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 292 10 April 2015 at 11:52am | IP Logged |
tarvos wrote:
Which programme is that? Tajpi? I have that one too, in case I ever want to get good at Esperanto :D
I actually have a problem with keyboards. There are just too bloody many to scroll
through... |
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I use Ek!. I assume it's similar to Tajpi but I think possibly Tajpi is newer/updated more recently. I've been using Ek! for years and it's still running fine even on Windows 8 so I've never got around to investigating Tajpi.
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rdearman Senior Member United Kingdom rdearman.orgRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5237 days ago 881 posts - 1812 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Italian, French, Mandarin
| Message 138 of 292 10 April 2015 at 4:42pm | IP Logged |
Radioclare wrote:
Btw you would make an excellent Esperantist, rdearman - almost all of them use Linux
:) In fact I have probably been at events where I was the odd one out for not being a
vegetarian Linux-user :D |
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LOL, I used to be a vegetarian until about a year ago too! :)
Serious have the IT department install language packs for you, or just ask if you can. I'm sure they would be OK with 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 139 of 292 12 April 2015 at 11:01am | IP Logged |
I seem to have been quite lazy this week and haven't read anything at all (in
Croatian). I have got my novel in Cyrillic off the bookshop and put it on my bedside
table, but that's the closest I've got to reading it. I made the mistake of Googling
it to find out what it was about and read a review which implied the language in it
was going to be really difficult to understand, so that has put me off a bit. I chose
it at random because I needed an extra book to reach the required number for some sort
of offer in the shop.
I have, however, watched three episodes of 'Budva na pjenu od mora' this week and
still really enjoying it. I was trying to explain to someone how most of the
storylines revolve around building regulations and they thought it didn't sound very
exciting, but actually it is :D
Interesting cultural observation of the week is how important the concept of 'kum' and
'kumica' seem to be. As far as I understand it, a 'kum' is the equivalent of a best
man, ie. a close friend who the groom chooses to play a role in his wedding. But it
seems like in Montenegro it's really important to choose this person carefully because
you and your family will be bound to them for the rest of your life. An example from
'Budva' is that two characters got married and a few episodes later the 'kum' was
arrested for smuggling drugs in a fishing boat from Albania. The father of the bride,
who doesn't even know the guy, then felt obliged to hire an expensive lawyer and try
to get him out of jail on the basis that they were now essentially family. I can't
imagine this happening in England :)
Despite all this TV I'm still only on 112.8 'films' so I think I need to come to terms
with the fact that I'm not going to complete a double challenge!
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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 292 15 April 2015 at 3:00pm | IP Logged |
I got a really exciting email yesterday from the British Croatian Society. They have just launched a booklet called "Writing Croatia" at the London Book Fair and sent an electronic copy to everyone on their mailing list. It is basically a list of Croatian fiction and non-fiction that has been translated into English and it runs to 27 pages :)
It does warn that some of the books on the list (I expect a lot of them!) are out of print, but I think I might make it my mission to track down as many of them as possible and read them in English and then in Croatian :)
If you're learning a popular language like French then you maybe won't see why I find this list so exciting, but it is so difficult to find recommendations of what to read in Croatian, so you'll just have to take my word for it that it is incredibly exciting :D
I can't find the list online anywhere to link to but if anyone else would like a copy, PM me your email address and I will forward it.
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Expugnator Hexaglot Senior Member Brazil Joined 5167 days ago 3335 posts - 4349 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, Norwegian, French, English, Italian, Papiamento Studies: Mandarin, Georgian, Russian
| Message 141 of 292 15 April 2015 at 11:56pm | IP Logged |
I can imagine it. I had the same feeling when I got the book 'Contemporary Georgian Fiction' (emphasis on the contemporary as it consisted of post-soviet authors).
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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 142 of 292 19 April 2015 at 11:07pm | IP Logged |
I've been a bit remiss in updating my log recently. That reflects the fact that I've
also been a bit remiss in actually doing anything. Last week I hardly did anything at
all except work.
This weekend I went to the British Esperanto Conference in Brighton. It was nice to
spend a weekend at the seaside, and I seemed to do better at not accidentally adding -
o's to the end of Croatian words in the middle of Esperanto sentences :D The two
mistakes I recall making involved me asking someone if a meal had been "sen-mesa"
rather than "sen-vianda" (without meat) and once I said "ovo" for "this".
I sat on the beach for a while this afternoon and started trying to read "Кавалери
старог премера", which is the Cyrillic book I picked up in Belgrade. I really
struggled, but not with the alphabet (apart from words in italics - still hate
those!!). The book just seems totally incomprehensible. There were so many words I
didn't know on the first few pages it was incredible. One word which cropped up a lot
was "катастар" so I looked it up in Google Translate, only to find that the
translation was "cadastre" which is not a word I have ever heard in English before. At
that point I lost the will to live and gave up!
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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 292 21 April 2015 at 9:53pm | IP Logged |
The most exciting thing about today is that I discovered the new album of my favourite Croatian band, Hladno Pivo. I knew they were
releasing a new album because there have been lots of teasers on Youtube over the past few weeks, but I've been so busy with work
recently that I completely missed it actually happening!
It's called 'Dani Zatvorenih Vrata' and if you don't want to buy it you can still listen to it all
on their Youtube channel :)
Edited by Radioclare on 21 April 2015 at 9:54pm
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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 144 of 292 21 April 2015 at 11:01pm | IP Logged |
Also in order to help me get over my repeated misspelling of Švicarska, today I watched
a short video on the
Deutsche Welle Hrvatski website about the Swiss trying to choose a new national anthem.
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