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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 4667 days ago 689 posts - 1119 votes  Speaks: English*, German, Esperanto Studies: Croatian, Serbian, Macedonian | Message 145 of 522 23 April 2014 at 11:58pm | IP Logged | ||
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Having charged my Kindle, I had a more productive journey to work today. I finished reading chapter 5 of the BCS grammar book, which covered genitive plurals,
numbers and subjectless sentences. I made a start on chapter 6 (which looks like it is going to be about the locative and dative) but didn't get very far. This evening I have been through the vocabulary lists in the entire BCS textbook and made a list of all the words which are different in Croatian and Serbian. When I've been inputting the vocabulary for my Memrise course, I've focussed exclusively on the Croatian-only words, ie. when I've seen a word labelled as Serbian, I've thought "Yay, I don't need to learn this one!". But now that for various reasons I am actually going to Serbia in the summer, I feel like I should at least learn to recognise the common Serbian words which differ from Croatian. So I have noted down any word labelled as Serbian and the equivalent Croatian word. I know this won't be perfect and probably all the words would be understood regardless of which country I used them in. But my plan is to input them into Memrise so that it will give me the Croatian word and ask me for the Serbian equivalent. That will hopefully help me to recognise the word pairs and ultimately understand whichever one is used. Interestingly, going through the entire book has only yielded slightly over 200 words. Admittedly, I have ignored any Bosnian words on the grounds that I have no plans to go to Bosnia right now, but I don't think that would have added many more. Still too many for me to put into Memrise tonight, though; that will have to wait for another day! In other news I had an email from the British Croatian Society today informing me that a theatre company from Zagreb will be performing a Serbo-Croatian version of Chekov's 'The Seagull' (with English subtitles) in Nottingham next month. Nottingham is only about 50 miles from where I live and the play is showing on a Saturday afternoon when I don't have anything else on, so I am considering whether to go. I would probably have to go on my own though, because my boyfriend hates going to the theatre, and I have never seen 'The Seagull' in English so I might need to acquire a copy and read it first to get an understanding of the plot... I am quite tempted to go. If going to see a play counts as a 'video' for the Super Challenge, that may swing it! I am wavering about whether to sign up for the May 6WC with Macedonian. On the one hand I don't think this is a good idea, because I want to make a strong start with Croatian for the Super Challenge and May is going to be a difficult month for me because I'll be spending a significant part of it working long hours in London. On the other hand, if I leave it until the August 6WC, I'll only actually have four weeks until I have to go to Macedonia, which might not be enough time to learn as much as I want to. Hmm. Edited by Radioclare on 24 April 2014 at 12:02am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 7240 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes 20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish | Message 146 of 522 24 April 2014 at 1:25am | IP Logged | ||
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If you don't mind, I'm going to pore over your list and add some comments where applicable in the next week or so. I can already see a few items whose ethnic identification is less clear-cut than Alexander's book suggests. I've examined some of the same items in your spreadsheet as they turned up in the dialogues/narratives in "Beginner's Croatian" and "Beginner's Serbian" and put down my findings in my log.
On the other hand, variation between about 200 lexical items (be they false friends or different spellings) in a beginners' course may be much less than one may think when using "Croatian" and "Serbian" (implying distinct languages on the level of say Spanish and Portuguese or even Japanese and Mandarin for the linguistically unaware) instead of "Bosnian-Croatian-Montenegrin-Serbian" or "Serbo-Croatian". 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6681 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 147 of 522 24 April 2014 at 2:46am | IP Logged | ||
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Speaking of that, the thing about bol changing gender depending on the meaning seems kinda artificial to me.
1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Radioclare Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom timeofftakeoff.com Joined 4667 days ago 689 posts - 1119 votes Speaks: English*, German, Esperanto Studies: Croatian, Serbian, Macedonian | Message 148 of 522 24 April 2014 at 11:24pm | IP Logged | ||
Any comments would be much appreciated :) I went back through the spreadsheet this evening and colour-coded the words to make it clearer which ones the book thinks are exclusively Croatian, which ones are exclusively Serbian and whether Bosnian uses the Croatian word, the Serbian word or both. My next task is to read through your log again! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Radioclare Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom timeofftakeoff.com Joined 4667 days ago 689 posts - 1119 votes Speaks: English*, German, Esperanto Studies: Croatian, Serbian, Macedonian | Message 149 of 522 24 April 2014 at 11:32pm | IP Logged | ||
I tried googling this and it seems like even natives are confused about what gender its supposed to be. I'm going to try to look out for examples of it when I'm reading for the Super Challenge and see which gender is used. The only example I can remember coming across so far is the line "Zašto dao si mi ti samo praznu bol" in a song. I assume this was meant to refer to spiritual pain. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Radioclare Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom timeofftakeoff.com Joined 4667 days ago 689 posts - 1119 votes Speaks: English*, German, Esperanto Studies: Croatian, Serbian, Macedonian | Message 150 of 522 24 April 2014 at 11:41pm | IP Logged | ||
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I'm not sure what I have achieved today, but I had a lot of fun colouring in my
spreadsheet. There is nothing accountants like more than colour-coding a spreadsheet ;) I felt too tired on the train this morning to read more grammar so I downloaded a Croatian game onto my phone and played that instead. It's a Croatian version of 'Who wants to be a millionaire' with lots of multiple choice general knowledge questions to answer. So far I haven't managed to progress further than 4 000 kuna without making a mistake. Probably not the most intellectual learning strategy ever, but I figured that if I'm going to play a pointless game on my phone then I might as well do it in Croatian. I also found an app called 'Ex-Yu filmovi' which has links to lots of films on Youtube so I'm hoping this is going to help me with the Super Challenge. I can normally count on the fingers of one hand the number of films I have watched in a given year, and my TV-viewing is normally limited to 30 minutes of news every other day, so I'm still a bit apprehensive about how I'm going to get on with this. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Radioclare Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom timeofftakeoff.com Joined 4667 days ago 689 posts - 1119 votes Speaks: English*, German, Esperanto Studies: Croatian, Serbian, Macedonian | Message 151 of 522 25 April 2014 at 11:01pm | IP Logged | ||
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I was more diligent on the train this morning and I started reading chapter 6 of the BCS
grammar book. This covered the dative and locative case endings, words which take u versus words which take -na, plus an introduction to the past tense and aspect with conjunctions. There was also a section on the use of 'svoj', which contradicts everything my Croatian teacher told me about it, but I think I'll go with what the book says! I'm about halfway through the chapter now. I found out this evening that I've won the Easter competition at CroVoc.de by guessing the highest number of the most searched for Croatian words on their website. They wrote to me to say that they were going to send me a CroVoc mug as my prize, but I've had to reply and confess that I don't actually live in Germany and so the postage costs might be a bit too high. At least I got some unexpected practice writing German! 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Radioclare Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom timeofftakeoff.com Joined 4667 days ago 689 posts - 1119 votes Speaks: English*, German, Esperanto Studies: Croatian, Serbian, Macedonian | Message 152 of 522 27 April 2014 at 12:05am | IP Logged | ||
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This afternoon I made more progress with chapter 14 of the BCS textbook. New words
learned include: granuti - to burst forth padaline - precipitation pretvarati - to turn into skloniti se - to take shelter znatan - considerable obavijestiti - to inform poginuti - to perish prolaznik - passerby utvrditi - to establish gust - dense Some of the vocabulary in this textbook is really unusual. I'm actually finding it really interesting and hopefully it will really help me when I start reading novels in the near future, but it's quite different to the normal tourist-orientated vocabulary that I've seen in other textbooks. I haven't done the exercises at the end of the chapter yet, but there were some exercises to complete in the middle of it which involved replacing infinitives in the text with either present or past verbal adverbs. I was glad I'd saved this for a weekend when I was feeling sufficiently awake rather than trying to tackle it after work! I was intending to do some more studying this evening but I got embroiled in a pointless debate with someone who believes that the logos of all Esperanto associations should feature green stars. Yes, because that won't make them look weird or cultish or anything..! He linked me to a Wikipedia page on 'Esperanto symbols' which includes such gems as "Most Esperantists, however, continue to hold the verda stelo dear as a symbol of international or supranational solidarity" and "Sometimes, Esperanto travelers will display the flag, wear a badge with one of the above symbols, or even wear green clothes, to make themselves known to other Esperanto speakers." Seriously?! If I ever start leaving the house in green clothes to make myself known to other Esperanto speakers then I would be grateful if someone would come and put me out of my misery. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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