Radioclare Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom timeofftakeoff.com Joined 4584 days ago 689 posts - 1119 votes Speaks: English*, German, Esperanto Studies: Croatian, Serbian, Macedonian
| Message 65 of 522 05 February 2014 at 12:42am | IP Logged |
I've had to bring so many work-related things away with me this week that I didn't have
space in my suitcase for any Croatian books at all. I'm limited to using materials I've
got on my computer, but didn't think that would be a problem as I have a digital
edition of the BCS textbook.
I forgot that when I had the bright idea of upgrading my laptop to Windows 8.1 at
Christmas, I lost all my applications and Digital Editions wasn't something which had
occurred to be to reinstall. Downloading it again was simple enough... until it refused
to let me open my book unless I could tell it my Adobe ID. I have no recollection of
ever having had an Adobe ID, but after a happy hour of entering all the combinations of
email addresses and likely passwords I could think of, I eventually managed to regain
access. Phew!
That didn't leave me quite as much time as I'd hoped for studying. I've started at the
beginning of the BCS Textbook again and am hoping to make significant progress through
it while I'm working away for the next three weeks. Tonight I went through Chapter 1
again thoroughly, listening to the audio and reading the dialogues aloud. I read the
Croatian dialogues first, then once I had an idea of how it went, read the same
dialogue in Serbian Cyrillic. I'm hoping this will help me get used to the alphabet and
be able to recognise words on sight rather than spelling them out like a five year old
:)
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prz_ Tetraglot Senior Member Poland last.fm/user/prz_rul Joined 4860 days ago 890 posts - 1190 votes Speaks: Polish*, English, Bulgarian, Croatian Studies: Slovenian, Macedonian, Persian, Russian, Turkish, Ukrainian, Dutch, Swedish, German, Italian, Armenian, Kurdish
| Message 66 of 522 05 February 2014 at 1:33am | IP Logged |
Postar Pat in Croatian version seems to be dubbed in a clearer manner than this in Serbian one, so this could be the reason.
But generally both of them were pretty easy for me ;)
Edited by prz_ on 05 February 2014 at 1:33am
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Radioclare Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom timeofftakeoff.com Joined 4584 days ago 689 posts - 1119 votes Speaks: English*, German, Esperanto Studies: Croatian, Serbian, Macedonian
| Message 67 of 522 06 February 2014 at 12:53am | IP Logged |
This evening I went through Chapter 2 of my BCS textbook. I enjoyed reading the grammar
and doing the written exercises but think it takes quite a long time to go through all
the dialogues in detail and rewrite them substituting the proposed words etc. I don't
think I will get through more than a chapter per day, even on the easy chapters.
Unfortunately I've had to spend several hours tonight doing Esperanto work, so haven't
had time for any more Croatian.
Edited by Radioclare on 06 February 2014 at 12:53am
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Radioclare Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom timeofftakeoff.com Joined 4584 days ago 689 posts - 1119 votes Speaks: English*, German, Esperanto Studies: Croatian, Serbian, Macedonian
| Message 68 of 522 07 February 2014 at 1:14am | IP Logged |
Today was dominated by work. By the time I had finished this evening I wasn't in a state
to do anything terribly productive, but I did watch the latest episode of EuroBox on
Deutsche Welle.
Themes included Josip Perković, the Sochi Olympics, the legalisation of cannabis and the
political situation in Ukraine. Definitely not as easy to understand as Postar Pat, but
it's good to listen to something which is aimed at adults and at least get the gist of it
:)
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Radioclare Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom timeofftakeoff.com Joined 4584 days ago 689 posts - 1119 votes Speaks: English*, German, Esperanto Studies: Croatian, Serbian, Macedonian
| Message 69 of 522 09 February 2014 at 10:43pm | IP Logged |
I'm a bit disappointed that I haven't been able to update my log for the past two days
:(
When I got home from work on Friday evening, I turned my computer on to print a number
of documents for the Esperanto trustee meeting I was due to attend on Saturday. For
some unknown reason the printer driver had some sort of conflict with my computer,
which resulted in Windows crashing and being unable to reload. In the end I had to do a
factory restore of my computer and spent a miserable few hours reinstalling all my
programs.
Saturday was mostly swallowed up by the Esperanto meeting, but in the train on the way
down to London I caught up with some neglected Memrise watering that I hadn't had time
for in the week.
Sunday was also spent in London, but I had time to finish reading 'The Balkans' by Mark
Mazower. It's actually quite a short book but it seems to have taken me a long time to
get through it because I've only been able to pick it up for an hour or so at weekends.
I did really enjoy it and think it deserves rereading over a shorter period of time. It
definitely provides a good overview of Balkan history and I learnt a lot, particularly
about the Ottoman empire, but if it was the first book I had ever read on the topic I
think I would have been quite confused by the sheer volume of names, date and events
which are packed into a small number of pages. So I would probably recommend it for
people who already have a little knowledge of the history of the region and are
interested to learn more, but don't have the time to commit to reading Misha Glenny's
enormous book on the same theme.
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Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 7157 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes 20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish
| Message 70 of 522 09 February 2014 at 11:57pm | IP Logged |
I read Mazower's book a while ago and agree that it provides a sufficient and relatively unbiased overview of Balkan history.
Since you're interested in Croatia, I recommend that Ivo Goldstein's Croatia: A History. Goldstein's treatment is quite balanced and in my view preferable to Marcus Tanner's Croatia: A Nation Forged in War which (IMHO annoyingly) gives a pro-Croatian spin to the narrative.
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Radioclare Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom timeofftakeoff.com Joined 4584 days ago 689 posts - 1119 votes Speaks: English*, German, Esperanto Studies: Croatian, Serbian, Macedonian
| Message 71 of 522 10 February 2014 at 11:55pm | IP Logged |
Chung wrote:
Since you're interested in Croatia, I recommend.... |
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Thanks Chung, I will add that one to my wishlist :) I have read Marcus Tanner's book so
will be interested to compare.
Edited by Radioclare on 11 February 2014 at 12:01am
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Radioclare Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom timeofftakeoff.com Joined 4584 days ago 689 posts - 1119 votes Speaks: English*, German, Esperanto Studies: Croatian, Serbian, Macedonian
| Message 72 of 522 11 February 2014 at 12:12am | IP Logged |
Today was a day which started with catching a train at 06.42 and got worse from there
onwards.
On the train I did have time, however, to read through the first few chapters of
Colloquial Croatian. This was borne less of a desire to read Colloquial Croatian and more
of the fact that it was the only Croatian text I had on my Kindle.
I missed my Croatian class again tonight because of working away. I'm away next week too
but it's half term so I won't miss anything and then I'll be home and able to attend for
two weeks in a row ;)
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