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Radioclare’s TAC log 2014 (*jäŋe/*ledús) | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 7154 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes  20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish | Message 353 of 522 05 October 2014 at 5:27pm | IP Logged | |||||
She might have got it from some of my posts >:-). As I keep working through my Russian courses, I've found that Russian really stands out from all of the other Slavonic languages that I've dealt with in its phonology. The grammar and even much of the lexicon are not that hard to figure out if one already has at least one Slavonic language down pat other than Bulgarian or Macedonian which have pretty much dispensed with declension but really complicated the conjugation It's indeed tough to adjust if you've already been exposed to other Slavonic languages which lack Russian's phonological peculiarities. I'm still struggling with listening even to the somewhat contrived dialogues used in "Take off in Russian"'s as the vowel reduction and to a certain extent the strong palatalization screw with my mind as I try to link words with actual pronunciation. 2 persons have 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 354 of 522 05 October 2014 at 5:48pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Hmmm... I'd think a lot of listening would take care of that? To me the Russian and BCSM pronunciation is actually quite similar, they just spell it much closer to how they speak.
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| 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 355 of 522 05 October 2014 at 9:26pm | IP Logged | |||||
Tempting as it is to blame it on Chung, my impression that Russian is more difficult that Serbocroatian is mainly based on my previous two attempts at learning it :) I first tried to learn Russian back in 2004 and I didn't get very far at all, although I'll be the first to admit that this was mainly because I didn't have a very sensible motivation for studying it (I wanted to communicate with someone who only spoke Russian and Esperanto, and I hated Esperanto so much I had to give Russian a go first!) and I was using a pretty rubbish book (I think it was 'Teach Yourself Beginner's Russian - I have long since given it to a charity shop!). I tried to learn more seriously for about six months before I went to Kiev in 2011. I listened to a lot of Michel Thomas and Pimsleur during my commutes and I learnt enough phrases from those to survive when I was in Ukraine. But I had massive problems recognising the words I knew the sounds of when I saw them written on paper; in that respect it felt a bit like French to me. I guess it didn't help that I hadn't learnt my lesson and had ended up with another really useless textbook that didn't consistently mark the stressed syllables or give much useful guidance on pronunciation. I found the experience of being in Kiev terrifying but exhilarating at the same time, and when I came home I bought the Penguin New Russian Course which is an absolutely amazing book. I was really motivated after my holiday and worked through the first few chapters but I still really struggled to make progress, pretty much for the reasons which Chung has explained above. Life got in the way, I gave up studying and then the following January my boyfriend suggested we take a holiday to Croatia. He bought me a copy of 'Teach Yourself Croatian' for Valentines Day and I immediately fell in love :) Croatian seemed sooooo straightforward after Russian. All the words were pronounced as they were written and written as they were pronounced; it could have been Esperanto if only the stress were regular ;) To be fair, I also found it a lot easier than Czech which I had also had an unsuccessful attempt at learning a few years previously. I'm hoping that Russian was just too difficult for me as my first Slavic language and that once I have mastered one that (to me at least) is easier and, as tarvos has pointed out, will have a head start with some of the grammar and vocabulary, I will do better. My Cyrillic reading speed is definitely improving and I've bought some books in Belgrade to practise with, so I'm hoping that by the time I do take up Russian again that won't be a barrier for me. I feel like I've learned a lot about learning languages from the process of learning Croatian and also from using this forum, so fingers crossed it will be third time lucky for me when I try again. I am liking the suggestion of July 2015 :) 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 7154 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes 20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish | Message 356 of 522 06 October 2014 at 5:19pm | IP Logged | |||||
That would probably work although I'm not sufficiently focused on Russian to put this in practice seeing that a few other languages get priority. The trouble for me is that I try to use 4 out of 5 senses when learning a foreign language (touch would come in the form of handwriting; I don't get the same sense of retention by typing). My eyes see one thing but my ears detect another quite regularly when dealing with Russian. This means extra work for my brain which has been wired for Slavonic languages which do not show such variance. 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 357 of 522 07 October 2014 at 8:49am | IP Logged | |||||
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Last night I finished reading 'Dolina Lavova'. It was really exciting - I definitely
recommend it. The vocabulary didn't seem too difficult, although there was a point where I kept getting confused between the words "koliba" (hut) and "kobila" (mare) which both featured in the story quite heavily. I think I've got it sorted out in my head now :) Other interesting points are that I did notice the word "vazduhoplov" a couple of times, so it obviously is a real word and not just one they invented in the airport in Belgrade. And sometimes I find it really difficult to understand in Serbian when they spell foreign words phonetically (my favourite in this book was "voki toki"). In Croatian they just write foreign words however they are written in the foreign language, which is easier for me to understand, though admittedly probably not so easy for Croatians to pronounce. I was on a bus for a couple of hours yesterday so I listened to some more of the audiobook 'Istorije slučaja'. That brings me up to nearly 63 films and nearly 131 books :) 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 358 of 522 07 October 2014 at 9:33am | IP Logged | |||||
I am intrigued to know which of the five senses you use; I get sound, sight, and you've said touch, but is the fourth one smell or taste? :D I completely agree about typing though. I don't learn anything unless I write it out by hand, old-fashioned as that seems these days. Edited by Radioclare on 07 October 2014 at 9:34am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Expugnator Hexaglot Senior Member Brazil Joined 5164 days ago 3335 posts - 4349 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, Norwegian, French, English, Italian, Papiamento Studies: Mandarin, Georgian, Russian | Message 359 of 522 07 October 2014 at 11:05pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I second Chung about vocabulary learning and spelling. When the spelling is phonemic, it is much easier to memorize a word. You don't need different 'slots' for its sound and its spelling. Memorizing Russian vocabulary is much harder because I have to account for vowel reduction, silent consonants, palatalizing sign and palatalizing vowels etc. Croatian makes it all so much simpler, even with sociolinguistics, ekavian/jekavian/ikavian. Most of the time learning Russian felt like a penitence I had to go through before delving into Croatian. It's getting better now, but I still find Croatian easier.
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 360 of 522 07 October 2014 at 11:19pm | IP Logged | |||||
Are you learning Croatian now, Expugnator? I saw in your log the other day that you had bought Spoken World Croatian. Will be interested to hear what it's like as I think that's the one Croatian course I don't have :) I have never managed to find it in a shop or a library to see what it's like. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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