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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 4377 days ago 689 posts - 1119 votes  Speaks: English*, German, Esperanto Studies: Croatian, Serbian, Macedonian | Message 17 of 522 12 January 2014 at 11:45pm | IP Logged | |||||
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This morning I opened the folder where I keep materials from my Croatian class in order
to do my much-procrastinated homework. It turned out that I needn't have procrastinated because I could make neither rhyme nor reason of the worksheets we had been given; they were badly printed with half the words missing. I made use of my reprieve to watch my weekly episode of 'Tomica i prijatelji'. This episode was about how Thomas and Percy are best friends, but almost fall out over who gets to pull carriages carrying a visiting orchestra. I learn a new word - 'fućkati' - which I assume means to whistle. I also watched my weekly instalment of 'Eurobox' on Deutsche Welle. This week's episode dealt with themes including Polish people living in western Ukraine, a private university in England which is teaching a course about espionage, the ongoing misery of public sector workers made redundant in Greece and a shop in Naples which sells very expensive ties. This afternoon I fortified myself with coffee and read chapter 13 of the Hippocrene Croatian book, which deals with the conditional. I followed everything pretty well, but then found that the bit I have been struggling with (if-clauses) was actually dealt with in chapter 15. I didn't do the exercises in chapter 13 as they were mostly to practise comparatives and superlatives of adjectives, also covered by that chapter, but which I didn't feel in the mood for. It is a topic I need to get a better grip on though - maybe next weekend! I skimmed chapter 14 and then read chapter 15 in detail. The explanation there of the correct tenses to use in different clauses was much cleared than in 'Teach Yourself Croatian'; it still made my head hurt, but I think it is definitely something I can come back to consult every time I get confused in future. It did remind me how much I love my Hippocrene book. I will be working away for the next 7 weeks or so after this one, and I think I will pack it and try to work through the exercises again from start to finish. Memrise is still going strong; I've nearly finished planting the vocabulary from the first five lessons of the BCS textbook :) Edited by Radioclare on 12 January 2014 at 11:47pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 6950 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes 20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish | Message 18 of 522 13 January 2014 at 1:16am | IP Logged | |||||
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Magner's text isn't the greatest but I got a lot of it after doing all of the exercises and getting feedback from a Croatian friend. I started to study BCMS/SC using that and TY Croatian. It's true that Magner's book is dated with some *ahem* quaint ideas about Yugoslavia, not to mention a strange layout of placing all of the grammar notes (although they're very clear) in a large appendix rather than piecemeal with the lessons themselves. On the other hand before the release of Alexander's and Elias-Bursac's textbook, Magner's book gave the most concise and even-handed presentation of Croatian and Serbian in one course. If you don't rely on it as a primary resource, I don't blame you. On the other hand, it might still have some use to you with by acting as a kind of rudimentary audiobook for you to shadow. Indiana University's audio archive has all of the chapters' audio available for free downloading as .mp3s under "Introduction to Serbo-Croatian Language --T.F. Magner" (an older edition before the latest edition with its title showing "...Croatian and Serbian language" in the title - note that "language" is singular rather than plural as one might expect with "Croatian" and "Serbian" listed in the same title)
It's good to see that you're enjoying Hippocrene's book, and I have to agree that it makes a solid alternative to TY Croatian (frankly, I think that it outdoes "TY Croatian", not to mention "Colloquial Croatian"). The authors of "Beginner's Croatian" (and "Beginner's Serbian" by the same authors) acknowledge the help of Ronelle Alexander among others - a good sign considering how Alexander's thoroughness and knowledge of Southern Slavonic languages also contributed to her textbooks for BCMS/SC and Bulgarian. It seems that Hippocrene has smartened up a bit recently and commissioned professionals to make a few of its courses (e.g. "Beginner's Russian" by Kagan et al., "Beginner's Ukrainian" (2nd ed.) by Shevchuk, "Beginner's Georgian" by Kiziria) rather than recycle public domain material (e.g. "Hungarian Basic Course" a.k.a. Volume 1 of FSI Hungarian Basic Course (textbook only)) or even worse. get ambitious amateurs to make their courses (e.g. "Beginner's Slovak" by Elena Letňanová who is a translator and concert pianist; "Beginner's Ukrainian" (1st ed.) by Johannes Poulard whose connection to Ukrainian seems to have been as a Slavophile/Russophile. According to his LinkedIn he got a degree in Fine Arts but I see no mention of Slavonic Studies or similar (!) or any professional work even requiring knowledge of Ukrainian). 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Expugnator Hexaglot Senior Member Brazil Joined 4960 days ago 3335 posts - 4349 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, Norwegian, French, English, Italian, Papiamento Studies: Mandarin, Georgian, Russian | Message 19 of 522 13 January 2014 at 6:48pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Radioclare, your log is truly inspiring! I'm going to follow your journey through
Croatian close and learn before I try it on my own. Chung, do you really think Beginner's Croatian or Beginner's Serbian is something one can't do without? Either one of them and Spoken World Croatian are books I dream of, but budget is tight since I got Basic Georgian. I already have everything for Croatian that can be found 'out there', you know. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 6950 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes 20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish | Message 20 of 522 13 January 2014 at 7:21pm | IP Logged | |||||
I don't think so. Basically I classify Beginner's Croatian and Beginner's Serbian on the same level as TY Serbian, and somewhat higher than TY Croatian and even higher than Colloquial Croatian or Colloquial Serbian. All of these would be typical choices for raw beginners in BCMS/SC. Spoken World Croatian is also comparable in price and coverage although it has a lot more audio than any of these courses but for one reason or another it doesn't seem to me to turn up as often as those other courses. (Alexander's course for beginners is good but its size and comprehensiveness could scare off beginners). If you're a total beginner without a course (and don't want to start with FSI or DLI), then getting one of TY Serbian, Beginner's Croatian, Beginner's Serbian or Spoken World Croatian would be ideal. Otherwise make do with what you have. If I remember correctly you already have Alexander's textbook and Assimil Serbo-Croate sans peine, and I'm left to guess that you also have TY Croatian and/or Colloquial Croatian. That should be enough. Remember I started off with TY Croatian and Magner's textbook (before I knew that Indiana University offered the old edition's audio in its archive), and ain't worse for the wear. 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Radioclare Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom timeofftakeoff.com Joined 4377 days ago 689 posts - 1119 votes Speaks: English*, German, Esperanto Studies: Croatian, Serbian, Macedonian | Message 21 of 522 14 January 2014 at 12:00am | IP Logged | |||||
Wow, now that I know there is audio available, the book has gone up several points in my estimation! Thank you, that looks really useful.
The Hippocrene book is definitely my favourite that I have tried so far. I started with 'Teach Yourself Croatian' because initially I was just aiming for holiday/vacation Croatian and normally the series is pretty good for that. I was pleasantly surprised to find that 'Teach Yourself Croatian' was far more comprehensive than I had expected based on other languages I've tried ('Teach Yourself French' is probably the worst one I've used) and provided a grounding. When I became more serious about learning I bought 'Colloquial Croatian', never having heard of Hippocrene books and assuming this was the next best step up. I was extremely disappointed by it and despite owning it for over year I probably haven't worked through more than 50% of it. Every time I try I end up despairing because the dialogues and exercises in each chapter include vocabulary and grammar which hasn't yet been taught. Time and time again I have completed an exercise only to find it wasn't one of the chosen few deemed important enough to have its answer included in the key. I find it extremely frustrating! I came across the Hippocrene 'Beginners Croatian' by sheer coincidence in a public library when I arrived too early for an Esperanto presentation I was giving. It was love at first sight ;) The dialogues are complex enough to be interesting and worth reading, but all the vocab used is given in the word lists. The presentation of grammar is thorough but accessible and presented in a logical way so that if you decide you want to brush up on numbers, you can just go the relevant chapter and read all about it in a couple of concise pages. Some of the translation exercises are challenging but I find you can do them over and over again and improve a bit each time. It is an expensive book and I had to wait for my birthday to get a copy, but it was worth it :) Once I have got to a stage of functional fluency with Croatian, I aim to go back to learning either Russian or Czech and would definitely be interested to see what the Hippocrene series is like for those languages. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Radioclare Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom timeofftakeoff.com Joined 4377 days ago 689 posts - 1119 votes Speaks: English*, German, Esperanto Studies: Croatian, Serbian, Macedonian | Message 22 of 522 14 January 2014 at 12:03am | IP Logged | |||||
Thank you, Expugnator :) I have never heard of Spoken World Croatian - this sounds like something I may need to investigate and add to my wish-list too! 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Radioclare Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom timeofftakeoff.com Joined 4377 days ago 689 posts - 1119 votes Speaks: English*, German, Esperanto Studies: Croatian, Serbian, Macedonian | Message 23 of 522 14 January 2014 at 12:11am | IP Logged | |||||
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Today wasn't a very productive day, I'm afraid. Too much work, too little time :(
I somehow ended up with over 200 words to water on Memrise this morning, but am all up- to-date with it now. I was supposed to go to my Croatian class at 18.30 this evening but got stuck in a meeting until 18.25, then had another hour of work to do before I could leave. I eventually got to my class at 19.40; it finishes at 19.55. Happily, I don't seem to have missed much. The teacher had a form to tick to confirm that we had mastered basic skills, including saying our names and where we come from. We then had to demonstrate that we could read a short text aloud. I got there on time to do that and was given a short text about the family of JFK, which was fine. On the way home I listened to some Hladno Pivo to cheer myself up :) 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Expugnator Hexaglot Senior Member Brazil Joined 4960 days ago 3335 posts - 4349 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, Norwegian, French, English, Italian, Papiamento Studies: Mandarin, Georgian, Russian | Message 24 of 522 14 January 2014 at 12:27am | IP Logged | |||||
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What a coincidence, we plan to learn the same Slavic languages: Croatian, Russian and
Czech. Only that I started with Russian. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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