(no subject)

[solitary_summer]

After four weeks of complaining about too much work I can't very well start to complain now that I'm feeling a bit useless and empty, without all that stress and responsibility, and fewer work hours, right?

It's nice, though, simply to be able to walk out at 2:30, not completely exhausted, and walk home in the afternoon sun.

Since I actually stick to my good resolutions once in a while (now about those morning runs... *sigh*) I've been walking to and from work a lot recently with my iPod, and it really does help with learning the new words, but it's still immensely frustrating how much repetition it takes before they actually stick in my brain. Some are quite easy, but the polysyllable verbs with prefixes and all the ж's and ш's and щ's, с's and з's, but at least after all this time I'm starting to hear the difference... I always thought I was reasonably intelligent (and not too bad with languages either), but I've kind of started to doubt that.

Three genders, six cases, adjectives and pronouns and even verb forms that change their endings accordingly. My brain can't really process all that, at least not as fast as I need it to. No one ever expected me to talk in Latin or Ancient Greek, and German I never had to consciously learn. A lot of prepositions that demand specific cases. Pronunciation shifting with the stress. Gah. Well, I said I wanted a challenge.

But what's really frustrating is that I'm starting to seriously wonder if I'll ever get to the stage where I'll be able to use Russian with the same ease as English, or at least something approaching that; reading books, understanding the nuances of the language, being able to express my thoughts...



Finished Sacrament, and I still have a lot of love for that book. And not only because it was one of the very, very few books that completely by accident came into my hands at a time where I really needed it. It's just beautiful.


Still vaguely inclined to write a Jack/Ianto CoE post, but most of the time I'm feeling completely written out TW-wise, and when I'm not, I'm obsessively scribbling thoughts in my notebook only to discover that I don't really have the energy to turn them into something coherent once I start typing them out.

Back to Russian, I guess.

Comments

This clogging of the brain

[newwaytowrite.livejournal.com]

and things not really sticking....has this coincided with the weeks of extra hours and stress at work?

Re: This clogging of the brain

[solitary-summer.livejournal.com]

I wish, but I've been struggling with this all summer. It does get easier with time once you figure out (e.g.) what certain prefixes imply, but the problem is that apart from the German loan words there is simply nothing to hold on to... It's completely different from learning a Romance language when you already know Latin, when you can at least pretty much figure out the meaning of a text very soon.

[davenport-6.livejournal.com]

That's just about the hardest part, for me, of learning German. The cases, and the ways in which articles, adjectives, etc. change depending on how they're used in the sentence. Vocabulary itself I can pick up relatively quickly. I seem to have an easier time with verbs in German than I did in French, too. I guess part of it is that I've been around German speakers off and on all my life, so I've always known at least a little -- enough to be dangerous, I guess -- but now that I'm really trying to improve it, I find that I'm still learning it in a most haphazard way. I need a plan, but I've never done very well with textbooks.

[solitary-summer.livejournal.com]

I can imagine how frustrating that must be; it's hard enough when you're already speaking a language with cases and all that. But at least German has the advantage that (dialects aside) you pretty much pronounce it like it's written?

[davenport-6.livejournal.com]

Yes... I like to think that my pronounciation isn't too bad...

My French, on the other hand. If I try speaking in French, I sound like I'm coming straight from a bad movie...

[solitary-summer.livejournal.com]

I had French at school for four years and still understand a written text pretty well, but these days I don't even dare to open my mouth any more, unless it's to say 'Je ne comprends pas'.