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 1 of 292 01 January 2015 at 9:44pm | IP Logged |
New year, new log :)
I will be studying two languages this year: Croatian and Macedonian.
I've been learning Croatian for three years now and feel like I made significant
progress last year, mainly due to participating in both the TAC and the Super
Challenge. I would estimate that my level is about B1 at the moment, but my
reading/listening is a lot stronger than my writing/speaking.
My main goals/plans for Croatian this year are:
1) Improve my writing skills by writing an average of 50 words in Croatian per day. I
know that other commitments will mean I don't ultimately write 50 words every single
day, but I'm aiming for an average of 350 per week. That will be 18,000 words over the
course of the year if I can pull it off.
2) Improve my grammatical accuracy by revising some of my existing textbooks and
finishing those which are still in progress.
3) Increase my vocabulary by using Memrise more regularly.
4) Develop Cyrillic handwriting which is legible at least to myself and read my first
adult novel in Cyrillic. Strictly speaking this is a 'Serbian' goal rather than a
'Croatian' one but you will find that I use the words interchangeably in my log. I am
primarily learning 'Croatian' because that is the country I have a cultural interest
in, but most of the novels I'm reading are actually 'Serbian' translations. I don't
want to get too hung up on the political correctness of it all here; I tried telling
someone I was learning BCMS once and they thought I meant BDSM. Awkward.
5) Continue to participate in the Super Challenge, but reduce the amount of time
dedicated to this. My new goals are to read just 50 pages and watch 60 minutes of
television per week. I won't complete a double challenge at that rate, but I've
decided there are more important things in life.
6) Ultimately I hope that I will feel my level is B2 by the end of the year.
As far as Macedonian goes, I have never intended to learn this language but I fell in
love with the country when I went there on holiday last year. I am expecting this to
be a real challenge, not least because resources are rather thin on the ground, but I
would like to get to a basic tourist level in preparation for hopefully another
Macedonian holiday in 2016.
Wish me luck :)
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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 2 of 292 01 January 2015 at 10:17pm | IP Logged |
Good LUCK!
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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 3 of 292 01 January 2015 at 11:32pm | IP Logged |
More good reads! You were the one person last year who took literally the advice to update your log daily hehe. I will be following your log closely, amusing myself with the stories and wanderlusting for Croatian for another year. Good luck, to basic fluency! And Macedonian will come right after, I'm sure.
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agantik Triglot Senior Member France Joined 4633 days ago 217 posts - 335 votes Speaks: French*, English, Italian Studies: German, Norwegian
| Message 4 of 292 02 January 2015 at 5:36pm | IP Logged |
Thanks to your log, I've added Croatian to my wish list, so keep up the good work and all the best for 2015!
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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 5 of 292 02 January 2015 at 7:12pm | IP Logged |
I would also like to thank you for your log. Because it has identified a number of languages I want to steer well clear of because they look bloody difficult!
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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 6 of 292 02 January 2015 at 7:13pm | IP Logged |
Thank you guys :) I didn't quite manage every day last year but I did find that
updating my log regularly was really helpful as a motivator to actually do something
every day. Hopefully this year will be the same :)
I'm on holiday in Belgium at the moment so it's a bit difficult to get into a routine,
but yesterday I made a start reading the John Le Carre novel 'Krpar, krojač, soldat,
špijun' (Tinker, Tailor, Solider, Spy - in Serbian). It seems quite difficult so far;
or, at least, the plot seems quite complex and a lot of characters have been
introduced all at once so I'm struggling to understand who is who. I haven't read the
book before in English, so it's all new to me.
I had a book of Croatian verb tables for Christmas and I've had the idea of writing
out a verb declension every day. Not sure how long this will last, but I've done five
so far and I'd like to keep it up because I feel like I know a lot of infinitives that
I would struggle to conjugate.
Writing 50 words per day in Croatian is easy so far. 50 really isn't a lot; I wrote
over 70 yesterday without even trying. I'm writing about my holiday in Macedonia at
the moment, so have plenty to say. I'm going to put what I write on Lang-8 in batches,
maybe once per week.
I started looking for Memrise courses for Macedonian last night but they are rather
thin on the ground. I'm going to have a go that the ones that are there and then
eventually make my own. I learned about 30 words from a Beginner's Macedonian course
yesterday and all of them were pretty easy to guess the definitions of when I read
them, though the challenge will of course be learning to spell them myself :)
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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 7 of 292 02 January 2015 at 7:16pm | IP Logged |
rdearman wrote:
I would also like to thank you for your log. Because it has identified a
number of languages I want to steer well clear of because they look bloody difficult!
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Haha :D No one believes me but I have honestly found Croatian an awful lot easier to
learn than French :)
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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 8 of 292 02 January 2015 at 8:21pm | IP Logged |
rdearman wrote:
I would also like to thank you for your log. Because it has identified a number of languages I want to steer well clear of because they look bloody difficult! |
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says a learner of mandarin :)
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