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Radioclare’s TAC log 2014 (*jäŋe/*ledús) | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| Radioclare Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom timeofftakeoff.com Joined 4575 days ago 689 posts - 1119 votes  Speaks: English*, German, Esperanto Studies: Croatian, Serbian, Macedonian | Message 169 of 522 11 May 2014 at 9:55pm | IP Logged | ||
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I found last night that I couldn't actually give Eurovision 100% of my attention, so I
spent some time on Memrise, planting the first five levels of a course called "Basic Macedonian". I've found it really good so far because it's not just a random list of words, but rather attempts to demonstrate some of the basic grammar. So far I have learned about definite endings for nouns, adjective endings in the nominative, and negation. A lot of the vocabulary I've learned was easily guessable from Croatian which is nice. I'm a bit down and stressed about various things at the moment, so today I had the world's laziest day and didn't leave the house at all. I don't think I have done that for about three years! It gave me lots of opportunity to catch up with reading for the Super Challenge. I read for at least two hours and got through 87 pages of 'Vrata Rima'. Now that I've got a bit further into it I feel like I'm understanding a higher proportion of the words. I'm not having any problems following the plot, even if I can't understand every sentence, and I'm definitely learning new words, partly from context and partly from looking them up. To be fair I'm only really looking words up when they occur so often in the text that not understanding them is irritating me! 'Gomila' (crowd) was one such word today. I'm up to 8 'books' for the SC though but I'm still really struggling with the film aspect of it. I made an effort this afternoon and watched two episodes of 'Bitange i Princeze' back-to-back, but I have to admit that sitting in front of a TV screen still feels like an unproductive use of time for me. My Croatian really isn't good enough to understand anything more complex than children's television at the moment and so overall I just end up feeling frustrated. I guess it's early days and I still haven't quite made it to four 'films' :( But those films feel like they have required ten times more effort than my eight books! I've completely lost the plot on the controversy over the SC rankings, but I'm hoping it doesn't matter because I'm only doing one language and I wasn't trying to compete against anyone anyway. For me the most important thing is to try and do a little bit every day. There was one day last week where all I logged was 5 pages of 'Vrata Rima'. It might seem a bit ridiculous to some people to have logged that, but that was genuinely all I could make time for on that day and in fact making time for that was harder than making time for 87 pages today. So I am going to keep logging everything I do, however little, and regardless of what badges or stars or streaks or whatever we might get ;) 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Radioclare Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom timeofftakeoff.com Joined 4575 days ago 689 posts - 1119 votes Speaks: English*, German, Esperanto Studies: Croatian, Serbian, Macedonian | Message 170 of 522 13 May 2014 at 12:13am | IP Logged | ||
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I read 18 pages of 'Vrata Rima' on the train to work this morning. I could have read a
few more but I actually had to stop reading and distract myself with something else because about half of those pages were describing an amputation! One of the characters, an ageing gladiator, was having his arm cut off by his brother and for once I was glad that I couldn't understand all of the vocabulary. I understood enough to know they were sawing through the bone. Eeek! I was supposed to go to my Croatian class tonight but I ended up staying at work until 8 so I missed it. My boyfriend went and was pretty angry when he came out because they spent the lesson listening to weather forecasts on Youtube, with the teacher stopping the video every few seconds and asking what had been said. This didn't work very well, because she hasn't taught the class any weather-related vocabulary and no one could understand a word. The apartment in Belgrade emailed me back in Serbian to say they've extended my reservation for a further night, so I felt a small sense of achievement. Tonight we also got in touch with an old friend who lives in Belgrade to let him know the dates we'll be there and try to arrange to meet up. I'm trying not to get too excited about this trip because September is a long way away and I'm actually going to Spain first... but I'm not doing very well! 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Radioclare Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom timeofftakeoff.com Joined 4575 days ago 689 posts - 1119 votes Speaks: English*, German, Esperanto Studies: Croatian, Serbian, Macedonian | Message 171 of 522 13 May 2014 at 11:40pm | IP Logged | ||
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Some sin I committed in a past life means that in this one I have the misfortune to be
responsible for the social media presence of Esperanto UK. Okay, so I am exaggerating slightly because out of all my responsibilities this is probably the least arduous, but this evening I am annoyed because in response to this tweet about the 6WC.... "Konvinku geamikojn kiuj ne lernis E-on elprovi dum ses semajnoj, poste konkursi por gajni senpagan ferion en E-ujo: http://6wc.learnlangs.com/special" ... someone DM'd me to say "Notu ke "amikoj" jam nomas aron ambaŭ-seksan, ĉar "amiko" estas neŭtra substantivo, ne vira substantivo. Do tute ne necesas "geamikoj"." It never fails to amaze (and irritate!) me how a certain proportion of Esperantists think that an acceptable response to something said by another person is to make critical comments about their grammar. Particularly when there hasn't even been a grammatical error. Grrrr! Anyhow I have had a rubbish day at work, got home really late and not achieved much at all. I have read another 17 pages of 'Vrata Rima' on the train. These pages were slightly happier and didn't involve any amputations. One of the characters is now on a boat, so I have learned some sailing vocabulary: mornar (sailor) časnik (officer) baciti preko palube (to throw overboard) Not sure how useful this will be in real life! I haven't watched any more video. I've got a problem with one of my ears at the moment which means I'm not hearing out of it very well, so it didn't seem worth trying to watch anything tonight. I did make the mistake of looking at the new rankings on the bot page and I am in awe of how many films other people have already watched! My Macedonian 6WC isn't going terribly well. I think I need to pretend I registered for Croatian instead ;) I am still making progress with vocabulary on Memrise, though I am finding it hard to get use to adding the definite articles to the end of words. I think that will take a bit of practice. Memrise is really helping my familiarity with the alphabet though which is good. Finally, tonight I read an interesting article about Nigel Farage on the DW website. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6589 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 172 of 522 14 May 2014 at 7:45am | IP Logged | ||
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Why didn't you register for Croatian btw? It clearly seems like a higher priority for you, and you say you're intermediate so you're eligible for the 6 week challenge :)
1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Radioclare Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom timeofftakeoff.com Joined 4575 days ago 689 posts - 1119 votes Speaks: English*, German, Esperanto Studies: Croatian, Serbian, Macedonian | Message 173 of 522 14 May 2014 at 10:31am | IP Logged | ||
Yeah, with hindsight I probably should have! Croatian is definitely the highest priority for me, but I do want to learn some basic Macedonian before going on holiday and I thought signing up to the 6WC would give me some extra motivation to do that. It means I've made a start at least and there will be four weeks of another 6WC before I actually go, so I'll have another chance to make progress with it then. I thought I read somewhere though that you need to be a beginner for the 6WC though? Although my Croatian isn't very good I technically started learning it two years ago so at best I can describe myself as an 'eterna komencanto' ;) 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6589 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 174 of 522 14 May 2014 at 11:39am | IP Logged | ||
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No, the max level is B1. Starting from scratch was the basic idea of the original challenge, but Sprachprofi was kind enough to change the rules when it became clear that the original idea was beautiful and romantic but mostly unrealistic. (it used to be about comparing various methods, and there was a limit of 30 min per day. that's how I started Esperanto back in 2007 btw) Edited by Serpent on 14 May 2014 at 11:39am 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Radioclare Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom timeofftakeoff.com Joined 4575 days ago 689 posts - 1119 votes Speaks: English*, German, Esperanto Studies: Croatian, Serbian, Macedonian | Message 175 of 522 14 May 2014 at 11:58pm | IP Logged | ||
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I read 23 pages of 'Vrata Rima' today. I've not been looking up a lot of words because
I'm reading on the train and can't be bothered to carry a dictionary with me, but I did learn one new word: školjka (shell). And I had a bit of a 'eureka' moment when I read the word 'cilj' for the hundredth time and realised that it sounds a bit like German 'Ziel' and that that meaning would make perfect sense in the context I was reading it. I looked it up in the dictionary tonight and it is indeed defined as meaning 'goal, aim' etc. I guess there aren't many words which are the same in Croatian and German but it's nice to have found one :) I left work on time today (yay!) so made use of my evening off to do some serious watching of videos. I sat through episodes 6, 7 and 8 of 'Bitange i Princeze'. Somewhere in the middle of episode 7 I felt like I was having a breakthrough and understanding entire continuous sentences, but by midway through episode 8 I was suffering from 'Bitange i Princeze' burnout! I'm officially on 9.7 books and 4.9 films now. No log update tomorrow because from Thursday afternoon to Friday evening I've got to participate in an enforced 'fun' awayday with work. It is going to involve orienteering, archery, golf and a lot of drinking/socialising with colleagues. It sounds like my idea of hell. I'll update again on Friday, if I survive! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6589 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 176 of 522 15 May 2014 at 12:49am | IP Logged | ||
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I'm so impressed with the effort you put in. I need to do more Croatian too.
There aren't as many words in common as between English and German, but maybe more than you'd expect. Esperanto has celo too ;) from Polish and Russian cel/цель. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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