Because why not? (Russian)

Continue or start your personal language log here, including logs for challenge participants
User avatar
Ice Blue
White Belt
Posts: 47
Joined: Tue Jan 08, 2019 9:49 am
Languages: French (N), English
Learning : Russian
On hold : Croatian, German
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... =15&t=9916
x 129

Re: Because why not? (German, Russian)

Postby Ice Blue » Mon Jul 22, 2019 9:08 pm

Russian: Watched Hotel Transylvania 3, AI : Artificial Intelligence, Annabelle : Creation and currently watching Kill Bill vol.1 in Russian, no subtitles. I understand much more when watching movies than when I'm watching Desperate Housewives - dunno why exactly ; all of these I've seen before. I actually watched DH many more times than the rest combined. My guess is that DH is so dialogue heavy that it kinda gets all mixed up in my mind, especially since the characters talk fast and say a lot of things in a short time. When it comes to movies I can guess a few words by context - with DH it seems like I don't have that privilege. Oh well. It'll get better!
2 x

User avatar
Ice Blue
White Belt
Posts: 47
Joined: Tue Jan 08, 2019 9:49 am
Languages: French (N), English
Learning : Russian
On hold : Croatian, German
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... =15&t=9916
x 129

Re: Because why not? (German, Russian)

Postby Ice Blue » Mon Aug 05, 2019 11:12 am

Russian

I stumbled on this song this morning and am in love with it

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GheOy-5pQkE

I now have two options:

1) I can get to work and start studying its translation.
2) I can waste my day listening to it again and again until I get sick of that song.

Spoiler: option 2 is definitely what's going to happen

Aside from my new musical discovery I've watched two episodes of The Lion Guard and am now on the 11th episode of Desperate Housewives season 2. I've also watched close to two hours of Let's Play videos. Russian is definitely getting clearer: it had already lost any foreignness a while ago but now I can really distinguish pretty much all the words I'm hearing, knowing which one stops where and where another one starts. I now simply lack vocabulary to actually understand everything (that, and I'm also still getting used to the word order and declensions which is a lot of work and since I'm lazy I've never really bothered to learn anything about those :mrgreen: )

I haven't done any reading in Russian for some time now. I should probably get back to my manga. I'm not feeling very motivated for that though... I'm feeling the itch to write (I'm an aspiring author). That itch has been occuring more often lately but I haven't actually taken the time to get back into it. I want to do eveything and nothing at the same time.

I have three days off right now and I don't even know what I want to do during those: should I write? Should I work on Russian? I can't even say I'm going to do a bit of both - it's either I'm writing or studying languages. I never really managed to have those two hobbies of mine coexist. If one gets my attention then the other one goes.
4 x

User avatar
Ice Blue
White Belt
Posts: 47
Joined: Tue Jan 08, 2019 9:49 am
Languages: French (N), English
Learning : Russian
On hold : Croatian, German
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... =15&t=9916
x 129

Re: Because why not? (German, Russian)

Postby Ice Blue » Sun Aug 11, 2019 3:50 am

Russian

Watched three episodes of The Lion Guard. They're 20 minutes long each. It's not the best series in the world but it's not too difficult to understand. I'm getting well acquainted with the vocabulary pertaining to the savanna and its inhabitants: hippopotamus, bushes, hyenas... Not extremely useful but at least I'm learning something! The characters usually speak a bit slower than I'm used to on Desperate Housewives, which helps.

I'm also currently watching IT (the 2017 version).

I wanted to watch some Star Trek Deep Space Nine but the Russian version is a voice-over and I can't bear it so instead I'm going to watch it in German. That's actually not a bad thing: I can feel myself get slightly burned-out on Russian and introducing some German listening in the next days could provide some relief.

Haven't read anything, I'm really feeling lazy lately :)

Aside from languages, I still haven't started writing again yet. Mostly because I had this illumination that I've got a tremendous amount of work waiting for me on that front and it's easier for me to concentrate on Russian, which doesn't take as much effort. I'm basically procrastinating at this point, using languages as an excuse. As much as it can sound like a good thing to language enthusiasts like us, it actually isn't. I just have to muster enough energy and courage to finally start working on my novel again - maybe in the next few days?
Last edited by Ice Blue on Sun Aug 11, 2019 4:05 am, edited 1 time in total.
1 x

User avatar
eido
Blue Belt
Posts: 841
Joined: Tue Jan 30, 2018 8:31 pm
Languages: English (N), Spanish (C1)
x 3181

Re: Because why not? (German, Russian)

Postby eido » Sun Aug 11, 2019 3:56 am

I enjoy writing, too, and I feel the same way as you. I often have bursts of inspiration to write the next great American novel (I'm a Yank, so hey) and I go weeks writing, and then I realize, "Why, shouldn't I be writing this in Spanish? Or Icelandic?" and I go back to the more, er, practical hobby... :oops: I guess I'm just lazy. I don't have enough faith in my ideas. But I hear you ;)
2 x

User avatar
overscore
Orange Belt
Posts: 233
Joined: Fri Jul 28, 2017 7:49 pm
Location: Belgrade
Languages: English, French, German, Serbian.
Levels vary. Native is fr-ca.
x 227

Re: Because why not? (German, Russian)

Postby overscore » Sun Aug 11, 2019 3:37 pm

hey I find your log fascinating!

I've always found German quite easy. I've never claimed to speak it well, or correctly, I still make a lot of mistakes, but it came very easily to me. If I were to live in Germany it would polish real quick. Now with Serbian (or Croatian as you call it) it's been a bit harder, but I love it and making progress, if slowly. So I guess my experience has been the opposite :lol:

I think with your Russian it would be helpful if you create personal links to the language, maybe you could make some Russian friends online and that would ease the uncertainty you have with the country itself? I found that the more I learned about Serbia – and made friends –, the more I could deconstruct the negative emotions associated with the East.

That's probably what I would do. I think our brain plays these kinds of tricks on us as a kind of survival mechanism, in order to retain energy and so on, but the reality is that language can come easily if we are not in a state of stress.

Bon je radotte beaucoup, mais c'est juste que je me reconnais là-dedans et on peut peut-être s'entre-motiver :D .
1 x

User avatar
Ice Blue
White Belt
Posts: 47
Joined: Tue Jan 08, 2019 9:49 am
Languages: French (N), English
Learning : Russian
On hold : Croatian, German
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... =15&t=9916
x 129

Re: Because why not? (German, Russian)

Postby Ice Blue » Fri Sep 06, 2019 2:37 pm

eido wrote:I enjoy writing, too, and I feel the same way as you. I often have bursts of inspiration to write the next great American novel (I'm a Yank, so hey) and I go weeks writing, and then I realize, "Why, shouldn't I be writing this in Spanish? Or Icelandic?" and I go back to the more, er, practical hobby... :oops: I guess I'm just lazy. I don't have enough faith in my ideas. But I hear you ;)


Oh, another aspiring author! Yeah, I feel you. I actually used to have faith in my ideas but after having taken close to a year long pause and seing now what I've written with new eyes it's... well, it's eye opening. I have close to 100'000 words and a big part of it is simply not good enough. I'm fortunate in that it definitely isn't all garbage - far from it. But a lot of it will need some serious reworking. It's intimidating but I know I will find the time and motivation to start again!

overscore wrote:hey I find your log fascinating!

I've always found German quite easy. I've never claimed to speak it well, or correctly, I still make a lot of mistakes, but it came very easily to me. If I were to live in Germany it would polish real quick. Now with Serbian (or Croatian as you call it) it's been a bit harder, but I love it and making progress, if slowly. So I guess my experience has been the opposite :lol:

I think with your Russian it would be helpful if you create personal links to the language, maybe you could make some Russian friends online and that would ease the uncertainty you have with the country itself? I found that the more I learned about Serbia – and made friends –, the more I could deconstruct the negative emotions associated with the East.

That's probably what I would do. I think our brain plays these kinds of tricks on us as a kind of survival mechanism, in order to retain energy and so on, but the reality is that language can come easily if we are not in a state of stress.

Bon je radotte beaucoup, mais c'est juste que je me reconnais là-dedans et on peut peut-être s'entre-motiver :D .


Thanks for coming by! Yeah, I'm well aware that I should normally have more difficulties with Croatian than with German but I'm not complaining, it's just strange!

I usually am able to make the distinction between a country and its politics and the people living there ; it's just that my primary reasons for learning Russian are related to its politics and unfortunately I rarely read nice things about Russia (I could work on that and make an effort to find new and engaging material). I'm not too worried though : I can already see that I'm making progress and I'm happy with it :) I may sound critical of the country but I'd actually have no problem making friends with a Russian - they're just regular people, like everywhere else.

C'est tout bon, j'espère que ton apprentissage du serbe se passe bien et qu'on va s'accrocher pour l'étude de nos langues respectives :)

**

Russian: I'm done watching season 1 of The Lion Guard : that's 26 episodes, each of them 20 minutes long. I'm already on episode 4 of season 2. The story lines are always easy to understand (it's an easy children show) and I definitely understand more and more words. Slowly but surely, Russian is becoming more transparent. The real test will be coming back to Desperate Housewives and see if I really made some substantial progress or not.

I tried reading some fanfic but I never spent more than a few minutes on it... And I think it's a bit too optimistic to believe I'm going to read a lot the coming weeks. I want to start writing again and this is going to take a lot of my free time. Yeah, I already wrote that in my last log entry. And guess what? I haven't written anything since then.

Why ? Because I'm lazy as f*ck.

And also because The Lion Guard is having a strange effect on me and I've spent a few too many hours those last days watching videos and documentaries about animals on youtube. I never knew people on the net were so invested in the lives of live lions, having favorites and all that. You learn every day!
3 x

User avatar
Ice Blue
White Belt
Posts: 47
Joined: Tue Jan 08, 2019 9:49 am
Languages: French (N), English
Learning : Russian
On hold : Croatian, German
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... =15&t=9916
x 129

Re: Because why not? (German, Russian)

Postby Ice Blue » Fri Sep 20, 2019 3:05 pm

Russian: I'm on episode 15 of season 2 of The Lion Guard. I wasn't very fond of this series at first but I guess it grew on me; some episodes are a bit "meh" but most of the time I enjoy my time spent watching it. I guess I'm lucky to actually like some children show, since those are usually dubbed.

I read the first volume of the manga Kingdom Hearts 2. It's not as big an achievement as it sounds because there isn't much to read at all. I'm more satisfied with the fact that I started exploring the russian internet: it is now slowly opening up to me like english did so many years ago! Now I can see what's happening on the russian side of the net! Now I can read in russian exactly the same bulls*it I was already reading about in english.

Anyway, I'm glad I seem to be going somewhere with russian. Where exactly I don't know but at least I don't have the feeling that I'm working on it for nothing :)
2 x

User avatar
Ice Blue
White Belt
Posts: 47
Joined: Tue Jan 08, 2019 9:49 am
Languages: French (N), English
Learning : Russian
On hold : Croatian, German
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... =15&t=9916
x 129

Re: Because why not? (German, Russian)

Postby Ice Blue » Tue Nov 19, 2019 4:48 pm

I haven't visited the forum in a while ; I've stopped doing anything language related those last months, mostly because I got burnt out, I guess. I also felt like finally getting back to writing my novel, which is much more important right now than getting better at languages I currently have no real use for.

Today I read a bit in Russian: two small fanfictions, amounting to a bit more than a thousand words put together. For those who don't know, fanfictions are stories that are written by fans of a movie/tv series/book using characters from said movies/tv series/books. I basically learned English reading Lord of The Ring fanfictions. I'm pretty much trying to recreate the experience with Russian. We'll see how it goes :)
2 x

User avatar
Ice Blue
White Belt
Posts: 47
Joined: Tue Jan 08, 2019 9:49 am
Languages: French (N), English
Learning : Russian
On hold : Croatian, German
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... =15&t=9916
x 129

Re: Because why not? (German, Russian)

Postby Ice Blue » Thu Nov 21, 2019 5:35 pm

Russian: I started reading the Russian translation of The Beach, a novel by Alex Garland. I read this book in both French and German a few years ago and really liked it, so I decided I could try reading it in Russian and see where it takes me. As a matter of fact I'm surprised to see I understand quite a lot. I suspect this is due to the fact that I remember what happens in the book, so mostly I'm just guessing what's happening in each scene but still - that's encouraging :) At the very least it's an agreeable activity and I'll try to keep it going for as long as I'm motivated. I haven't read a lot yet - maybe 6-7 pages.

I had planned to concentrate on Hungarian during the last months of 2019 but I don't think it's going to happen. I'm too busy worrying about the fact that I'm still not working on my novel. It'd be so easy to just open a Word page and start typing... But nope. Better read in Russian.

Haven't done any Croatian or German for a long time either. I'm not too worried. I feel like these two would easily come back if I needed them to. Hope I'm not wrong! :mrgreen:
0 x

User avatar
Ice Blue
White Belt
Posts: 47
Joined: Tue Jan 08, 2019 9:49 am
Languages: French (N), English
Learning : Russian
On hold : Croatian, German
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... =15&t=9916
x 129

Re: Because why not? (Russian)

Postby Ice Blue » Sun Feb 02, 2020 12:57 pm

I'm very late but I'll still wish you all a happy new year :D

2019 in a nutshell
2019 has been a very good year language learning wise: I started with some intensive input-based studying for Croatian the first three months then abruptly decided to concentrate on Russian. I watched quite a few movies as well as two seasons of The Lion Guard and a season and a half of Desperate Housewives in Russian without subtitles. I also read close to 5000 words - only guessing there, but I've read short stories and at least two manga so probably not too far off that number. I'm very satisfied with my progress; Russian was never a big priority in my language learning but since there is so much ressource available I'll probably keep doing what I've been doing until now, which is watching movies and tv series and probably some Let's Play on youtube.

My German is doing well I think, at least when it comes to input; I can understand it quite well and read it without too much effort. It definitely hasn't been a priority in 2019. Hungarian I practically never touched last year. My only contact with it has been when I've listened to some songs in Hungarian and...that's it. I'm not particularly worried about my lack of studying that language. I know I haven't lost much of it - mostly because I never attained a high level in it to begin with. No problem, I'm still very motivated and when it comes to languages I mostly have long terms plans so I know I'll get around to studying it eventually.


My goals for 2020

Russian: I'm not really good at counting (read: I'm lazy...but also I hate math) so instead of focusing on hours and minutes and seconds I'll just say that in 2020 I should be watching at least two seasons of a tv series (which one is not important) and maybe ten movies in Russian. I have no particular reading goal in mind. Maybe read at least two more manga and 10'000 words of fanfiction. This should be doable!

German: Watch something like ten movies without subtitles. I don't know, I'm not planning to concentrate my efforts on German this year so if I can manage to squeeze a few hours of listening it'll be enough.

Croatian: No real plans either, I fear to mix it up with Russian so I guess it'll stay on the back burner for now.

Hungarian: This is the language I should concentrate my efforts on during the second part of the year (starting from june, I'm thinking). This year I'm going to start watching series in Hungarian without subtitles and see where it takes me. This has worked well for Russian but Hungarian is more opaque and I'm not convinced I'll see as much progress. I could be agreeably surprised though!


2020 up until now

Russian has still been going quite strong in the first month of 2020: I've already started season 3 of The Lion Guard (I'm on episode 9) and watched Crawl yesterday. Today I'm watching A Dog's Purpose :)
2 x


Return to “Language logs”

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: guyome and 2 guests