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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 337 of 522 27 September 2014 at 8:16pm | IP Logged | ||
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I wanted to spend today at home enjoying my electricity, but I had prearranged to go
and see my family this morning. My partner had to stay at home because some workmen were coming to do more repairs on the house, so I had to go by public transport (I'm doing an amazing job at procrastinating learning to drive. Almost as good a job as I'm doing with procrastinating my wedding!). That was slow, but I was able to read more of 'Ušica Igle' on the train (40 pages) and listen to some more of the 'Istorije slučaja' audiobook (42 minutes) on the bus. It was nice to see my family, though amusing at times. My dad thought I was making it up when I said they spoke Macedonian in Macedonia (he'd never heard of it). My Mom had a look at 'Ušica Igle' and proclaimed that Serbian didn't look at all like a "European language" :D My sister is very stressed because her PhD thesis has to be submitted in a week's time and then she is relocating to start her first job in the language department of a major university. I am trying very hard not to be jealous of her and imagine parallel universes where I had made different life decisions...! Tonight I'm going to try to resolve the 800 plants which need watering on my Memrise account. 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 338 of 522 28 September 2014 at 8:47pm | IP Logged | ||
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I didn't manage to hit Memrise-zero last night (though I have got my unwatered plants
below 500) because I found a really good new Croatian course about animals. I knew all the basic animals already, but this course has lots of details and is divided into levels like "farm animals", "birds", "saltwater animals", "bugs" etc. I learned loads of new words, including: omčica - ferret jež - hedgehog gušter - lizard vodenjak- newt nosorog - rhino labud - swan slatkovodni rak - crayfish morski jež - sea urchin (This would have been so useful when I was last in Croatia and my boyfriend stood on one!) skakavac - grasshopper Also I finally understood the difference between golub (pigeon) and galeb (seagull). I've watched two more episodes of 'Bitange i Princeze'. One of them went really well and I was laughing out loud at the jokes. The other one I really struggled with. It's weird how it varies from episode to episode. Haven't got a lot else done today because I've been busy cleaning the house. You have to imagine what a house looks like when you've not had electricity to vacuum for eight weeks and you have two large long-haired cats! 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 339 of 522 29 September 2014 at 1:05pm | IP Logged | ||
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It's more or less the end of the month, so thought I'd summarise my Super Challenge figures for September.
During September I have read: 15. Konj i Njegov Dječak Plus about half of 'Ušica igle'. So I've finished 119.8 'books' and 15 actual books. My reading stats per month are: May 2014 - 1 808 pages June 2014 - 1,441 pages July 2014 - 872 pages August 2014 - 1,462 pages September 2014 - 414 pages As you can see, a very lean month for SC reading. That's been influenced by the fact that I was on holiday for over two weeks and only brought English reading material with me (by choice, to have a break!). I was able to buy lots of (mainly Serbian) reading material on my holiday though, so I intend to do a lot more reading in October. September has been a much better month for films. During my travels I listened to the following audiobooks: Misterija sedam brojčanika (whole book) Ušica igle (whole book) Pedeset nijansi mračnije (first few chapters) Istorije slučaja (first few chapters) I've also watched 9 more episodes of the sit-com 'Bitange i Princeze'. I haven't watched any actual films. I don't think films are for me. My listening/watching stats are as follows: May 2014 - 941 minutes June 2014 - 713 minutes July 2014 - 1,081 minutes August 2014 - 827 minutes September 2014 - 1,856 minutes September is the best month for 'films' by a long way, mostly due to the audiobooks. I had three days during my holiday where I was travelling for almost 12 hours which was a great chance to listen to things. Unfortunately I don't think I will have enough free time to replicate this success in any future months! Overall I am now on 60.2 films, which feels like a big improvement to me. Also I know have my electricity back, so no more excuses for not watching things! The biggest achievement of this month is that I have now officially completed a half-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 340 of 522 30 September 2014 at 12:39pm | IP Logged | ||
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I finally watered everything on Memrise last night :)
With the animals, the only ones I seem to be struggling with is where I don't actually know what the animal is. For example I keep forgetting the word for armadillo but I think I'm probably unlikely to use it if I have no idea what an armadillo looks like, so I may just set words like that to ignore. Last night I also did the September challenge in the SC discussion thread and translated a song. Esperantowise I have finished my first draft of the 2014/2015 budget and written my Treasurer's Report for the next meeting. Exciting stuff! But necessary. The budget is in English which would scandalise some people. I could do it in Esperanto almost as easily as in English, but if it is only going to be looked at by six other native English speakers then what would be the point? To prove to each other that we all know how to talk about depreciation in Esperanto? No thanks. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| rdearman Senior Member United Kingdom rdearman.orgRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5234 days ago 881 posts - 1812 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Italian, French, Mandarin | Message 341 of 522 30 September 2014 at 1:18pm | IP Logged | ||
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I can't even talk about depreciation in English, so I figure you're way ahead of me!
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 342 of 522 01 October 2014 at 10:28am | IP Logged | ||
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@rdearman Haha, well I talk about it and all the others fall asleep :) But I don't think talking about it in a different language would make it any more exciting.
I'm totally on top of Memrise now, which is a nice feeling. I need to find a new time to fit it into my day on a regular basis. I was using it for at least half an hour every day on my commute up until May, then when the Super Challenge started I swapped that time to reading. Last night was mostly dedicated to Esperanto management accounts, but I did fit in one episode of 'Bitange i Princeze' (35 minutes). I'm on page 315 of 'Usica Igle' now and there are about another 100 pages to go. I'm hoping to finish it before I go to Sardinia on Saturday. Serpent kindly reminded me that Tadoku is on for October, so I have registered and set myself a target of 1000 pages in Croatian. I would hope to surpass that but I'm probably only going to take English books to Sardinia so I will effectively lose a week of October. 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 343 of 522 02 October 2014 at 9:47am | IP Logged | ||
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I don't often practise my German before 8am, but when I got to work this morning I had an email from a colleague asking if I could translate part of some accounts for them. That woke me up!
I was getting really angry at work yesterday because the person I was sitting next to spent the whole afternoon complaining about a colleague from the Japanese branch of our firm who only speaks - wait for it - Japanese! How completely unreasonable that a Japanese person working in Japan hasn't dedicated years of their life to learning fluent English on the offchance that one day he might want to ask them a question. I would like to be shot if I ever start Espervangelising but it does make me mad when I encounter English-speakers with such an attitude of entitlement, who expect that the entire world will speak English for their convenience. Grrrr! As far as Croatian goes, I'm on page 368 of 'Usica Igle' now so hopefully I will finish it today. I have 81 pages logged for Tadoku so far. I am definitely understanding the action and descriptive scenes a lot better in the printed book than on the audiobook; I understood the audiobook enough to know what was going on, but reading the book I can identify so many details that I missed. I couldn't understand how one of the characters knew that her husband was dead, for example, when I listened to the audiobook, but reading the book on the way home yesterday I realised that it was because she saw his 'kabanica' floating in the sea. I didn't know what 'kabanica' meant but I looked it up on Google Translate and learned it was a raincoat and now everything makes much more sense :) I did several more hours of Esperanto accounting last night as I'm trying to get lots of things done before I went on holiday, but I did have time to watch two more episodes of 'Bitange i Princeze'. It's so much easier now I have the mains power back! I found out yesterday that I actually know someone else who is learning Serbian. He is a French Esperanto-speaker who is a good friend of a formerly good friend of mine, and he has a Serbian girlfriend. He posted a message on Facebook last night to say that he was going to start using Facebook in Serbian in order to practise and I thought that was such a good idea that I have changed mine to Serbian as well. I used to use Facebook in Esperanto but I switched back to English a while ago because the Esperanto translation is frustratingly bad in places. I guess I won't be able to judge how good the Serbian translation is but it's in Cyrillic anyway and my hope is that seeing a bit of Cyrillic every day will increase my reading confidence. Finally, my friend Professor John Wells has got a new book out called 'Sounds Interesting: Observations on English and General Phonetics'. It's a collection of the best bits from his famous phonetics blog, so while not directly related to language learning it might be of interest to some people here who enjoy reading about language in general :) 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| rdearman Senior Member United Kingdom rdearman.orgRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5234 days ago 881 posts - 1812 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Italian, French, Mandarin | Message 344 of 522 02 October 2014 at 10:42am | IP Logged | ||
I think you should only speak to that person in German from now on. :) 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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