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Radioclare’s TAC log 2014 (*jäŋe/*ledús)

 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log Post Reply
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Radioclare
Triglot
Senior Member
United Kingdom
timeofftakeoff.com
Joined 4581 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 
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 4581 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 
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 4581 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 
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 6595 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 
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 4581 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 
Serpent wrote:
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 :)


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 6595 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 
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 4581 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 
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 6595 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 
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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