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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 137 of 522 16 April 2014 at 11:07pm | IP Logged |
Tuesday
I made some more progress today with planting the vocabulary from lesson 14 of the BCS
textbook on Memrise. I think I have now learned 84 out of 128 items.
On the train to and from work I continued reading the BCS grammar book. I read all of
chapter 2 and about half of chapter 3. Topics covered included an introduction to noun
and adjective declensions in different tenses, object pronouns, basic word order and
prepositions with the accusative. I was refreshing my memory of lots of things I
already knew, but there were three new things which stood out to me:
1) The agreement of adjectives is determined by gender rather than by form, so
adjectives that describe masculine nouns ending in -a (eg. gazda) take masculine
adjective endings.
2) The word 'bol' has two genders, being masculine when it describes physical pain and
feminine when it describes spiritual anguish.
3) When forming masculine plurals, nouns whose stem ends in -c soften this to -č before
adding the syllable -ev-, eg. stric => stričevi, zec => zečevi.
Wednesday
I was a bit lazy today, possibly because I knew the forum was down and so I wouldn't
have to post in my log what I'd achieved!
I have done a lot of Memrise-watering, but not any new planting. I think that's okay,
because I need some time for some of the new words from chapter 14 to sink in.
I also started putting together a Word document with links to Croatian resources
online, but haven't finished it yet. I had a load of things bookmarked in my browser
and then I had a computer issue which required me to reinstall Windows, so I lost them
all. Some of them were links that I knew were in the BCMS profile thread here, but when
the forum was down that didn't really help so I figured it wouldn't be a bad idea to
make an offline list.
Edited by Radioclare on 17 April 2014 at 10:23pm
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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 138 of 522 17 April 2014 at 11:05pm | IP Logged |
I have tried to be more diligent today now that I know I can access the forum again. It's amazing how much difference
it made to my mentality when I didn't think I had to account for what I'd achieved!
This morning on my way to work once I'd finished all my watering, I listened to the Serbian alphabet song a good few
times on my phone. This weekend I'll be at the same event as a friend who I know speaks Serbian, so I'm wondering
whether I'll have the courage to do some practice with him. He has been learning for a lot longer than me though, plus
I have been almost exclusively focusing on Croatian, so I'm not sure whether it would be a great idea. Perhaps after a
drink or two!
I've continued reading the BCS grammar book all of chapter 3 and chapter 4 as well. A lot of it was about the
genitive, and I'm a bit bored of the genitive at the moment.
The person who is using my BCS Memrise course wrote me another message today to say he had found two more sets of
words which were causing problems when being watered; 'svakako' and 'sigurno' both translate as 'certainly', while
'nego' and 'već' both translate as 'but, rather'. He queried that as a translation of 'već' and asked whether it
should be 'already' instead.
I have to confess that I am a bit confused about this as well, because I have only ever used 'već' to mean 'already'.
However in the textbook it is definitely given in the vocab list as 'but, rather' and there is the following dialogue
to illustrate it:
A: Pravi je trenutak za veliku ljubav!
B: Ne mislim na ljubav, već na poeziju.
I assume it must be a word with several meanings, and for the time being I have amended the translation to read
'already/but, rather' which is a bit clumsy but will hopefully make it clearer for him which word is required when
watering.
This evening I had the worst idea I have had in a long time and decided to go to a Croatian chatroom. To give some
context, I was thinking about the things I did when I was learning German about 10 years ago, because it seems to me
that I didn't put anywhere near as much effort into German as I have into studying Croatian, and yet I got better
results much more quickly. I have to say I wasn't very diligent at learning German at all (I think I got to chapter 6
of my Berlitz book and gave up!) but I did used to use the language, and one of the things I used to do was speak to
random German men in chatrooms. I don't actually know why I did this. I was 18 and it was the era of AOL chatrooms and
I guess it seemed cool!
Anyway I found a Croatian chatroom this evening and thought it might be good to get some practice at 'speaking'
Croatian in (almost) real time without having the pressure actually speaking in real time like on Skype. I lasted
about 15 minutes, during which time I learned the following:
1) "Bok, god?" is an acceptable way to greet a complete stranger. I guess this is like how on AOL we used to just go
round saying "asl" to everyone.
2) Really polite guys start by saying "bok, smetam?" before they move onto "god?"
3) Once you've exchanged ages, the next question is "odakle si?". After that question, 50% of people have exhausted
their conversational repertoire.
I don't think I'll be trying this again tomorrow ;)
I may not actually be updating my log again until Monday/Tuesday, as I'm off to the
British Esperanto Conference for the weekend. I will be bringing my Croatian
books with me though.
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| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6598 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 139 of 522 18 April 2014 at 12:29am | IP Logged |
What does god mean as a conversation starter? Is it an acronym like asl?
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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 140 of 522 18 April 2014 at 9:19am | IP Logged |
Serpent wrote:
What does god mean as a conversation starter? Is it an acronym like asl?
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No I think "god?" is just a really lazy way of asking "koliko imaš godina?". Probably not
a conversation starter to use in real life!
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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 141 of 522 21 April 2014 at 11:58pm | IP Logged |
I'm home from the British Esperanto Congress now and as predicted, it wasn't a weekend which was very conducive to studying Croatian.
Most days all I managed was to keep on top of my Memrise watering. I haven't planted any new words.
On Sunday I had a couple of hours of free time between two items on the programme, which my other half and I spent drinking coffee in a pub, so I was
able to start working through chapter 14 of the BCS textbook. I copied out the text for section A1 in an attempt to make the new words stick in my
mind a bit better. Once I'd read the Croatian version a few times, I forced myself to read the Serbian Cyrillic. Having done that, I needed to move on
from coffee to wine ;)
It would take too long to list all the new words I've learned so far in this chapter but the ones I am particularly struggling to remember at the
moment are:
mljeti/samljeti - to grind
pjena - foam
poredati - to line up
preliti - to pour over
primaknuti - to bring closer
srknuti - to sip
talog - dregs, sediment
uhvatiti - to take hold of
I didn't get to speak Serbian to my friend during the congress, but this was mainly due to me being busier than I anticipated and only managing to
speak to him for half an hour at all. I did speak a little Croatian to a Slovenian acquaintance though, and we had a nice conversation in Esperanto
about Zagreb. I unexpectedly had a conversation in German, which was probably helped by mild inebriation on the part of all involved.
****
La kongreso mem estis multe pli bona ol mi atendis. Nu, tio eble malmulton signifas, ĉar mi partoprenis pli-malpli kontraŭvole. T.e. mi partoprenis
pro tio ke mi estas la kasisto de la brita asocio kaj do havas devon (moralan se eĉ ne juran) ĉeesti la jarkunvenon kaj klarigi la kontojn al la
membroj. Tiu devo kutime ne tro ĝenas min, ĉar ĝenerale la membroj ne ege interesiĝas pri la kontoj (sinteno kiun mi bone komprenas!) kaj ne starigas
komplikajn demandojn. Cetere la jarkunveno daŭras nur kelkajn horojn, kaj kutime kongreso estas bona eblo revidi malnovajn amikojn kaj kunbabili. Ĉi-
jare, tamen, mi iom malĝojis pro tio ke oni ĝin organizis ĝuste dum la paska semajnfino, kiam mi fakte jam havis aliajn planojn. Mi sentis min
devigitan nuligi tiujn planojn por ke mi ĉeestu la jarkunvenon.
Ĉiuokaze vi komprenu ke miaj atendoj de la kongreso estis malaltaj. Malgraŭ tio (aŭ ĉu pro tio?) mi tamen pasigis belegan semajnfinon. Kvankam ĉeestis
nur 50 homoj, temis pri 50 bonkoraj kaj interesaj homoj kiuj plejparte flue regis la lingvon. La prelegoj estis aŭskultindaj kaj pritraktis pli
diversajn temojn ol kutime okazas ĉe naciaj kongresoj. Aparte plaĉa por mi estis kiom da la prelegoj okazis en Esperanto sen temi pri ĝi; por mi tio
estas treege grava afero. La jarkunvenon mi travivis, kaj la tiea etoso fakte estis bonhumora kaj amikema.
La nura malkomforta parto de la kongreso por mi estis la komuna kantado de 'La Espero'. Malbonŝance mi tiam sidis ĉe la antaŭo de la ĉambro kaj do
estis klare videble por ĉiuj ke mi ne ekstaris kaj kunkantis. Mi certe iom ruĝiĝis, tamen mi ne hontas pri tio ke mi estas raŭmisto kaj mi certe ne
emas ŝajnigi kvazaŭ Esperanto estus por mi religio.
En iu ajn recenzo de la kongreso aparte menciindas la prelego de Sprachprofi pri kiamaniere senpage lerni lingvojn, kiun mi ege ĝuis. Mi lernis pri
kelkaj novaj retejoj kaj mi certas ke kaj aliaj homoj en la ĉambro multegon lernis. Eble kvarono de la partoprenantaro verŝajne ne jam uzas
interreton, kaj estus bonega afero se pro tiu prelego eĉ unu el tiuj decidus ke eble interreto povus esti utila afero kaj indus lerni kiel ĝin uzi.
Serpent even had a brief starring role in the lecture when an illustration of some of her 6WC stats was shown as an example of how much language
practice a person can achieve :)
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| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6598 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 142 of 522 22 April 2014 at 3:05am | IP Logged |
Awwwwwwwww!!!!!! More info please? Which stats exactly? Like which main language or which month/year?
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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 143 of 522 22 April 2014 at 9:45pm | IP Logged |
It was a screenshot of one of your 6WC piecharts, but not sure which challenge it was
from. The main language looked like it was Italian, but you had so many other languages
it was a bit hard to tell ;) It was a crazy amount of hours though and everyone looked
very impressed!
2 persons have voted this message useful
| 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 144 of 522 22 April 2014 at 10:33pm | IP Logged |
Today feels like a bit of a failure day. I started reading the BCS grammar book on my
Kindle on the way to work this morning but I only managed to cover part of chapter 5
(the use of prepositions with motion verbs and negation) before the Kindle died and I
was left without any reading matter for the rest of the journey. I decided to catch up
with Memrise instead and found to my horror that I had 300 plants waiting for watering.
I diligently watered them all... and then realised that my phone app hadn't synced with
the latest version on the web yet, so most of them hadn't needed watering at all!
This evening I tried to make up for it and finished planting all the vocabulary from
chapter 14 of the BCS textbook on Memrise. I have also charged my Kindle, so will
hopefully be able to do better with grammar tomorrow.
I forgot to say yesterday that I got my other half to change the spoken language on his
sat-nav to Croatian, so we used Croatian directions on the way home from the congress
in Sheffield yesterday. I learned a new word: "kružni tok" (roundabout).
I spent some time this evening exploring the Serbian pages of Deutsche Welle to see
whether the content was different to on the Croatian pages. I have been ignoring the
Serbian pages until now because they all seem to be written in the Latin alphabet and I
think if I'm going to read in the Latin alphabet, I might as well just read Croatian. I
had a look at the video material though and compared a weekly instalment which I had
already watched between the Croatian and Serbian versions. It turned out that while
each was recorded separately with a different presenter etc, they both covered the same
themes. So there probably isn't a lot to be gained by watching the Serbian versions if
I've already seen the Croatian ones.
If I do find some Serbian videos to watch though, I'm assuming (hoping?) that no one
will mind if I count them as being Croatian for the purposes of the Super Challenge.
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