Radioclare's 2019 log (Croatian/Russian)

[Radioclare]

10 April
I feel tired today. I had back-to-back meetings this morning, followed by an afternoon of interviewing, and I didn't even have time to eat lunch properly.

Russian
It was another day of heavy Memrise reviews. I've spent nearly three quarters of an hour on Memrise today. It is genuinely really helpful - and definitely the best way I've found to make myself learn vocabulary - but today is one of those days where if it wasn't for the challenge, I probably would have slacked it off

Anyway, on the way to and from the station today I got through lesson 6 of Pimsleur 2. Not sure I learned anything earth-shattering on this one, but the speaking practice continues to be useful.

This evening I really didn't feel like doing anything much, so I didn't, but I do have good news: my passport arrived in the post today and I've got my Russian visa

Total time = 72 minutes. Streak = 100 days

[Meddysong]

Your streak has hit 100 days too!

[Radioclare]

I didn't even realise that it was 100 days yesterday! This may be the longest I've ever kept up a streak of anything

11 April
I was lucky enough to get a lift to/from work today, so I didn't have a commute to do any studying, but that was compensated for by a longer evening

Russian
I got in thirty minutes or so of Memrise on the computer. There were fewer reviews today thankfully, so I was able to start learning some new vocabulary.

Once I'd done that, I input the vocab from chapter 16 of TY Russian. I'd been putting this off but it actually wasn't too painful; there were only about 50 new words.

Then I spent a couple of hours on LWT and got the end of chapter 6 of Twilight

Total time = 163 minutes. Streak = 101 days

I'm going to be away for the weekend at the British Esperanto Conference, so not sure whether I'll be updating my log for the next couple of days, but I'm definitely going to be trying to keep my streak

[Radioclare]

12 April
I decided to work from home today before finishing early to travel to Dover for the British Esperanto Conference. It was quite a hectic morning while I tried to get enough done to justify finishing at 3.

Russian
I just about managed to leave home on time for my train and the walk to the station was just long enough to get through lesson 7 of Pimsleur 2. The lessons are getting hard enough now that I have to give them my full concentration to get the answers right. I was struggling to hear a bit at times because there was a lot of traffic on the roads, so I definitely didn't get 100% on this one. I'm trying to resist the urge to go back and repeat lessons though.

I had to stand on the train to Birmingham but I had a comparatively spacious spot so was able to do Memrise most of the way. I seem to be averaging about 100 reviews per day at the moment so I'm very grateful for the speed review function on the app. I hope that continues with Decks.

The next part of my journey involved a train to London. I had a reserved seat so figured I'd be able to make some good progress with TY Russian, but the train was so packed that I didn't have space to write. I spent about 15 minutes on my current chapter before giving up; I can't do exercises with verbs of motion in my head

Instead I took out Penguin Russian, which I'd brought with me for emergencies, and started reading that for revision. I managed to focus on it for half an hour and got through the first four chapters. Bizarrely, I remember revising this textbook on the train to last year's British Esperanto Conference as well.

I've now got to London and I have another hour or so on the train to Dover, but I feel too tired/caffeine-deprived to do any more Russian, so I'm going to read some Croatian instead And when I finally get there I guess I'll have to speak some Esperanto

Total time = 96 minutes. Streak = 102 days

[Radioclare]

13 April
Not a very long update today; most of the day has been taken up by attending the Esperanto conference. We had the AGM this morning, which is traditionally one of the lowlights of my year, but I survived it at least

Russian
All I've managed today is Memrise! I did a bit when I woke up and then some more during gaps between lectures in the afternoon. So in total I got to 41 minutes, which at least keeps my streak, even if it doesn't feel very inspiring. In my TY Russian course I did manage to get to the end of the vocab for chapter 14.

Total time = 41 minutes. Streak = 103 days

Esperanto
Today has obviously involved a lot of Esperanto. The AGM this morning was in English, but then the afternoon was a series of lectures in Esperanto, interspersed with a quiz, and in the evening we had a concert. My Esperanto feels kind of rusty, which is to be expected given how infrequently I use it. I keep second guessing myself and stopping halfway through a sentence thinking I may be about to say a Slavic word by mistake

[Radioclare]

14 April
Just got home from Dover. I had an Esperanto-free day on my own today as a treat for surviving the AGM Well, most people were going on an excursion to Calais, but I couldn't do that because I need to be at work tomorrow, and I chose not to participate in the Dover-based excursion and make my own instead. So this morning I climbed up to the top of the white cliffs, where there is then a really beautiful coastal path that you can follow for miles. Dover is not the most happening place in the world, but the cliffs are very pretty I did end up having a couple of conversations in Esperanto when I bumped into people I knew during the course of the day.

Croatian
I finished reading Dan Brown's 'Digital Fortress' in Croatian, which gave me 366 pages towards the Super Challenge. I only need to read one more book now to reach 100 so I'll have to see whether I've got any more light reading waiting for me on my Croatian shelf. I don't want to read anything too strenuous in Croatian before my trip to Russia.

Russian
I didn't do any Russian until it was time to travel home. I could have done tonnes of Pimsleur during all the hours I was hiking along the cliffs if I had had the foresight to charge my iPod before I left home. Or even bring the charger with me. But I didn't, so I had to walk in silence. On the train from Dover to London I did Memrise and then when I was on the train from London to home, I watched a new video on the Russian Progress Youtube channel and spent about 35 minutes revising Penguin Russian, which took me to the end of chapter 7. This chapter had some exercises on adjective endings which I think would be good for me to re-do as practise, but it wasn't possible on the train. I may come back to them later in the week or next weekend when it's Easter

Total time = 81 minutes. Streak = 104 days

[Radioclare]

15 April
As Mondays go, this one didn't feel terribly productive. I didn't sleep that well, and that I spent 3.5 hours stuck in pointless meetings at work, which meant I had to stay late to get some actual work done.

Russian
I'm home alone at the moment which means I had to walk into the station this morning. It takes about half an hour, so just the right amount of time to get through lesson 8 of Pimsleur 2. This lesson started to introduce days of the week, which is useful, although because it's going at Pimsleur-speed it's only covered Monday and Tuesday so far

On the train to work I did some Memrise but the train home was too cramped to do anything, because there had been a problem with another train being cancelled. By the time I got home I felt too tired to do any proper studying, so instead I listened to the audiobook for chapter 6 of Twilight (which took about half an hour) and started looking up words for chapter 7 in LWT. I would love to do LWT with a language that doesn't have cases; literally every time I think I must have defined every possible variant of a word, another version crops up as unknown

Total time = 138 minutes. Streak = 105 days

[Brun Ugle]

When I started using LWT for Spanish, I tried calculating the number of possible forms one verb could have. When I counted up all the variations of person, number, tense, mood, plus the various combinations of clitics that could be added to certain verb forms, I found that there were well over 200 possible forms of each verb. Of course not all the forms are possible for all verbs and some are unlikely to be used even if possible, but it’s still a lot. I also like to include every possible definition of a word, so I ended up making an Excel sheet with the verbs so I could just paste the definitions in. Fortunately nouns and adjectives are pretty easy in Spanish.

I suppose every language has its difficulties if you want to use LWT. German has compound nouns and separable verbs, which LTW doesn’t notice the other half of. So even if you’ve defined a verb, it doesn’t mean you’ve defined it for the right separable prefix for the current sentence. And then there are agglutinative languages where they just keep adding another bit to the word like LEGO bricks. And languages like Chinese and Japanese where there are no spaces.

[Radioclare]

Wow, 200 forms for a verb sounds nightmarish

I keep thinking I've spent so long on LWT that I must surely have defined all the words I know - because I don't actually know that many words in Russian - and that next time I start a chapter it will only be the truly unknown words which are shown as unknown... but I don't seem to quite be at that stage yet!

16 April
I was able to work from home today which meant I had a good lie-in, although when I did get up I found that one of my cats seems to have gone AWOL, which is less good.

Russian
I have obviously done something to offend the Memrise gods because I had over 200 reviews waiting for me today

My mom's Russian teacher has recommended that the class watch a film called 'Осенний марафон'. I started trying to watch it this evening (it's on Youtube with Russian subtitles) but I couldn't really get into it. It's probably a mixture of my Russian not being good enough even with subtitles and not really being a huge film person anyway.

I spent some more time on chapter 7 of Twilight before bed. So far this feels like a chapter in which not much happens.

Total time = 91 minutes. Streak = 106 days

[Radioclare]

17 April
My cat came back Goodness knows where she has been! And I had a client meeting at work which had the potential to go badly, but went unexpectedly well.

Russian
Those were the positives. Otherwise, I really felt like I'd lost motivation to do anything useful today. I guess I'm just tired, because although some parts of this past weekend in Dover were nice, it wasn't exactly what I would call a relaxing weekend. I'm extremely glad it's nearly Easter!

I did some Memrise on the train to work as usual. I didn't do any Pimsleur on the way to the office because I just didn't feel like it, although I did listen to Russian music instead (though I don't include music in my study figures).

This evening I watched a video on the Russian Progress channel about Milan which I thought might be interesting, because I've changed trains in Milan multiple times but never properly seen the city itself. The video didn't really convince me that I was missing out on anything And I watched a couple of videos in Russian about Montenegro.

Total time = 62 minutes. Streak = 107 days