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Radioclare’s tac log 2015 (*jäŋe/*ledús)

 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log Post Reply
292 messages over 37 pages: << Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 ... 8 ... 36 37 Next >>
Expugnator
Hexaglot
Senior Member
Brazil
Joined 4925 days ago

3335 posts - 4349 votes 
Speaks: Portuguese*, Norwegian, French, English, Italian, Papiamento
Studies: Mandarin, Georgian, Russian

 
 Message 57 of 292
09 February 2015 at 7:55pm | IP Logged 
Congratulations on finishing the Super Challenge, Radioclare! You deserved it!

Your comments on the voicing/devoicing issue in Macedonian was a bit discouraging, I agree. Even if I'm more-or-less used to it from Russian, I like languages that don't devoice better, so I prefer Croatian at this respect, too.

And thank you Serpent for the insight on housing in Russia ;)
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Serpent
Octoglot
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Russian Federation
serpent-849.livejour
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 Message 58 of 292
09 February 2015 at 8:59pm | IP Logged 
It's not that Croatian doesn't devoice, it just reflects it in the spelling :)
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Radioclare
Triglot
Senior Member
United Kingdom
timeofftakeoff.com
Joined 4342 days ago

689 posts - 1119 votes 
Speaks: English*, German, Esperanto
Studies: Croatian, Serbian, Macedonian

 
 Message 59 of 292
09 February 2015 at 11:34pm | IP Logged 
Thanks Expugnator :) I am massively behind with your log but hope that your SC is
going well too!

Croatian doesn't have devoicing at the ends of words. So, for example, 'grad' is
simply pronounced as 'grad', whereas in Macedonian it would be pronounced 'grat'.

Croatian does have the sort of devoicing where if two consonants are together the
first one changes depending on the second one. But, as Serpent says, the spelling
always changes to match the pronunciation, so you don't need to learn the rules; you
can just absorb the spellings.

This is one of the reasons I think it will always be my favourite Slavic language :)

I hope I will get used to the devoicing in Macedonian in time. I find it quite off-
putting that something like this is in the first chapter of the book, because it feels
like straight away there's something really hard about this language that I can't
understand. So I think that my strategy for now will just be to ignore it, focus on
learning some Macedonian so that I have a better feel for the language (and locate
some decent audio so I can listen to it) and come back to perfect the devoicing thing
in a couple of months when I hopefully feel more confident :)
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Radioclare
Triglot
Senior Member
United Kingdom
timeofftakeoff.com
Joined 4342 days ago

689 posts - 1119 votes 
Speaks: English*, German, Esperanto
Studies: Croatian, Serbian, Macedonian

 
 Message 60 of 292
10 February 2015 at 12:14am | IP Logged 
Serpent wrote:
While for some it might be about family bonding, I think it's commonly just a practical issue. It's not so much about
liking to live with your parents/grandparents, but just about this not being shameful. This probably varies but I'd say in Eastern
Europe there's much less pressure to get your own house (or flat), this isn't seen as a status thing to the same extent. Or at least
it's much better to live with your parents but have your own car than to have your own place but use the public transport :D

We might also have a different concept of how much space is enough XD During socialism there used to be "communal flats", ie flats
where several families have rooms and share the kitchen etc. For example, we have a two-room flat, but originally only one of the
rooms belonged to my family. There used to be one more family living in the room that is currently mine :D I've heard they were from
Mordovia (not to be mixed up with Moldova). So obviously when people got a full flat in possession they would let their family
members live with them.


Thank you Serpent for all those insights :) I think I would make a rubbish Eastern European as I like personal space and solitude far
too much :D I did actually live with my parents for longer than is usual in the UK (until I was about 25) and I get on with them
pretty well, but having had my own house for over 5 years now I can't imagine that I would cope well with going back to sharing.

I was actually really confused by the storyline in 'Budva' to start with, because I had understood that this woman was about to spend
her life savings on buying a little house with a sea view and I had understood that her boyfriend was going to come from Belgrade to
live with her, but I had assumed that they were going to live together on their own. I was quite perplexed when I got to the episode
which was their moving-in day and the rest of the family started packing up and moving all their belongings as well!

I don't want to start ruining the storylines for you as I'm guessing I'm about 16 episodes ahead, but there is another middle-aged
character who proposes to his girlfriend and assumes (without asking her) that when they get married she will come and move in with
his family. She is absolutely aghast by the idea (as I would be!) but the impression I'm getting from the way this storyline angle is
being portrayed is that the viewers are supposed to be sympathising with the guy and the woman's refusal is meant to be an indication
that she isn't a very nice person.

Quote:
I think it's also because people don't trust mortgages and loans to the same extent as in the West. They are still a
relatively new concept, and obviously most have used them at some point by now, but there can always be pitfalls. For example, some
people have loans in dollars or euros, probably due to the terms being better at the time (than for rouble loans). Now they find
themselves having to pay A LOT more in roubles, and this on top of the inflation and sanctions, grrr.


I guess this is way off the topic of languages, but I read an interesting article in one of the Croatian newspapers about this last
week. It was about people in Poland who had taken out mortgages in Swiss Francs and who were obviously set to have serious problems
after the recent exchange rate movements. There was a proposal that governments should force banks to hold the exchange rate at the
previous level for a few months to give people time to find the extra money, though I'm not sure whether that was actually going to
happen. Again, I was really interested to read about that because I'd never heard of people taking out loans in currencies other than
their own before.

I think getting these insights into different countries is the best bit about learning another language :)
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Radioclare
Triglot
Senior Member
United Kingdom
timeofftakeoff.com
Joined 4342 days ago

689 posts - 1119 votes 
Speaks: English*, German, Esperanto
Studies: Croatian, Serbian, Macedonian

 
 Message 61 of 292
13 February 2015 at 10:37pm | IP Logged 
I am still massively behind with reading logs, but the weeks are slowly getting better
for me workwise.

I haven't done any reading/watching TV in Croatian yet this week, but I have spent at
least half an hour a day on Memrise. They are running a challenge in February to set
personal goals for different courses and try to maintain them for 12 days in a row. I
set a goal to achieve 20 000 points per day in a course called "A long list of
Croatian verbs". I completed the 12 days yesterday evening, having learned 333 verbs
:) Now I think I can get entered into a draw to win a sticker or something :D

When I can manage to relax enough in the evenings, I've been enjoying reading in
German this week. At the moment I'm reading
Schutzpatron, the
sixth book in the Kommissar Kluftinger series. Highly recommend it :)

My only other language activity this week has been listening to lots of Brkovi.
Struggling to make this sound terribly educational, but I was listening to a song
called Hoću da budem svoj this
morning and it occurred to me that it contains a good example of the difference in
pronunciation between sam=am and sam=alone (Listen about 20 seconds in to the lyric
"pa sad dobro znam da u ljubav vjerujem samo kad sam sam").

I've got a free weekend in front of me so will hopefully get lots done.
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Serpent
Octoglot
Senior Member
Russian Federation
serpent-849.livejour
Joined 6356 days ago

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 Message 62 of 292
14 February 2015 at 1:38am | IP Logged 
Interesting about sam sam. To me it actually sounds like the first sam is barely there and the second one is stressed. (like "that that that that that man said" contains 2-3 different tones imo ;)) But I admit I have no clue how the tones are supposed to work in Croatian.
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Radioclare
Triglot
Senior Member
United Kingdom
timeofftakeoff.com
Joined 4342 days ago

689 posts - 1119 votes 
Speaks: English*, German, Esperanto
Studies: Croatian, Serbian, Macedonian

 
 Message 63 of 292
14 February 2015 at 3:21pm | IP Logged 
Serpent wrote:
Interesting about sam sam. To me it actually sounds like the first sam
is barely there and the second one is stressed.


Yes, that's right :) The first 'sam' is a clitic and clitics are always unstressed, so
in speech the difference between the two words should always be clear. In writing they
often put a circumflex over the 'alone' type of 'sam' to show the difference, eg.
"samo kad sam sâm". Similarly to distinguish between 'da' (that) and 'da' (gives) they
sometimes write the latter as 'dâ'.

Quote:
like "that that that that that man said" contains 2-3 different tones imo ;))


If you understand that sentence you speak better English than me :D
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Serpent
Octoglot
Senior Member
Russian Federation
serpent-849.livejour
Joined 6356 days ago

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 Message 64 of 292
14 February 2015 at 4:47pm | IP Logged 
The full sentence is the following:

He said that that "that" that that man said was correct. :D

Does the ^ imply a specific kind of tone? I also see other tone marks sometimes but I don't know how to read them and kinda don't bother tbh. I have much more pressing comprehension problems to solve first :D

I guess what I'm trying to say is that to me the difference is mostly about intonation, rather than pronunciation. The tones aren't the Chinese ones anyway :D


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