Radioclare's 2020 log (Russian, Croatian)

[Radioclare]

30 October
I had a much quieter day at work today, I think I only had one phone call which might be a personal lockdown best

Russian
I had a glass of wine with my dinner so I didn't really feel like doing the genitive exercises on a Friday night after all. Instead I made a bit of an attempt to clear my Memrise reviews (although they seem to be growing at a greater rate than I can clear them, I still have over 300 to go although I spent about 15 minutes on it). I followed that up with an episode of 'Татьянин день'. There were no gherkins in this one

Total - Russian: 69 mins

[Radioclare]

31 October
I didn't do any work work today, so better than last weekend, but I did have some Esperanto finance work to do which ended up absorbing more hours than I'd hoped.

Russian
It was late afternoon before I was free to do any Russian. I tackled the genitive exercises in Schaum's Grammar. There are ten different exercises in total, of which I've got through six at the moment. The first one was very simple; a list of 12 sentences in which I had to identify which words were in the nominative, which in the accusative and which in the genitive. After that the exercises were more about getting the correct genitive endings, which was what I wanted to practice. I don't think the exercises were as hard as they could have been, but I did surprisingly well. I only got one sentence wrong and that was because I got confused about whether a soft sign noun was masculine or feminine. So overall I was pretty pleased

Total - Russian: 57 mins

[Radioclare]

1 November
Not the best of days, but I got my language study in first thing this morning before anything went wrong.

Russian
I spent over half an hour on Schaum's Grammar and finished all the exercises on the genitive. I got a few more incorrect answers this time but overall averaged around 80% and the most important thing is that I understand where I went wrong with them. I also worked through the section on prepositional case endings. The textbook seems to think the prepositional case is so easy that it doesn't need to give any exercises on it, skipping straight to the dative instead. I called it a day at that point because I know one of my weaknesses with Russian cases is failure to remember that the dative and prepositional cases are different (not so much with noun endings, but with pronouns) and also failure to remember which endings are which for dative and prepositional plural nouns (as in, I know both endings but I keep forgetting which ending is for the prepositional and which for the dative). So I need to work on that.

I also spent nearly 20 minutes clearing Memrise reviews, because I was feeling virtuous with it being the first day of the 6WC. I was hoping to get to Memrise Zero, but in the end all I achieved was getting my outstanding reviews below 200

Total - Russian: 54 mins

[Radioclare]

2 November
I had a meeting scheduled over lunchtime today which made me grumpy, though I did manage to get out for a short walk beforehand.

Russian
I've started the section on the dative in Schaum's Grammar. So far I've revised the dative endings and I'm trying to think of ways to cement the endings for prepositional plurals and dative plurals in my head. I also covered most of the section on uses of the dative, which hasn't included any surprises so far

I swear I will get to Memrise Zero before the end of the 6WC, but I'm not there yet. I did have another stab at it this evening, but I still have 178 reviews outstanding.

Croatian
I watched another episode of 'Drugo ime ljubavi'. Didn't notice any new words today

Total - Russian: 36 mins, Croatian: 45 mins

[Radioclare]

3 November
I had to sit a technical exam at work today to prove that I still know what I'm doing. I was a bit nervous about it because it was on something I last studied in 2008 and rarely use in my daily job. It wasn't a very fun two hours, but the good news is that I passed

Russian
I devoted some more time to Memrise this evening and I got to zero on my Russian reviews - yay

I continued with the dative chapter in Schaum's grammar, revising the use of the dative in impersonal constructions. Then I made a start on a couple of the dative exercises. The first one was pretty easy and just involved identifying which words in a list of sentences were in the dative and which in the accusative. I also didn't think the second one was too bad; it gave a list of 10 sentences with words in the dative singular and tasked you with rewriting them in the dative plural. I thought I was doing pretty well... until I came to mark myself and realised I had to award myself 0/10, on the basis that I'd somehow turned all the nouns into instrumental plurals instead Think that may be a personal worst!

Croatian
Enthused by the 6WC, I spent a few minutes clearing Croatian reviews on Memrise earlier too. And I watched another epsiode of 'Drugo ime ljubavi' while cycling, of course

Total - Russian: 42 mins, Croatian: 48 mins

[Radioclare]

4 November
After the stress of the exam yesterday, today was a fairly normal day at work We're having another lockdown in England starting tomorrow, but I don't think it's going to make much difference to my way of life because I haven't been doing anything very exciting anyway

Russian
I cleared all the Memrise reviews which had sprung up overnight while I was waiting for my computer to warm up. Later I re-did yesterday's exercise on dative plurals and I got 6/10. I mean I guess 6/10 is a big improvement on 0/10, but it's still not exactly a stellar performance. I don't think dative plurals are my thing. I forgot, although I think I did know at some distant point in the past, that if a noun has a weird nominative plural then the dative plural builds on that weirdness, so to speak, so two of the ones I got wrong were друзьям and братьям. I also didn't know that the dative plural of люди was людям... in fact I'm still not really sure why it's людям, but never mind.

Croatian
I got my Croatian Memrise reviews to zero. And I watched another episode of 'Drugo ime ljubavi'. The main character has been living a double life for about 90 episodes and it feels like we might be getting close to the point that people discover her true identity. She's pulled off quite an impressive deception which has involved (spoilers!) getting a job as a nurse (she's not a nurse) and even getting married under her false name. I'm quite surprised that the deception has gone on for as long as it has, because I assumed the plot would involve her husband finding out that she wasn't who he thought she was at a fairly early stage, then the couple spending most of the series tragically separated before he forgives her so that they can get back together and live happily ever after in the final few episodes. Most Croatian telenovelas I have watched have followed approximately this plot. There's "only" about 85 episodes left now, so I feel like he needs to find out the truth soon so that he has time to be suitably outraged but ultimately come around to forgiveness before the end of the series

Total - Russian: 33 mins, Croatian: 49 mins

[Radioclare]

5 November
I had a reasonably productive morning and managed to get something complicated done, but then this afternoon I've just felt kinda tired.

Russian
I only needed 5 minutes or so to stay on top of my Memrise reviews today, which was good I decided to have an evening off from grammar study, because Антон Птушкин had released a new documentary on YouTube. This one was called "Швеция. Как жить в кайф в стране с плохим климатом" and it was basically an exploration of why people who live in Sweden are so happy/content with life. I'm still feeling a bit lukewarm about watching travel videos at the moment, by which I mean I'm mainly avoiding them. But honestly, this guy's videos are so good that I couldn't not watch it when I saw it had been released He covered lots of interesting topics, from the Swedish response to Covid to the recycling system to the lack of an expectation that everyone works lots of overtime. I definitely learned a lot and as ever there was lots of brilliant footage. He films all his own footage and I've watched several videos which feature an incident where he sets up his camera to film himself driving away from somewhere, then keeps driving and forgets he needs to go back for the camera. That didn't happen in today's video, but he did crash his drone into a tree instead! Anyway, it was well worth watching and I was pleased with how much I understood. My level of comprehension on these videos is significantly higher than on the telenovela.

Total - Russian: 71 mins

[Radioclare]

6 November
Yay, it's the weekend again

Russian
I did a bit of Memrise before dinner and then I had a glass of wine with my dinner, which meant that I didn't feel like doing any grammar study this evening. Instead I watched an episode of "Татьянин день". I think I mentioned the domestic abuse storyline in this series a while ago. Well today that storyline got quite exciting; the woman who was being beaten by her husband had an argument with him at the building site where they both work and it ended with her giving him a bit of a push. He fell over and it looks like he's landed on some sort of metal spike, so she may accidentally have killed him

Total - Russian: 51 mins

[Radioclare]

7 November
I had some Esperanto work to do this morning but otherwise it was a nice relaxing day at home.

Russian
I gave up on the dative and started the section in Schaums' Grammar on the instrumental case instead. I just can't wait to get to the exercises on instrumental plurals I didn't get as far as that today, though. I spent about 45 minutes, revising uses of the instrumental. As with most things in Russian, the instrumental is slightly more difficult than in Croatian

Total - Russian: 48 mins, Croatian: 44 mins

[Radioclare]

8 November
Today was even more relaxing because I didn't have to do any Esperanto work

Russian
I completed all the exercises on the instrumental case endings in Schaum's Grammar this morning. There weren't actually that many exercises on instrumental plurals, so good that I already practised them in the dative section I did okay on these exercises, averaging at least 80% correct answers. And the good news is that, having finished those exercises, I'm now at the end of the chapter on nouns. So tomorrow I'll get to learn about a different part of grammar

This evening I also watched a couple of Russian Progress videos. One was about Russian slang and it was probably a really interesting video, but it was filmed in a cafe with so much background noise that I found it really hard to listen and concentrate on the content properly. The main word I remember was "краш" which they said was a slang word taken from English. For a few seconds I assumed they meant the English word "crash", but of course they didn't; they meant "crush" The second video was about travel and was filmed outside, so easier to understand.

Croatian
I started reading 'Na zapadu ništa novo', which is the Croatian translation of Erich Maria Remarque's famous 'Im Westen nichts Neues'. This book has been in my to-read pile since Christmas and I'd failed to get around to reading it, but I figured that if I was going to do it then this week would be quite an appropriate one. I've read the book several times before in English and at least once in German, but very many years ago. In fact it's probably nearly 20 years ago since I first read it in English I read the first 50 pages or so in Croatian this afternoon.

Total - Russian: 67 mins, Croatian: 89 mins