Radioclare's 2019 log (Croatian/Russian)

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Re: Radioclare's 2019 log (Croatian/Russian)

Postby Daniel N. » Thu Feb 07, 2019 8:02 pm

Serpent wrote:maybe learn to spell изоляция first? :) most -lation words are spelt with -ляция in russian btw. (if they exist obviously)

it's interesting that Russian has that -я- while Croatian and Serbian have just -a- (izolacija). How come? Russians like to palatalize consonants?
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Re: Radioclare's 2019 log (Croatian/Russian)

Postby vonPeterhof » Thu Feb 07, 2019 9:20 pm

Daniel N. wrote:
Serpent wrote:maybe learn to spell изоляция first? :) most -lation words are spelt with -ляция in russian btw. (if they exist obviously)

it's interesting that Russian has that -я- while Croatian and Serbian have just -a- (izolacija). How come? Russians like to palatalize consonants?

It's mainly because Russian doesn't have an exact match for the "neutral" Western European [l] consonant, and when we hear it we tend to perceive it as sounding closer to our [lʲ] (which apparently isn't quite as palatal as [ʎ]) than to our [ɫ]. This isn't the case for most other Slavic languages which do have the [l] consonant (although I've always found it curious that in Croatian and Serbian it plays the role of the "hard L", whereas in Polish it's etymologically equivalent to the "soft L", the hard one having shifted to [w]).
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Re: Radioclare's 2019 log (Croatian/Russian)

Postby Serpent » Thu Feb 07, 2019 9:25 pm

Russians like to palatalize consonants?
Not randomly, no. I think traditionally the French or Latin L was seen as closer to the soft one in Russian?
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Re: Radioclare's 2019 log (Croatian/Russian)

Postby Daniel N. » Thu Feb 07, 2019 9:27 pm

vonPeterhof wrote:(although I've always found it curious that in Croatian and Serbian it plays the role of the "hard L", whereas in Polish it's etymologically equivalent to the "soft L", the hard one having shifted to [w]).

It depends on the dialect. In coastal regions of Croatia, the hard l became quite soft, and the original palatal l /ʎ/ = <lj> merged with /j/, so they say voja and jubav for will and love...
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Re: Radioclare's 2019 log (Croatian/Russian)

Postby vonPeterhof » Thu Feb 07, 2019 10:09 pm

Daniel N. wrote:
vonPeterhof wrote:(although I've always found it curious that in Croatian and Serbian it plays the role of the "hard L", whereas in Polish it's etymologically equivalent to the "soft L", the hard one having shifted to [w]).

It depends on the dialect. In coastal regions of Croatia, the hard l became quite soft, and the original palatal l /ʎ/ = <lj> merged with /j/, so they say voja and jubav for will and love...

Yeah, I was mainly thinking of the standard varieties there. Apparently in some eastern Polish dialects they still use the “dark L” and consistently palatalize the “light” one.
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Re: Radioclare's 2019 log (Croatian/Russian)

Postby Radioclare » Thu Feb 07, 2019 10:53 pm

DaveAgain wrote:Somewhere on the RTS.ch there's a documentary about british traders (trying to bypass the baltic/hanseatic (?) traders) that opened a trading route from Britain to Russia into that area.


Thank you - that sounds interesting, will look it up :)

Serpent wrote:also, maybe learn to spell изоляция first? :) most -lation words are spelt with -ляция in russian btw. (if they exist obviously)


Maybe I can blame Croatian for my poor spelling because I keep writing звукоизолация :lol: I hadn't thought of it as being hotel vocabulary, but I guess you're right :)

7 February
One of those frustrating days at work. This feels like a long week.

Russian
I tried really hard with Memrise this morning. I've run out of words to learn from the Penguin course until I develop the motivation to type up the chapter 15 vocabulary, so I went back to the official Memrise Russian 1 course and I learned this very useful phrase:

Image

I sent it to my sister because she is legit scared of clowns, so who knows - maybe we will actually get to say this in Russia :lol:

Otherwise a pretty uninspiring effort for the 6WC today, because I had a backlog of correspondence to get through this evening. I am keeping up the Pimsleur and I'm nearly at the end of lesson 7 now. It doesn't feel as hard as last time I got to this stage so I guess this is positive and means I'm learning something.

Total time = 51 minutes. Streak = 38 days
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Re: Radioclare's 2019 log (Croatian/Russian)

Postby Radioclare » Fri Feb 08, 2019 10:41 pm

8 February
Working at home again today, but I finished earlier than on Wednesday so had a more productive evening :)

Russian
I went for a walk at lunchtime and got through all of lesson 8 of Pimsleur. My iPod started playing up again halfway through the walk. I hope it's not about to break :(

This evening I watched some more Russian videos on Youtube. Now that Youtube knows I am learning Russian it is making all kinds of suggestions to me. So I watched one video about Novosibirsk, another about hotel vocabulary and one about dogs in Russia. A bit random, but because they are made for learners they are easier to understand than the children's videos I was trying to watch before. I guess I'm not quite at the intellectual level of Thomas the Tank yet :lol:

I finally bit the bullet and put the vocab from chapter 15 from Penguin Russian into Memrise. I feel like this book lulls you into a false sense of security about vocabulary. You work through all the grammar points in the chapter and think things are going pretty well... then you get to the end of the book and get hit with a huge vocab list of words which mostly haven't featured in the chapter up to this point but are used in the brief dialogues which follow. There were 64 words in the vocab list for this chapter and most of them are genuinely new to me. It wasn't so bad at the start of the book because I already knew a lot of the words from previous failed attempts at other Russian courses :lol:

Total time = 121 minutes. Streak = 39 days
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Re: Radioclare's 2019 log (Croatian/Russian)

Postby Radioclare » Sat Feb 09, 2019 10:59 pm

9 February
Another one of those weekend days where I didn't get as much done as I expected. I read for quite a while this morning, but it was in English. I spent all afternoon doing voluntary stuff, including writing a charity investment policy, which was as much fun as it sounds. Then this evening I was mostly booking accommodation for my Bulgaria/Romania trip and it just takes so long! 10 years ago booking accommodation was quick, because I just went for whatever was cheapest. Now I'm rejecting places because I don't like the look of the headboards on the beds, and I guess this is means I am getting old :lol:

Russian
I did do Memrise, but it was one of those days where you log in and have a lot more reviews than you expect, so I didn't learn any new words.

I am still enjoying watching videos in Russian. I watched one about Helsinki today, which was interesting because I've been there quite a few times now, although I didn't recognise most of what was shown in the video.

I didn't do any Penguin today, but I did complete lesson 19 on the RT site. It was all about nouns and pronouns in the dative case, so nice practice but not too difficult :)

Total time = 70 minutes. Streak = 40 days
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Re: Radioclare's 2019 log (Croatian/Russian)

Postby Radioclare » Sun Feb 10, 2019 9:39 pm

10 February
I didn't have boring things like housework and investment policies to deal with today, so I got more done :)

Russian
I didn't have too many reviews on Memrise today, so I was able to learn some new words.

I did two lessons on the RT website. One was about the dative and the other was about the prepositional. These aren't bad as cases go, so I thought I was going to get through the whole two lessons without having to consult the answer sheets. But I fell almost at the final hurdle in the prepositional lesson, when there was a task which required you to drag things which a person was dreaming about to be under the headings of a woman, a man and a child. Some of them were quite easy to guess, like the woman was the one dreaming about perfume and the man was the one dreaming about motorcycles. But although I tried my best to get into a sexist frame of mind, I just couldn't get it 100% correct. Eventually when I checked the answers I found my error had been to assume that the man was dreaming about a coat. I'd assigned the coat to the man mainly because I'd just assigned "dress" to the woman so I thought perhaps they were dreaming about one item of clothing each. And, I mean, men do wear coats! I was imagining a very manly coat for a cold Russian winter. But I was wrong anyway, and I would have never figured it out without checking the answers.

This afternoon I watched two episodes of Thomas the Tank. The playlist says that they're "classic", but in my opinion they are a newfangled version (there's a helicopter!) as opposed to the true classic version with Ringo Starr :lol: I can feel my comprehension increasing, especially my comprehension of the intro (which is the same for each episode). I still feel like my comprehension of Russian is lower than my comprehension of Croatian was at the point I started trying to watch similar episodes in Croatian, but I'm not 100% sure whether that's true or whether I just feel more optimistic when I was learning Croatian.

I have finally started chapter 16 of Penguin Russian, which is about the instrumental case. This isn't the first time I've tried to learn the instrumental case so you might think I was getting good at it, but I still made errors in the exercises and in particular got caught out by the instrumental of царь.

Total time = 144 minutes. Streak = 41 days

Other
I've really neglected Croatian this week, which makes me sad. Having spent so long waiting for my series to come back on TV after Christmas, I'm now actually several episodes behind. It's because I've been prioritising Russian above everything else in my evenings.

I am doing dreadfully with reading Metro 2033 and may have to drop out of the book club. I'm still stuck somewhere in the middle of chapter 3, so not on track with the schedule at all :(

Some days all I've done in Croatian is listening to music. I don't count this for the 6WC, but I do enjoy it a lot. Maybe I need to find some music to listen to in Russian as well.

Another thing I'm not counting for the 6WC is watching the second series of the Belgian TV programme 'Salamander'. It's so exciting! I watched the first series years ago... I think maybe 2014/15 when I went to Belgium for New Year... so it was a brilliant surprise when my sister bought me the DVD of season 2 for Christmas this year.

Ĉi-semajnfine mi finfine aĉetis miajn trajnbiletojn por vojaĝi al la ĉi-jara Brita Kongreso de Esperanto, kiu okazos en Dovro post du monatoj. La biletoj estis pli altekostaj ol mi esperis, plejparte ĉar mi devas vojaĝi al Dovro vendredon el mia laborejo en Birminghamo kaj dimanĉon reveni hejmen. Pro tio ke mi ne vojaĝos el kaj revenos al la sama urbo, mi ne povis aĉeti unu ambaŭdirektan bileton sed anstataŭe devis aĉeti du unudirektajn, kaj en Britio tiu ofte plialtigas la koston. La kongreso mem estas kunkongreso de la Esperanto-asocioj en Britio kaj Francio, kaj samtempe la 100a brita kongreso. La britaj kongresoj kompreneble komenciĝis antaŭ pli ol 100 jaroj sed ili ne okazis dum la mondmilitoj, kaj pro tio ni nur ĉi-jare atingos la centan. La lokon oni elektis pro tio ke en Dovro okazis la unua internacia kunveno de Esperantistoj en 1904, kiam britaj kaj francaj Esperantistoj renkontiĝis tie kaj en Kalezo. Al Kalezo oni planas ekskursi dum la kongreso, kvankam estas eble ke Briteliro malhelpos tion... Mi skribis ĉi tion en Esperanto principe pro tio ke mi volis ekscii ĉu - post tiom da lernado de la rusa - mi fakte kapablas esprimi ion ajn en Esperanto. Ŝajnas ke mi ne tute forgesis ĉion, kaj pro tio mi ĝojas :)
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Re: Radioclare's 2019 log (Croatian/Russian)

Postby Meddysong » Sun Feb 10, 2019 9:53 pm

Radioclare wrote:Mi skribis ĉi tion en Esperanto principe pro tio ke mi volis ekscii ĉu - post tiom da lernado de la rusa - mi fakte kapablas esprimi ion ajn en Esperanto. Ŝajnas ke mi ne tute forgesis ĉion, kaj pro tio mi ĝojas :)

Tute senerare :) Nur unu duon-komenton mi havas:

Radioclare wrote:Briteliro

Pli trafa estas Britdeliro.
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