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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 4581 days ago 689 posts - 1119 votes  Speaks: English*, German, Esperanto Studies: Croatian, Serbian, Macedonian | Message 297 of 522 29 August 2014 at 9:56am | IP Logged | ||
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There was still lots of Esperanto VAT work to do last night, but I finished a little earlier and was able to watch two episodes of 'Bitange i Princeze'. I've finished the second series and watched the first episode of the third series, which was actually a special behind-the-scenes episode.
This morning on the train I started reading the third Narnia book - 'Konj i njegov dječak'. I remember that was one of my favourites when I was a child but I don't actually remember what happens in it, beyond that it revolves around a horse :D Today is my last day at work before my holiday so I am starting to get excited and nervous in equal measures :) Edit: I forgot to say that yesterday I spent my afternoon using German at work. We have an internal database of people in the company who speak various languages. I used to list German on this, which has resulted in some nice opportunities like getting to go and work with German colleagues for a few weeks, but last year I removed it because I was getting sick of being asked by people I've never met to translate really boring documents in my spare time. One colleague obviously remembered me as a German-speaker though because yesterday she came over to me with an email from a German client explaining his methodology for calculating a stock provision. She literally walked over to me, stuck it in front of my nose and said "What does this say?!". Luckily for both of us I have discussed stock provisions in German before, so I was able to understand it and translate for her, then draft an email to clarify one of the points. I don't mind helping people a bit, but on the other hand this kind of expectation that you will be an on-demand translation machine just because you speak another language makes me frustrated! Edited by Radioclare on 29 August 2014 at 11:11am 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 298 of 522 29 August 2014 at 7:37pm | IP Logged | ||
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Awww it's my favourite Narnia book :))) Or at least it was when I read it as a teen, in Finnish ;) Maybe it's time to reread it in Croatian too :)
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 299 of 522 29 August 2014 at 10:56pm | IP Logged | ||
:) Ne znam da li je već imaš na hrvatskom - ako hoćeš mogu ti je poslati. 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 300 of 522 29 August 2014 at 11:35pm | IP Logged | ||
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Thanks for the offer, I have it :)
Already did LR of Lion... with Swedish audio, but got bored and stopped after 50 pages :/ 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 301 of 522 30 August 2014 at 4:07pm | IP Logged | ||
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It's not quite the end of August yet, but as I'm going away tomorrow I thought I'd
write my end-of-month Super Challenge summary now :) During August I have read: 11. Pedeset Nijansi Mračniji 12. Pedeset Nijansi Slobodniji 13. Čarobnjakov nećak 14. Lav vještica i ormar That brings me up to 112 'books' and 14 actual books. I also read a few pages of 'Dnevnik Anne Frank' but couldn't get into it so gave up, and a short Serbian fairytale which felt like an achievement for me because it was in Cyrillic. My read stats per month are: May 2014 - 1 808 pages June 2014 - 1,441 pages July 2014 - 872 pages August 2014 - 1,462 pages It's quite a surprise for me to see that August is so high because I feel like it's been the worst month of the year so far for various reasons. But I guess it was helped by the fact that there are so many pages in the '50 Shades' books and they're not difficult to read. I am probably going to take a break from SC reading while I am away because I have a huge backlog of books to read in English. Films... I've listened to 427 minutes of the 'Grimizna Studija' audiobook, watched half of a film called 'Neke duge priče' before giving up and watched 10 episodes of the sit- com 'Bitange i Princeze'. So I didn't manage to watch an entire film all month. But given my house-problems and ongoing lack of electricity, I don't think that is too much of a disaster. My film stats are like this: May 2014 - 941 minutes June 2014 - 713 minutes July 2014 - 1,081 minutes August 2014 - 827 minutes That takes me to 39.6 'films' overall. I have got hold of some Croatian/Serbian audiobooks and will be taking those on holiday to listen to on long bus journeys, with the hope that by the time I get home I will have brought my total up to 50 films and have completed a half-challenge. We shall see! 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 302 of 522 03 September 2014 at 9:31pm | IP Logged | ||
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Hello from Macedonia :) What a beautiful country! The weather hasn't been great this
week but it's still fantastic to be here. My Macedonian definitely isn't going to win any prizes, but it is helping us to survive at least. It has been sufficient to help us order food, change money and buy bus tickets. I have taken advantage of the cheap prices here to buy an English-Macedonian dictionary and a couple of books. This trip is definitely giving me the motivation to study the language properly. I haven't completely neglected the Super Challenge and have read the final 150 pages of 'The Horse and his Boy' in Croatian. Today I was on a bus for four hours so I listened to a Serbian audiobook version of an Agatha Christie novel - 'Misterija Sedam Brojčanika'. It's not one I've read in English or German before so I don't have prior knowledge of the storyline and was pleased by the amount I was able to understand. I did have to play it quite loud though to drown out the Macedonian pop music on the bus driver's radio station of choice! 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 303 of 522 07 September 2014 at 4:24pm | IP Logged | ||
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Going to Macedonia has thrown all my half-formed plans about starting to learn Russian
in 2015 off balance, because now I really want to learn Macedonian. The rational part of me really doesn't want to commit to a language that has even fewer resources than Croatian, but I think there's a reasonable chance I'll be asking for a Macedonian textbook for Christmas. It's a really stunning country. I arrived in Serbia last night and I'm sooooo excited to be here. I'm also really relieved to see that my language skills definitely have improved over the past year. When we arrived at the room we were renting yesterday evening I was able to discuss everything with the landlady completely in Serbian, even when she made the somewhat unusual request for me to get my laptop out and cancel my booking online so that she wouldn't have to pay the hotel reservation website a cut of the cash I paying her. It was actually a really interesting conversation because by a bizarre coincidence some of her relatives live in the same suburb of the same city in England where I grew up. Her brother lives on a street which is maybe 200m from where my parents live and she goes to visit them there for her holidays. She was impressed that I was able to speak some Serbian because some of her relatives who have been born in England aren't able to speak Serbian at all and she has to speak to them in English. We went out for a meal last night and when I asked the waiter for the bill he handed it to me and said "Your Serbian is really good". I think that's kind of a double- edged compliment, because if my Serbian really was good he wouldn't have felt the need to tell me that in English. I'm not sure whether I gave myself away as a foreigner by poor pronunciation (my rolling of r's is a bit hit and miss!) or whether I was just too polite in the way I asked for the bill :D We travelled to Serbia yesterday from Macedonia and I managed to listen to over 4 hours of a Serbian audio book, so I'm now on just under 46 films. The half-challenge is in sight! We're travelling on to Montenegro tomorrow so I had a test of my language skills this morning when I had to go to the bus station and pick up tickets I had reserved online. I had one of those moments when you know exactly what you're going to say in advance, but as soon as you open your mouth it all comes out wrong. I guess it's because I was a bit nervous that there would be something wrong with the reservation or the bus would turn out not to exist or something. The lady behind the counter did manage to understand me though - despite a moment of brainstorm when I used a German word by mistake - and I got my tickets :) I really need to learn some filler words in Croatian. Like when I'm talking German and I need to buy time to think I throw in an 'also', and when I'm speaking Esperanto I say 'kaj', but I don't know what the Croatian/Serbian equivalent would be. I also need to think of a good answer for when people ask me why I'm learning Serbian, as I don't have one right now. This afternoon I found a market stall selling cheap books and I picked up some translations of Ken Follett novels, which my boyfriend tells me are very good. I want to buy some books in Cyrillic as well but I think I need to find something pretty easy; although I feel I've improved a lot (and last week in Macedonia was really helpful practice), I still find it fries my brain if I try to read more than a few sentences. 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 304 of 522 08 September 2014 at 10:40pm | IP Logged | ||
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I made it to a half-challenge!!!! :)
I feel far more proud of having 50 'film's than 100-odd books, because the films have really been a struggle for me. I've spent 11 hours on a bus from Serbia to Montenegro today and I spent 7 of those hours listening to a Croatian audiobook of the Ken Follett novel "Eye of the Needle". I was really struggling to start with because I think the audio has been taken off old cassette tapes (it's very crackly) and the woman reading it is in such a rush to get to the end that she doesn't even pause for breath between chapters. For the first half hour I thought I was going to have to give up, because I don't know the story in English and I was really confused about what was happening. But after another 6 and a half hours I was starting to get in to it and either the woman slowed down a bit or I just got better at understanding her. Every hour or so I had a break from listening and told my boyfriend (who has read the book in English) what I had understood so far and he confirmed that I was on the right track. So I have managed to understand the main gist of the plot, though I'm sure I have missed many of the finer details. 4 persons have voted this message useful |
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