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petrklic - Русский Язык (TAC 2011)

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petrklic
Triglot
Pro Member
Czech Republic
Joined 4846 days ago

95 posts - 109 votes 
Speaks: Czech*, English, Russian
Studies: Vietnamese
Personal Language Map

 
 Message 1 of 68
30 December 2010 at 10:08pm | IP Logged 
Hi there!

I'll be studying Russian as part of team Я in TAC 2011.

I'm Czech, which means that as languages go, Russian comes easy to me. But in the end it's foreign language anyway, and I need to work on it just like everyone else.

I've been learning Russian for about two years now (this is my fifth semester). My day job takes fair amount of time, and I have a bunch of other hobbies and people to hang up with, so I'm hardly studying full time. But I spend about an hour a day on Russian-related activities.

For about the first two years of my studies I had ordinary, old-fashioned group course, two hours a week. That provided the necessary external motivation, and served well the first two years. This fall, I stopped attending for various reasons, and am in the process of test-driving several native speakers whom I'd like to replace the group course with.

This summer, I've gathered my courage, did all the paperwork and visited Russia. I spent three weeks in St. Petersburg living at host family and attending a language school. Since I was mostly able to converse, it's been essentially a three-week long conversational course. By the end of it, I'd commonly have dreams in Russian. I'd definitely recommend this to anyone except perhaps beginners, who wouldn't benefit that much, I think.

As for the methods... I read most days, I listen to the radio most days, and often watch Russian telenovelas and news. The vocabulary that I pick goes into Anki, where I have meticulous system of templates for conjugations and inflections of Russian words. Since I'm well over the threshold where such system makes sense, lately I've been adding sentences where I cloze out a part, and replace it with approximate English equivalent. That seems to work better.

In 2011, I don't expect any dramatic progress, or a change in methods for that matter. I mean, it's been working well so far. I'm more looking into ways of keeping myself consistent. I might try to pass some sort of language certificate, but that's not decided yet. I hope to do a writeup at least every month, but preferably more often.

Edited by petrklic on 10 January 2012 at 12:34am

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dotdotdot
Diglot
Newbie
United States
Joined 4979 days ago

24 posts - 37 votes
Speaks: Korean, English*
Studies: Italian, Russian

 
 Message 2 of 68
30 December 2010 at 11:34pm | IP Logged 
Welcome to TAC, petrklic!

You seem to be far ahead of me, but that makes me look forward to your language log more.

Go Team Я! :)
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joanthemaid
Triglot
Senior Member
France
Joined 5230 days ago

483 posts - 559 votes 
Speaks: French*, English, Spanish
Studies: Russian, German

 
 Message 3 of 68
04 January 2011 at 11:14am | IP Logged 
Hello teammate!
С новим годом и желаю удачи для учить русского языка! Я думаю что твой русский - очеиь хорошо. Можеть быть ты меня бы можеть помочь когда я бы писать на логь.

It seems to me, from what you're saying, that you're past intermediary level in Russian. In any case it will be good to have a more advanced team member, it'll motivate us, though I suppose it might be harder for the rest of us than for you; personally I don't know any other Slavic language so I have to learn everything the hard way

I any case good luck and much success with it, and may you without shame declare yourself a triglot by the end of this year!

Edited by joanthemaid on 04 January 2011 at 11:15am

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Teango
Triglot
Winner TAC 2010 & 2012
Senior Member
United States
teango.wordpress.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name
Joined 5316 days ago

2210 posts - 3734 votes 
Speaks: English*, German, Russian
Studies: Hawaiian, French, Toki Pona

 
 Message 4 of 68
04 January 2011 at 11:52am | IP Logged 
I'd love to have dreams in Russian one day. Which Russian telenovelas have you seen so far that you really liked and would recommend?

Udachi in your studies this year! :)
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petrklic
Triglot
Pro Member
Czech Republic
Joined 4846 days ago

95 posts - 109 votes 
Speaks: Czech*, English, Russian
Studies: Vietnamese
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 Message 5 of 68
04 January 2011 at 6:20pm | IP Logged 
joanthemaid wrote:
С новим годом и желаю удачи в обучении русского языка! Я думаю что твой русский - очеиь хороший. Можеть быть ты мне поможешь когда я напишу на лог.

(Don't take those corrections for granted, I'm still struggling with how Russians say stuff.)
Спасибо, конечно напиши, помогу!

joanthemaid wrote:
It seems to me, from what you're saying, that you're past intermediary level in Russian. [...] I suppose it might be harder for the rest of us than for you

Yeah, it remains to be seen whether any of my experience will be of help to you.

Teango wrote:
Which Russian telenovelas have you seen so far that you really liked and would recommend?


I remember having watched "Кармелита. Цыганская страсть", which is about a romantic rendition of life of gypsies. Quite a bit on the politically-correct side, if you ask me, and the rendition was a bit too romantic, too. Then there was "Ефросинья", a show about a girl who grew up in taiga. I actually enjoyed that one, there were a couple interesting characters there. Later they brought her back to civilization, so there were a couple episodes filled with blunders as she struggled with ways of urban society. Quite fun. Then there was "Богатая и любимая", about a woman who owns some sort of pharmaceutical company, and her family, business partners, opponents etc. There were a couple more, but I don't remember the names. RTR-planeta airs two episodes each day, each one from a different series, so that's what I watch.

All of these are filled with heaps of pathos (сыганская страсть was the worst in this respect) and of course everyone is plotting against everyone else, as is par for the course. The story development is pretty much nil, which is perfect, because you won't even notice if you miss a couple episodes. They were this close to signing the contract last Wednesday, and now it's Monday and it seems they are, well, this close to signing the contract. But it's not the message that I'm after, it's its deliverance, so that's all fine by me. One thing that's special about Russian telenovelas is that the characters tend to drink quite a bit. I think I've seen about a dozen scenes of two мужики taking turns in drinking shots of vodka and discussing the ultimate questions of life, the universe, and everything.

The upside of watching telenovelas is that they are easier to understand than movies. Over the Christmas, I've watched Москва слезам не верит and Кин дза дза, and I found myself replaying some dialogs a dozen times to figure out what they say. Well with something as crazy as Кин дза дза one can't be surprised, but anyway, that doesn't happen that much in telenovelas, and not only because it's hard to rewind a TV stream :)

One of the first things that I watched in Russian was Смешарики, a children's show about ball-shaped animals. There should be a bunch of episodes over on video.mail.ru. I remember that it was a major pain to get through each episode, each minute would easily take me about 5-10 minutes of listening and dictionary work to figure out what words they used, let alone what they mean. I remember one moment of epiphany as I finally understood that Совуния wants the young ones to stop прыгать по лужам, jumping the puddles. In retrospect, there may have been better shows to start with that children's, they use these grotesque voices that make it more difficult to understand. But Смешарики is a genuinely funny show, so there's a reward in figuring out the sentences.
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petrklic
Triglot
Pro Member
Czech Republic
Joined 4846 days ago

95 posts - 109 votes 
Speaks: Czech*, English, Russian
Studies: Vietnamese
Personal Language Map

 
 Message 6 of 68
04 January 2011 at 6:22pm | IP Logged 
joanthemaid wrote:
С новым годом ...

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petrklic
Triglot
Pro Member
Czech Republic
Joined 4846 days ago

95 posts - 109 votes 
Speaks: Czech*, English, Russian
Studies: Vietnamese
Personal Language Map

 
 Message 7 of 68
09 January 2011 at 2:30am | IP Logged 
I spent Tuesday evening looking into the Participle. For my grammar studies, I use Wade's "Comprehensive Russian Grammar". It's awesome book if you are after systematic explanation of a particular piece of grammar, even if that explanation is rather dry. There are not many examples or exercises, but I get plenty of these in my weekly class, so the book is pretty much exactly what I need. Czech has participles and gerunds too, but they are almost never used in daily conversation, and only rarely in books, so few people actually know how to use them. Russian, on the other hand, uses them quite a bit in books, although not so much in conversation, as far as I can tell.

Participle is essentially a way of turning a verb into adjective or adverb, to express in one word things like "[the man] who read", "[the man] who is reading", "while reading [he did something]". The rules are not hard to understand, it's the same playing with roots and suffixes as the rest of Russian, but there's plenty of them. There are five kinds of participles, and Wade dedicates about 30 pages to explain everything. I'll need to go over this once more and make more detailed notes.

On January 7, the Orthodox Christmas was celebrated in Eastern Europe. Which means that the TV was full of live orthodox ceremonies, complete with play-by-play voice-over where the more ancient litanies (perhaps Greek or Latin, I can't really tell) were explained in Russian. What I love about these ceremonies (you see one on TV every now and then) is their pronunciation of Russian. They don't reduce that much, and they pronounce г fully in words like его. I can't tell if that's Church Slavonic or just some sort of traditional pronunciation. Another wonderful thing about these ceremonies is the singing, which I like, but that has nothing to do with the language.

Apart from this, I watched Russian movies Сюрприз and Отцы и деды. I was able to get at least a chapter of Двенадцать стульев each day. I also added a couple sentences and cards, I think about 10 facts total. Not that much, but I've been like that for a couple months now.
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snovymgodom
Diglot
Senior Member
United States
Joined 5485 days ago

136 posts - 149 votes 
Speaks: English*, Russian

 
 Message 8 of 68
09 January 2011 at 3:56am | IP Logged 
Nice log! It sounds like we are at somewhat similar levels in Russian and have similar
goals (mostly dealing with maintaining what we already know and working on gradual
improvements in fluency/understanding). I'm going to check out some of those shows and
movies you mentioned.


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