Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 7148 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes 20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish
| Message 25 of 522 14 January 2014 at 12:48am | IP Logged |
Radioclare wrote:
Once I have got to a stage of functional fluency with Croatian, I aim to go back to learning either Russian or Czech and
would definitely be interested to see what the Hippocrene series is like for those languages. |
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You're at least the third person whom I can recall who wants to tackle this set of Slavonic languages. tarvos and Expugnator are the other two but have started with Russian.
Hippocrene Beginner's Czech is junk. Avoid it (I browsed through it at my public library) but Hippocrene Beginner's Russian seems better. At the same time, Russian is loaded with choice in beginners' courses. I wouldn't be disappointed if I were you if Hippocrene Beginner's Russian ultimately doesn't work out.
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Expugnator Hexaglot Senior Member Brazil Joined 5158 days ago 3335 posts - 4349 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, Norwegian, French, English, Italian, Papiamento Studies: Mandarin, Georgian, Russian
| Message 26 of 522 14 January 2014 at 1:00am | IP Logged |
We should be fully conscious and cautious with our language learning promises and
hitlists, Chung is recording them all =D Everything we say might be used in the future,
either against us or in our favor, luckily in our favor it seems.
j/k aside, I recommend once again Living Language/Spoken World. I don't know how
accessible they are at your place, but they happen to have a good Russian volume as well
as a continuing, an intermediate one.
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YnEoS Senior Member United States Joined 4246 days ago 472 posts - 893 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Russian, Cantonese, Japanese, French, Hungarian, Czech, Swedish, Mandarin, Italian, Spanish
| Message 27 of 522 14 January 2014 at 1:24am | IP Logged |
I've also got Croatian and Czech on my to do list (if I can ever get through Russian), so I'll be keeping a close eye on your studies as well. Best of luck!
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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 28 of 522 14 January 2014 at 11:06pm | IP Logged |
Wow, that's cool to know that there are other people who want to learn Russian, Czech
and Croatian too :) Although I now feel like a bit of a wimp if everyone else is
starting with Russian!
I started learning Czech so long ago that my 'Teach Yourself Czech' comes with cassette
tapes. I didn't have much experience of learning languages at the time and eventually
gave up and learnt Esperanto instead. An friend once sent me a Czech novel and a little
grammar of Czech in Esperanto, so I have promised myself that one day I will return to
learning the language properly to get some use out of them.
I spent six months learning Russian in 2011 prior to a visit to Ukraine but have now
forgotten a lot of what I knew. I will look forward to following your Russian logs this
year :)
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Expugnator Hexaglot Senior Member Brazil Joined 5158 days ago 3335 posts - 4349 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, Norwegian, French, English, Italian, Papiamento Studies: Mandarin, Georgian, Russian
| Message 29 of 522 14 January 2014 at 11:18pm | IP Logged |
Don't feel like that. I actually started with Russian because otherwise I wouldn't
actively learn it =) I really like Croatian and Czech better (and a few others). I'm
waiting till I reach a decent reading level with Russian so I can start Croatian.
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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 30 of 522 14 January 2014 at 11:28pm | IP Logged |
On my commute this morning I revised some more of 'Teach Yourself Croatian':
- Chapter 15, which is on the theme of feeling ill and deals with parts of the body and comparatives of adjectives.
- Chapter 16, which is the obligatory boring chapter with business vocab. It also deals with relative clauses.
I tried to do the exercises in my head; I would have liked to write them out, but didn't get a seat on the train.
Towards the end of chapter 16, the battery on my Kindle gave out so I had to resort to Memrise on my phone for the rest of the journey. I've now
finished planting the vocabulary from BCS lesson 5.
I noticed on Twitter than the website Croatian Week is launching a Croatian
Phrase of the Day, which could be interesting to follow.
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YnEoS Senior Member United States Joined 4246 days ago 472 posts - 893 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Russian, Cantonese, Japanese, French, Hungarian, Czech, Swedish, Mandarin, Italian, Spanish
| Message 31 of 522 15 January 2014 at 12:39am | IP Logged |
Radioclare wrote:
Although I now feel like a bit of a wimp if everyone else is
starting with Russian!
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Expugnator wrote:
Don't feel like that. I actually started with Russian because otherwise I wouldn't
actively learn it =) I really like Croatian and Czech better (and a few others). I'm
waiting till I reach a decent reading level with Russian so I can start Croatian. |
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Heh, I originally intended to learn Czech first, but ended up going with Russian because of the large amount of good courses to choose from.
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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 32 of 522 15 January 2014 at 11:34pm | IP Logged |
I'm nearly at the end of 'Teach Yourself Croatian' now. This morning I revised:
- Chapter 17, which contains further details about using numbers eg. talking about
groups of people and using the past tense. Thanks to the excellent chapter on numbers
in the Hippocrene book, I feel quite confident with all this.
- Chapter 18, which is all about letters. I found a few words in this chapter which I
didn't know and need to learn: "suradnja" (cooperation), "kolebanje" (hesitation),
"buran" (stormy).
What I haven't done is complete all the exercises yet, so maybe that should be my next
task. There are some revision exercises towards the end of the book which I've only
done once before.
I've started making myself a course on Memrise with alphabetical vocab from TYC.
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