Radioclare's 2021 log (Russian, Croatian)

Continue or start your personal language log here, including logs for challenge participants
User avatar
Radioclare
Black Belt - 2nd Dan
Posts: 2250
Joined: Sat Jul 18, 2015 12:59 pm
Location: England
Languages: Speaks: English (N), Esperanto, German, Croatian
Learns: Russian
x 10434
Contact:

Re: Radioclare's 2021 log (Russian, Croatian)

Postby Radioclare » Sat Mar 13, 2021 9:00 pm

13 March
Finally the weekend! It was sunny for a bit in the morning so I was able to go for a walk by the canal. I had a few admin tasks to get through in the afternoon, so I didn't do much with languages until late afternoon.

Russian
I read another chapter of 'Смерть приходит в конце' over lunch. Honestly, 100 pages of a murder mystery is a lot to read without having a murder so I was relieved that it finally happened :lol: But today's chapter wasn't wildly exciting because most of the characters still seem to think the death might have been an accident.

Once I'd got through all my admin I spent half an hour practising writing in Russian. And then I finally tackled the rest of the exercises on aspect in Schaum's. They were actually quite useful, I shouldn't have spent half the week putting them off.

This evening I watched the final 45 minutes or so of the film 'Новолуние'. This part of the story was set in Volterra, so it made me wish I could go to Italy. Or anywhere, really :lol: I'm getting quite bored of not leaving the town I live in.

Total - Russian: 121 mins, German: 104 mins
7 x

User avatar
Radioclare
Black Belt - 2nd Dan
Posts: 2250
Joined: Sat Jul 18, 2015 12:59 pm
Location: England
Languages: Speaks: English (N), Esperanto, German, Croatian
Learns: Russian
x 10434
Contact:

Re: Radioclare's 2021 log (Russian, Croatian)

Postby Radioclare » Sun Mar 14, 2021 6:12 pm

14 March
Today was rather grey. But I had fewer chores to get through than yesterday, so it's been quite relaxing.

Russian
I started with Schaum's after breakfast. Today's section was about the use of aspect with infinitives and there was more to learn than I expected. I have found this section on aspect very useful, though. The next section looks like it's going to be about the imperative and that's one of my least favourite grammar topics so probably not going to be so much fun.

I read another chapter of the Agatha Christie. I'm still finding the plot very slow. But I do think that I've got faster at reading in Russian since the first Agatha Christie I read. Or, at least, it feels less painful. So I guess the Super Challenge is doing me some good.

Later in the day I watched an episode of 'Татьянин день' while on the treadmill. I had been tempted to start the next Twilight film, but when I looked at my spreadsheet I realised it was 10 days since I last watched an episode of this series and I was in danger of forgetting the storyline if I didn't watch another episode soon.

Total - Russian: 102 mins, Croatian: 77 mins, German: 76 mins
5 x

User avatar
Radioclare
Black Belt - 2nd Dan
Posts: 2250
Joined: Sat Jul 18, 2015 12:59 pm
Location: England
Languages: Speaks: English (N), Esperanto, German, Croatian
Learns: Russian
x 10434
Contact:

Re: Radioclare's 2021 log (Russian, Croatian)

Postby Radioclare » Mon Mar 15, 2021 10:46 pm

15 March
Today wasn't too bad for a Monday. The 6WC finished yesterday and I'm kind of glad because I was getting bored of remembering to log things on Twitter. I finished 5th, with 78 hours of Russian.

Russian
I started the section on the imperative in Schaum's today. The first part was about forming the imperative and the second part was then about the use of aspect with the imperative. It made more sense then I expected it to.

I also read another couple of short chapters of the Agatha Christie. Words I looked up today included бусы (beads) and суета (vanity).

Total - Russian: 36 mins, Croatian: 46 mins, German: 22 mins
5 x

User avatar
Radioclare
Black Belt - 2nd Dan
Posts: 2250
Joined: Sat Jul 18, 2015 12:59 pm
Location: England
Languages: Speaks: English (N), Esperanto, German, Croatian
Learns: Russian
x 10434
Contact:

Re: Radioclare's 2021 log (Russian, Croatian)

Postby Radioclare » Tue Mar 16, 2021 11:22 pm

16 March
A year ago today was the last time I went to the office, the last time I went into Birmingham city centre, the last time I got on a train. If anyone had told me that day that I wouldn't do those things again for at least a year, I think I would have burst out laughing. It's been a strange year!

Russian
Today has been memorable for a different reason - I bought a new laptop a few weeks ago and it finally arrived this afternoon :) So this evening has mostly been dominated by me trying to get it set up. That hasn't left much time for language learning; just a 45-minute session on the treadmill, where I watched an episode of 'Татьянин день'. Interesting cultural points from today's episode include two of the characters bringing their own slippers with them when they went to visit another character, plus a character who wanted to sit down outside not being able to sit directly on a rock, but having to put a blanket on the rock first :lol:

Total - Russian: 45 mins
9 x

User avatar
Radioclare
Black Belt - 2nd Dan
Posts: 2250
Joined: Sat Jul 18, 2015 12:59 pm
Location: England
Languages: Speaks: English (N), Esperanto, German, Croatian
Learns: Russian
x 10434
Contact:

Re: Radioclare's 2021 log (Russian, Croatian)

Postby Radioclare » Wed Mar 17, 2021 11:56 pm

17 March
Have spent a lot of this evening sorting out my new computer, so still less language learning than usual.

Russian
I read a bit more of the Agatha Christie and I'm over 150 pages into it now. I also watched a couple of Russian videos on YouTube. One was a question and answer video about life in the UK, which covered exciting questions like how to deal with mould in English houses. The second one was more amusing because it involved Russian-speakers trying English food. The definition of "English" food was quite loose and included samosas :D

Total - Russian: 60 mins, Croatian: 45 mins
7 x

User avatar
IronMike
Black Belt - 2nd Dan
Posts: 2554
Joined: Thu May 12, 2016 6:13 am
Location: Northern Virginia
Languages: Studying: Esperanto
Maintaining: nada
Tested:
BCS, 1+L/1+R (DLPT5, 2022)
Russian, 3/3 (DLPT5, 2022) 2+ (OPI, 2022)
German, 2L/1+R (DLPT5, 2021)
Italian, 1L/2R (DLPT IV, 2019)
Esperanto, C1 (KER skriba ekzameno, 2017)
Slovene, 2+L/3R (DLPT II in, yes, 1999)
Language Log: viewtopic.php?f=15&t=5189
x 7265
Contact:

Re: Radioclare's 2021 log (Russian, Croatian)

Postby IronMike » Thu Mar 18, 2021 12:39 am

Radioclare wrote:...like how to deal with mould in English houses.

Not being a d!ck or anything, but is that really how you guys spell mold?
0 x
You're not a C1 (or B1 or whatever) if you haven't tested.
CEFR --> ILR/DLPT equivalencies
My swimming life.
My reading life.

User avatar
Radioclare
Black Belt - 2nd Dan
Posts: 2250
Joined: Sat Jul 18, 2015 12:59 pm
Location: England
Languages: Speaks: English (N), Esperanto, German, Croatian
Learns: Russian
x 10434
Contact:

Re: Radioclare's 2021 log (Russian, Croatian)

Postby Radioclare » Thu Mar 18, 2021 10:40 am

IronMike wrote:
Radioclare wrote:...like how to deal with mould in English houses.

Not being a d!ck or anything, but is that really how you guys spell mold?

Yes! Don't think I've ever seen it spelt another way :lol:
2 x

vonPeterhof
Blue Belt
Posts: 879
Joined: Sat Aug 08, 2015 1:55 am
Languages: Russian (N), English (C2), Japanese (~C1), German (~B2), Kazakh (~B1), Norwegian (~A2)
Studying: Kazakh, Mandarin, Coptic
Language Log: viewtopic.php?f=15&t=1237
x 2833
Contact:

Re: Radioclare's 2021 log (Russian, Croatian)

Postby vonPeterhof » Thu Mar 18, 2021 11:26 am

I think as a result of consuming media in both varieties of English I accidentally ended up internalizing the two spellings as completely separate if homophonous words, with "mold" referring to the nasty fungal growth and "mould" being the frame used for shaping materials. I remember being convinced for a long time that US English spelled both words as "mold" while UK English distinguished between them in writing, and it was only relatively recently that I learned that there was no semantically justified orthographical distinction whatsoever.
5 x

User avatar
Radioclare
Black Belt - 2nd Dan
Posts: 2250
Joined: Sat Jul 18, 2015 12:59 pm
Location: England
Languages: Speaks: English (N), Esperanto, German, Croatian
Learns: Russian
x 10434
Contact:

Re: Radioclare's 2021 log (Russian, Croatian)

Postby Radioclare » Thu Mar 18, 2021 11:50 pm

18 March
Today was a slightly strange day - I had a meeting this evening which was quite stressful, then I had some wine afterwards to relax and I haven't been very productive afterwards.

Russian
All I've done in the end this evening is Russian listening. I started watching the third Twilight film, Затмение, on YouTube and I'm over an hour into it now. I've read the book so recently that this has been fairly easy to understand so far.

Total - Russian: 82 mins
3 x

User avatar
Radioclare
Black Belt - 2nd Dan
Posts: 2250
Joined: Sat Jul 18, 2015 12:59 pm
Location: England
Languages: Speaks: English (N), Esperanto, German, Croatian
Learns: Russian
x 10434
Contact:

Re: Radioclare's 2021 log (Russian, Croatian)

Postby Radioclare » Fri Mar 19, 2021 10:17 pm

19 March
I had some more wine with dinner tonight. I think I'm making up for lost time after all that post-jab abstaining :lol:

Russian
That's my excuse for not doing any Russian grammar this evening anyway. I did finish watching the film 'Затмение' though, which was about 45 minutes. And afterwards I watched another video on YouTube with a Russian woman talking about English primary schools and comparing them to schools in Russia. It sounds like the summer holidays are a lot longer in Russia! But that the children get more homework.

Total - Russian: 71 mins
5 x


Return to “Language logs”

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: Amandine and 2 guests