Radioclare's 2019 log (Croatian/Russian)

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

Postby vonPeterhof » Sat Mar 09, 2019 7:27 pm

Radioclare wrote:1. Someone wrote "Если множественное число - вы, если единственное то Вы или ты." So I should be capitalising "Вы" if I'm using it to refer to one person? I just want to check this because in my textbooks it has always been written in lower case.
Yeah, it is customary to capitalize "Вы" when addressing a single recipient politely, although this custom isn't observed very strictly outside formal correspondence. In fact gramota.ru, a government-supported portal of information on standard written Russian, apparently considers not capitalizing "Вы" when addressing a single person a less serious error than capitalizing it when addressing more than one person, which is the opposite of what I assumed the rule was. But then, I'm a native speaker, so what do I know about prescribed standards? :lol:

Radioclare wrote:2. I am confused about the difference between "обед" and "ужин". My textbook said "The main meal of the day, обед, is a moveable feast - it may be at midday, in the afternoon or in the evening". I took this as meaning that "обед" was the correct word to describe my main meal, regardless of what time I normally have it. But on Lang8 someone wrote "Обед с 12 до 3" which makes it sound more like "обед" is simply "lunch", regardless of whether it's a proper meal or just a sandwich :?

Yeah, that is essentially right. To me the distinction was always less about either meal being the "main" one and more about how it ties into your work/school routine - "обед" is when you take a break from your work to have a meal at around the middle of the day, whereas "ужин" is assumed to be taken after you've left work in the evening. If I heard someone describe their 6:30 PM meal as "обед" I would assume either that they've been so busy at work that they couldn't take a proper lunch break, or that it's their tongue-in-cheek way of implying that they woke up at noon or later.
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Re: Radioclare's 2019 log (Croatian/Russian)

Postby Serpent » Sat Mar 09, 2019 10:58 pm

This is a holy war (холивар) on the level of apple vs android :lol:
Gramota does say that Вы is capitalized to show respect. I would capitalize it when I emailed university profs for example.
If it's just an acknowledgement of social distance rather than respect, you don't have to capitalize it. For example:
Я подошла к девушке и спросила: "Извините, вы можете меня сфоткать, пожалуйста?"
In a Romance language I would've probably used tu (or the third person without a pronoun). In Russian I'm likely to omit the "вы" in speech but it feels weird to do that in writing.
The overall context is informal to the point that I feel comfortable saying сфоткать instead of сфотографировать, but if she's not a friend of a friend, using ты would feel really weird.
The same applies to online forums, especially if I'm required to use вы by default, even with people of my age. If I add a forum member on fb/vk, we're probably going to switch to ты.
In a cup community i would feel really weird using Вы while explaining how to put a cup in the vagina :shock:, I would feel like a lady-in-waiting attending to the queen :lol: I generally use impersonal structures as much as possible but if I really had to use вы it would definitely be lowercase. Although it's not unusual for my entire message to be lowercase :D (If I got paid for this I'd probably only use Вы when giving cup advice if my employer insisted on that :lol:)

Anyway, most of the time you can just go by the same rules as with the german sie. But if the person who gave you corrections didn't acknowledge that this is heavily debated by native speakers, well, that was disingenous. :?
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Re: Radioclare's 2019 log (Croatian/Russian)

Postby Radioclare » Sun Mar 10, 2019 9:53 pm

Thank you, both - that's really helpful and makes things a lot clearer :) Getting corrections on Lang8 is great but it isn't really a format which lends itself to long explanations.

10 March
Yesterday I started the day with Russian and was really productive. Today I ended up doing everything else I needed to do first and everything else I needed to do ended up taking considerably longer than I expected, so I ended up without much time for studying :( I can't really complain because most of the day was spent planning itineraries and booking accommodation for my trips to Sicily and Cyprus later this year - which was fun - but I should probably have done half of it yesterday and half of it today so that my Russian studying was more balanced.

Russian
After a bit of Anki and Memrise, my main activity today was starting chapter 11 of TY Russian. This is all about the weather, so full of useful vocab. I worked through the weather-related bits of the chapter and then got to the grammar bit, which was about the future tense. I had had a glass of wine at this point so decided to stop and save the future tense for another day, because I feel like it's one of my big weaknesses at the moment.

The good news is that I finished reading the book about "Крольчонок Люси" :) I was definitely quite lazy and could/should have looked up a lot more vocabulary than I did, but I was definitely able to understand enough to enjoy the storyline. Hopefully by next time a new Super Challenge starts, I will be able to sign up with Russian and read some proper books! My next reading goal is to get to a level where I am good enough to read Twilight (don't judge - I find this a very motivating goal :lol: ). I don't think my vocabulary is anywhere good enough for that yet, though. Which means I need to spend more time typing things into Anki, so that I can expand my vocabulary...

While I was doing all my travel planning today I was listening to Russian music in the background. I like this song by Сплин:



Total time = 67 minutes. Streak = 69 days
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Re: Radioclare's 2019 log (Croatian/Russian)

Postby Radioclare » Mon Mar 11, 2019 10:48 pm

11 March
I hate Mondays :lol: I had a morning of back-to-back meetings and so it felt like a really unproductive start to the week.

Russian
I tackled the section on the future tense in TY Russian this evening. It wasn't too bad actually and I managed to get to the end of the chapter.

The most remarkable thing about today was that I got through not just one, but two, lessons of Pimsleur. I think this is a personal best :lol: I listened to most of one lesson while walking to work in the morning and only had a few minutes of it to finish when I went out for a walk at lunchtime, so I started a second lesson and ended up finishing that too :) I think it was lessons 18 and 19. The sentences are getting a bit more complicated now, which is good.

Total time = 135 minutes. Streak = 70 days
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Re: Radioclare's 2019 log (Croatian/Russian)

Postby Radioclare » Tue Mar 12, 2019 10:16 pm

12 March
This evening has been less productive than I hoped, because I got a bit carried away following Brexit-related news.

Russian
I didn't do any Pimsleur today because I seem to have done something to hurt my knee, so I was trying to take as few steps as possible. I don't have the patience to do Pimsleur sitting down!

I have done a lot of Memrise/Anki though (38 minutes combined). I am still using Memrise to work my way through their official "Russian 1" course. I do think it is genuinely good; the audio is really clear and the phrases/vocabulary they've chosen are mostly things which will be useful as a tourist. But it's definitely not worth paying a Pro subscription for, and ultimately I see working through it as a nice add-on to my main vocabulary learning, but certainly not the be all and end all.

I watched a video on the Russian Progress site about the history of Hong Kong. An interesting topic, which I know very little about, but the video was way above my level.

I should have put more vocab into Anki last night but I procrastinated and watched an episode of my Croatian series instead :lol:

Total time = 52 minutes. Streak = 71 days
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Re: Radioclare's 2019 log (Croatian/Russian)

Postby Radioclare » Wed Mar 13, 2019 10:30 pm

13 March
I worked from home today, so it was never going to be a great day for studying. I finished quite late, partly because I was trying to make up some hours that I need to take off tomorrow to go to London for my Russian visa application (eek!!). Then my evening got a bit derailed by catching up on Brexit news again :lol:

Russian
I'm trying to make a deck of vocabulary from TY Russian to put into Anki, so I spent a while working on that this evening. I think I should try to force myself to spend 20 minutes on it a day (or something like that) to make it feel more bearable.

For some reason I had a lot of reviews on Memrise today, but I don't mind doing Memrise reviews; it's days when there are a lot of Anki reviews that I'm finding depressing!

The next chapter of TY Russian seems to be about the past tense, so I'm hoping it's going to be a nice chapter. The past tense is one of the few things about Russian that seems straight forward :lol: I'll be spending quite a lot of time on trains to/from London tomorrow so I'm hoping to make more progress with that chapter anyway.

Total time = 51 minutes. Streak = 72 days
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Re: Radioclare's 2019 log (Croatian/Russian)

Postby Radioclare » Thu Mar 14, 2019 9:02 pm

14 March
Today was an unusual day because I took it off work. I normally save all my holiday days up for travelling, but I needed to take a random day off to go to London to get fingerprinted for my Russian visa, and today was that day! Now it's just a case of waiting and hoping that I'm successful.

Russian
I didn't do any Anki or Memrise on the train to London, because I needed my phone to display my train tickets and I didn't want it to run out of battery before the return journey in the evening. So I read chapter 12 of TY Russian instead and tried to do the exercises in my head (I forgot to pack any paper!). I will have to go back through some of the chapter at the weekend and take notes, because there were definitely some useful bits about the past tense of motion verbs, for example. When I'd finished chapter 12, I did some revision and read through some of the earlier chapters. And on the train home, I judged I had enough battery to do my Memrise and Anki reviews :)

Total time = 67 minutes. Streak = 73 days

Croatian
I forgot to say that I learned a new word from my series this week - bdijenje - which is a vigil. In the context of the series, it was a vigil before the funeral of one of the characters. I also did some reading in Croatian on the train today and about two thirds of the way through 'Salon za plakanje'. I'm going to London again on Saturday, for a less stressful reason this time, so I should definitely be able to finish it then :)
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Re: Radioclare's 2019 log (Croatian/Russian)

Postby Radioclare » Fri Mar 15, 2019 9:34 pm

15 March
I was working quite locally today which was great because it meant I got a lift and a lie in. It also meant I finished before 5.30 so my boyfriend and I ended up going out for a celebratory drink at a local pub, which was fun but has meant I haven't felt like doing any serious Russian grammar study this evening.

Russian
I have got through all my reviews on Memrise and Anki, plus planted 20 new phrases in the offical Memrise Russian course. There is news today that there may be an app for Decks after all, but I'm not sure whether I believe/trust Memrise any more after the past few weeks. I will be overjoyed if the app actually materialises and I can give up on using Anki. I'm already wondering whether it's worth me investing more time in adding words to my Anki decks or whether I should save myself the pain and see how things pan out with Decks.

I listened to one of the Russian Progress podcasts, reading the transcript at the same time. With the transcript, I could understand quite a lot. Without the transcript, I'm not sure I would have got very far at all. I also watched an episode of Thomas in Russian on Youtube and I did understand a reasonable amount of this :)

I finished the 6WC with 67 hours 43 minutes of Russian, which works out as about an hour and a half a day over the course of the challenge. This must be the best I've ever done in a 6WC :)

Total time = 60 minutes. Streak = 74 days
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Re: Radioclare's 2019 log (Croatian/Russian)

Postby Radioclare » Sat Mar 16, 2019 10:52 pm

16 March
I went to London again today, but this time to visit a cat cafe :)

Russian
I spent the journey down reading TY Russian. I still haven't had an opportunity to make notes on chapter 12, so I didn't want to rush ahead and start chapter 13. Instead I revised some of the earlier chapters (I got as far as the end of chapter 6) and studied the grammar summary at the back of the book, which is quite useful.

Total time = 62 minutes. Streak = 75 days

Croatian
On the journey home, I finally finished reading 'Salon za plakanje'. It was a really good crime novel which kept me guessing right until the end. It was one of those where, once you know what the solution is, you can see that there were several critical clues dropped in along the way, which you missed completely :lol:

I forgot to say yesterday that I came across a word in my series which I really can't understand: 'regres'. The context is that the policemen in the village police station have gone on strike, because the bosses in Zagreb are trying save money by cutting their pay. There are two bits to it, the first being that they are no longer going to be paid overtime and the second being that they are no longer going to get 'regres'. They are very upset about it, particularly one of the characters who has just remortgaged his house. I have no idea what 'regres' means though, beyond the fact that it seems like it's some sort of extra pay they normally get in addition to their basic salaries :? Maybe some sort of bonus??
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Re: Radioclare's 2019 log (Croatian/Russian)

Postby Robierre » Sun Mar 17, 2019 1:07 pm

Regres = the extra amount you get for your summer holidays. We also have the word "božićnica" for Christmas bonus.
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