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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 313 of 522 13 September 2014 at 7:17pm | IP Logged |
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Aw, thanks guys, that's kind of you to say :) I am really having a great time here and
definitely recommend this region in general as a holiday destination; there's so much to see, it really does deserve more tourists. 4 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 314 of 522 13 September 2014 at 11:23pm | IP Logged |
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I went on a day trip to Novi Sad today and I think everyone who is going to the
Polyglot Conference will have a great time there; parts of the town centre are really beautiful and other parts of it will be really beautiful one day when someone has enough money to repaint and replaster the facades of the buildings. Again, a relaxed place with a really nice atmosphere. What I wouldn't recommend, however, is travelling on Serbian regional trains. I chose to go by train from Belgrade because I honestly couldn't face another bus this week, but I think Serbia wins the prize for the worst trains I've ever travelled on it my life. The train from Belgrade made such a horrendous noise that I thought we were going to have to get out and push :D And the train back to Belgrade was a mixture of thuggish football fans and police with guns. Belgrade actually seems to be the place where I am doing worst with speaking Serbian. I had a waitress last night who insisted on speaking to me in English despite my best efforts so in the end I had to give up. And today when I bought my tickets in the train station the guy told me which platform to go to in English. It's odd because I don't think anyone spoke to me in English at all when I was in Montenegro. But I guess people are perhaps more used to speaking English here, can hear I'm foreign and are trying to be helpful. Still having a great time though and sad that I'll be going home on Monday. 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 315 of 522 14 September 2014 at 8:05pm | IP Logged |
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Today I had lunch with a friend who lives in Belgrade. I know him via an Esperanto
connection but he speaks incredibly good English and we spoke a confusing mixture of all three languages around the table :) It is many years since I last saw him and he was really surprised that I was learning Croatian/Serbian and that we had chosen to come on holiday to this part of the world. It was really interesting to hear his views on Serbia and politics. He is someone whose biggest wish is to get out of the Balkans, and he painted quite a grim picture of the country in many respects. He is worried about the future, and whether Serbia ultimately will choose to lean towards Russia or towards the EU. I know we can't discuss politics here, so I won't say more, but I think it was good to listen to his views because sometimes there is a danger that you go on holiday somewhere and just see it through the eyes of a tourist, thinking that everything is rosy, when of course that is not the case anywhere. On the other hand it is important to remember that people's opinions are just that - opinions - and that there are probably many people in the country who see things very differently from the one or two people you have spoken to. Esperanto-speakers, for example, do not generally represent mainstream political opinions wherever it is that they live. And in this particular instance my friend is not straight so faces certain frustrations in Serbia which the average person on the street may not share. One anecdote which wasn't political and so I think I can get away with sharing here regards whether Croatian and Serbian are separate languages. He attended a conference in western Europe about 10 years ago which was linked to some Esperanto cultural event, and a representative from a Croatian institute in that country came to give a lecture, the main premise of which was that Croatian is a completely separate language to Serbian and that Croatians and Serbians can't understand each other when they speak. The lecture was given in Croatian and a heritage Croatian-speaker was interpreting to Esperanto for the audience. Partway through the lecture it became apparent that the heritage speaker was really struggling with the task and so my friend stepped it and interpreted for the second half of the lecture. The audience all knew he was from Serbia and they weren't very sympathetic to the nationalist message of the lecture, so they were pretty much in hysterics, much to the confusion of the lecturer. At the end of the talk, he chatted to the lecturer for a while and she thanked him for his help, complimenting him on his excellent Croatian. She was mortified when she asked where he was from and he gave her the name of a small town in eastern Serbia :D 4 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Stelle Bilingual Triglot Senior Member Canada tobefluent.com Joined 4142 days ago 949 posts - 1686 votes Speaks: French*, English*, Spanish Studies: Tagalog | Message 316 of 522 14 September 2014 at 8:27pm | IP Logged |
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I love your updates! Keep them coming!
I love the places where language learning and travel intersect. :) 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 317 of 522 16 September 2014 at 11:31am | IP Logged |
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Sadly I am now back in the UK again after a wonderful holiday. It feels painful being back - especially because the repairs still aren't sorted on my house (we might be getting an electrician to restore the power next week!) - and it reminds me how much I'd like to live somewhere which isn't here.
On the other hand, it was very simple and stress-free buying my train ticket on the way to work this morning in English and understanding everything that was said to me :D We had a relaxing final day in Belgrade yesterday and I took the opportunity to go around some of the bookshops. I found so many things I wanted to buy, and the prices were definitely a lot cheaper than in Foyles. In the end I chose things, my boyfriend paid for them and is going to give them to me as Christmas presents :) Most of the books I chose were in the Latin alphabet (indeed, most of the books in the shops are in the Latin alphabet) but I got a children's book in Cyrillic and a random novel I found in the bargain basement bin. I don't think I am up to reading the novel yet but my reading speed has improved so much over the past few weeks that I am determined to keep up the progress. Hopefully if I start with the children's book I will eventually be able to read the novel. Despite the fact I have complained a lot about SC 'films' I definitely think they have had a positive impact on my listening abilities. One area where I have noted a big improvement is understanding numbers. Since the first time I went to Croatia two years ago I have been able to count to 100, but that doesn't really help in this part of the world where anything you buy is likely to be more than 100 kuna and in Serbia potentially more than 1000 dinar. My brain has always been too slow to understand numbers greater than 100 in real time, which has led to problems when buying bus tickets etc; I have been able to conduct the whole transaction in Croatian until we get to the price, and then the cashier either has to write it down for me or tell me in English. But this holiday I have found I can understand instantly and I have hardly had any instances where I have tried to pay with the wrong money. I have also found I can understand snatches of people's conversations as I walk past them in the street or if I'm sitting next to them on public transport. That's a big improvement for me because previously I would probably just have heard a jumble of words from which I could pick out one or two that I recognised. In a way it's frustrating because I can understand sooooo much more than I can say. I don't have much opportunity to practise speaking but I do at least need to practise writing. I will start tonight because my landlady in Montenegro wanted me to write to her and let her know that we got home safely :) 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 318 of 522 16 September 2014 at 12:19pm | IP Logged |
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Oh I forgot to say, I saw a new word yesterday and I'm interested to know whether anyone else has seen it used: vazduhoplov.
It was on a sign in the airport in Belgrade, informing passengers that they had to undergo a security check before they boarded the plane. I have learned 'zrakoplov' as the specifically Croatian word for 'aeroplane' and I assumed that in Serbia and elsewhere people used the word 'avion'. I've seen 'avion' used in Croatian airports too, though my dreadful teacher when I was going to Croatian classes told me off for using it and said it was an 'un-Croatian' word. That was a bit of a stupid thing to say, not least because it was actually used in a dialogue in 'Teach Yourself Croatian' which we were studying! I've never seen 'vazduhoplov' before so I'm wondering whether this is a specifically 'Serbian' counterpart to 'zrakoplov' or whether it's a generic word that can be used anywhere. Or perhaps it's a more formal word or old-fashioned word that you might write on a sign in an airport but not use in conversation? I don't know. 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 319 of 522 17 September 2014 at 2:40pm | IP Logged |
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I did email my Montenegrin landlady last night to let her know I got home, and also the person I rented an apartment from in Belgrade to tell him that the air-con is broken. They were only short messages, but they took a while to write. My landlady replied today though with a really nice message, so that was good :)
I haven't started reading anything else for the SC yet because I have a couple of books on the go in English. One of them is the history of Montenegro, which I have nearly finished and have really learned a lot from. Even though I've read quite a few books on Balkan history now, most of them have pretty much ignored Montenegro or spoken about it in the same breath as Serbia, so it's been really interesting to read a whole book dedicated to the country. As I go on so well with audio-books while I was away, I've been doing some more SC listening on my way to work in the mornings. So far I've listened to the first few chapters of '50 Shades Darker'. I'm not sure I can bear to listen to the entire audiobook, but it does have nice clear audio so I'm trying to persevere with it. Tonight I may email a long lost Serbian friend who once gave me a guidebook to Belgrade as a Christmas present. At the time I smiled politely and never thought I'd use it, but it was actually invaluable when I was in Serbia and so I want to thank her. It's an awkward situation because her ex-husband is the brother of my boyfriend's best friend and it all became so complicated I think she just decided it was easier to stop speaking to me. But I hope that if I just send her a brief message in Serbian to say thank you then it won't cause any harm. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6701 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 320 of 522 17 September 2014 at 3:19pm | IP Logged |
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I definitely agree with you concerning the low quality of the Serbian railways. I travelled from Timisoara in Romania to Beograd a few years ago, and the local train on that route resembled a garbage can on wheels - way below the standard in Romania. And from Beograd to Thessaloniki in Greece I travelled on 1. class in a sleeper where the toilets didn't flush and there was no water from the tap and no toilet paper. Luckily I had brought some toilet paper of my own and a large bottle of water, but it didn't suffice to remove the sickening urine stench from the sink in my single-bed compartment.
The strange thing is that the town Beograd was a positive experience - how come then that the national railway systems has become so run down? I passed through Jugoslavia by train several times during the 70s, and it seems that the same waggons are in use today as back then - and they haven't been cleaned in the meantime. Edited by Iversen on 17 September 2014 at 3:22pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
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