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 425 of 522 15 November 2014 at 6:26pm | IP Logged |
I recognize a lot of the books in your Slavonic collection mainly because I have them too :-)
You may find community in this thread and this one :-)
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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 426 of 522 16 November 2014 at 12:54pm | IP Logged |
Thanks Chung :) I have been looking at those threads and now I have massive bookshelf-envy! When we get our Romance and Esperanto shelves sorted out as well I might
put some pics there.
*****
Yesterday evening turned out to be quite a productive one. I watched three episodes of 'Bitange i Princeze' and that takes me to the end of the fourth series. There
are 24 episodes to come in series 5, and then I can try something new :)
I seriously don't know how some people manage to consistently watch more than one 'film' per day. I think the optimum watching time for me is about an hour;
sometimes it takes me the first 30 minutes to get warmed up and in a proper Croatian-listening mode, then the subsequent 30 minutes goes really well and I
understand a lot. But on the rare occasions I do manage to watch three episodes in one evening, I find that in the third episode my concentration starts to wander
and my comprehension slips again. So I am in awe of anyone who can concentrate on videos for hours and hours every day!
I haven't done this month's challenge for the SC yet. I think it's a good challenge but so far I haven't managed to find a film for which I can download the actual
film and also the subtitles; I seem to be able to find either one or the other, but not both. And the subtitles are only in English, of course.
Anyway, this morning when I woke up I started reading 'Raskol' and I got to the end, which was an extra 79 pages. In the last 100 pages or so the storyline became
quite exciting and I didn't want to put it down. There was a lot more dialogue, which made things easier to understand. Unfortunately I don't think I have the
second book in the series in Croatian so I think I might just skip it and start reading the third one tomorrow.
In Esperanto news, one of our members Ian Carter has made a video which gives a really cool
little introduction to the language. I love it because I think he's got such a nice voice to listen to, and the background music has been stuck in my head all
weekend :)
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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 427 of 522 17 November 2014 at 2:14pm | IP Logged |
I watched the first two episodes of series 5 of 'Bitange i Princeze' last night. It was quite sad actually as it's now 2009 and all the characters have lost their jobs because of the recession. Also because I was reading some articles on a Croatian news website last night and I realised that the only reason the producers stopped after five series was that one of the actors died in real life.
On reflection I decided I couldn't face another Sansom book so soon after finishing 'Raskol', so I decided to have an easy week and read the remaining Narnia books on my Kindle. I started 'Voyager of the Dawntreader' this morning and I'm already 30 pages in, so it is definitely a whole lot simpler :) It's nice to be able to read and understand most of the words in a sentence.
I've been trying to think about my goals for Croatian and also what I want to achieve with languages next year. I need to give this some more serious consideration, partly in the context of the other things I want to achieve in my life outside of languages. I am considering dropping out of the Super Challenge as one possibility to have more time. It's great and I've really enjoyed it/got a lot out of it, but the problem is that it's become my only language-learning activity. I mean, even now I'm supposed to be doing the 6WC in Croatian as well, in reality I'm still just doing the SC and logging my time on two different bots, which doesn't really achieve anything. I will definitely continue to get 200 books and 100 films, but after that I'll have to see. I'd love to have 200 films as well, but is that more important than everything else I want to achieve in 2015? Probably not!
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rdearman Senior Member United Kingdom rdearman.orgRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5228 days ago 881 posts - 1812 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Italian, French, Mandarin
| Message 428 of 522 17 November 2014 at 3:37pm | IP Logged |
You could always forgo sleeping. :)
I can sympathise with you actually. Although I don't get the benefit of logging time against 2 bots, since I have Mandarin for 6WC and FR & IT for the SC. However I have discovered that language learning is taking up a considerable amount of time. Although I don't consider this time wasted, I do have other things which I need to get on with. I've basically stopped any other extra activity and I find this very frustrating. The problem is I'm afraid if I park the languages then I'll slip back down the slope I've spent so much time climbing. I could get a lot more done if I didn't have to work and pay for stuff, and that sleeping thing takes up more time than it should.
If you have the flexibility (and self-disciple) you could try the Uberman Sleep Schedule where your sleep schedule revolves around forcing yourself to rely on six, twenty to thirty minute naps spread throughout the day for your daily dose of sleep. So basically you only sleep for 3 hours not 8 and gaining back 5 hours a day or 35 hours a week!
You can read the log of a guy who did it and see if it is for you.
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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 429 of 522 17 November 2014 at 4:39pm | IP Logged |
rdearman wrote:
However I have discovered that language learning is taking up a considerable amount of time. Although I don't consider this time wasted, I do have other things which I need to get on with. I've basically stopped any other extra activity and I find this very frustrating. The problem is I'm afraid if I park the languages then I'll slip back down the slope I've spent so much time climbing. I could get a lot more done if I didn't have to work and pay for stuff, and that sleeping thing takes up more time than it should. |
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This is exactly how I feel. I mentally designated 2013 as the year in which I would focus on Croatian, and although I haven't made as much progress as I had hoped, I still feel the progress has been huge. However it really has been to the exclusion of having any other hobby, to the extent that it is nearly Christmas and for the first time ever I haven't even finished reading all the (English) books I had for Christmas last year. I have at least one hobby not related to languages that I want to pursue, never mind additional languages that I want to learn, but I do have the same worry that as soon as I start spending less time on Croatian my level will start to slip.
I have read Steve Pavlina's polyphasic sleep log a while ago but unfortunately my job requires me to me in certain places at certain times. Also I'm rubbish at getting up at the best of times so not sure I could pull it off :D I'm placing all my hopes on winning the lottery and retiring, because you're right - if I didn't have to work and pay for stuff, everything would be fine!
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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 430 of 522 18 November 2014 at 10:55am | IP Logged |
I've been enjoying reading 'Plovidba Broda Zorogaza' and I'm now on page 73. The characters are spending a lot of time on board a boat and I've impressed myself by knowing some random vocabulary like jarbol (mast) and paluba (deck). I think I learned them when I was reading the Conn Iggulden series about Julius Caesar.
I watched two more episodes of 'Bitange i Princeze' last night and understood enough to laugh at the jokes, which at least makes me feel it has been worth watching :)
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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 431 of 522 20 November 2014 at 10:07am | IP Logged |
Reading 'Plovidba Broda Zorogaza' is going well - I'm now on 145. I think when I've finished this I might read the two remaining Narnia books before I do anything else.
Watching TV isn't going quite so well. Yesterday night I ended up watching football and last night the charger for my personal laptop mysteriously died. I have a bit of battery left for this evening, but may need to use it for Esperanto work. I'm not sure whether I can get away with watching Croatian TV on my work laptop. I don't feel like I am having a lot of luck with electricity this year!
Before the laptop problems I did spend some time on Memrise last night. There's a new flower icon which lights up when you get a word correct. A bit difficult to explain, but it's really cool. Little things, little minds :)
I've had the idea of using Twitter to practise Croatian. I really want to practise writing, but I know it's not realistic for me to write a paragraph of Croatian every day (which is what I'd ideally like to do). Yes, I probably could find half an hour every day to do that, but if that half an hour is between 22.30 and 23.00 then it's not really the optimum time to be doing it. So I thought perhaps I should aim lower and try to write a sentence in Croatian every day. I remember Benny Lewis used to do this in his languages years ago (perhaps when he was learning Czech, or possible before his Fi3m blog), with a different Twitter account for every language. I may make it one of my new year resolutions :)
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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 432 of 522 21 November 2014 at 1:22pm | IP Logged |
I've read another 43 pages of my Narnia book since yesterday. I've learned two new words:
- rt - headline, cape (seriously - how do you even pronounce that word?!)
- negoli - but, except for, than
I watched two episodes of 'Bitange i Princeze' last night. My computer died in the second episode, but I managed to finish it on my phone.
Hopefully my new charger is going to be delivered today.
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