Finnish and Serbo-Croatian | My language mission and my log | Forum

Now it's my turn to entertain you, and hopefully also be more motivated.

I have found out that I probably can get a scholarship for a semester in Finland. And of course I want to learn as much finnish before that. Of course I am not 100% that it's gonna work out (my girlfriend doesnt like the idea at all hehe) but nevertheless it can never hurt to learn a language. 

I actually wanted to only focus on Finnish, but I cant. I cant let go of the idea of learning Serbian. I have been in the Balkans twice and I just love it. I am not going to learn any specific dialect, but since one of my friends speak bosnian, it will probably go in that direction. I am not aiming for fluency, or being mistaken for a native, I am just aiming at being able to speak with locals and travel on my own without the use of other languages.

I just finished this semester so I am gonna party hard this weekend, and then start the language learning on monday:) My goal in finnish is to be able to introduce and talk about my self and make a video of it before September. It may not be the most ambitious of goals, but due to a heavy workload and other things I think that will be my aim. I can always aim higher

While I learn this to languages I will still be improving my already advanced Russian. I will do this by meeting with my tandem partner at least once a week, reading 3 articles a day, and watch at least 30 of russian tv. 

I will also be perfecting my german (Right now I live in Germany) watching tv every day, reading a newspaper everyday, and of course improve my grammar.

If anything is unclear or you have questions or suggestions please write:)

So time for an update.

I will start with my progress in russian because thats the most positive:) I have been working hard with Anki, I almost finished putting 501 russian verbs into it, with stress patterns, declensions and examples. I have only met my languagepartner once, but it went great, i spoke at least 2 hours of russian. I also had a 7 hours layover in Riga last week where I, much to my surprise, had te possibility to speak a lot of russian. I havealso been watching a lot of The big bang theory dubbed in russian. So overall my russian mission is going fine.

German is also going smoothly. I speak with natives everyday, and listen to german radio and watch television everyday. 

With finnish I had a real slow start because I couldt decide if I should focus on finnish or serbian. But I have still made some progress. I learned some grammar. I can now decline verbs in all persons in present tense. But most of my wok have been focused on pronounciation, since the double vocals and consonants are giving me somewhat of a hard time. 

But I will keep working on it, I am sure that I will reach my target in finnish.

Rusinska Vila. I really envy that you get to live in Serbia, it's a great place. Unfortunately i didnt "discover" Benny before i ended my exchange programm in russia, so I wasted 5 months of immersion, and just hung out with expats. Unfortunately I think I will have to push back serbian until I have a better base in finnish

New update

In the last time I have been focusing heavily on Russian. It wasnt supposed to be this way, but I found myself wanting to improve my russian, so why fight it?  I have found 2 skypepartners, and I have been speaking almost an hour everyday. Besides that I have been watching a lot of movies and series in russian without subtitles. I have been 1 season of The big bang theory dubbed in russian. I have also just started watching the serial Univer, and I just love it. I can highly recommend it.  I have also been focusing heavily on creating a massive verb anki deck, until now i have 300 verbs. I add them in both aspect, with all important conjugations and examples of use. It's taking up a lot lot lot of time, but I hope it will be worth it.

Besides the work on russian, I have also been working on finnish. In the beginning I couldnt choose with materials to use, so I wasted some time shopping among them. I think that I have ended up with teach yourself finnish, linguaphone, and a russian book говорим по-фински. But this may still change. 

I feel like I have made improvements in my pronounciation, but the double letters and the ä still gives me some problems. I have also written to text on Lang-8, and only one of them got butchered:)  I have been looking for some talkpartners, but without luck.. So all in all I am happy..

But I must the declare the serbian part of my mission for dead. Or actually more in a waiting room, or secret lab frozen down for later use.

I am having some friends visiting me the next 2 weeks, so I doubt that I will be able to study very much, but we will see. No matter what you will hear from me again. I have decided to promise you a 5 lang video at the 10 September. I have pushed the deadline a bit, because of my friends visiting me.. 

I know, but I just really really wanna learn it. And I actually think that I will be going to Bosnia, or Serbia before I go to Finland. But well have to focus, and the finnish will hopefully pay off in the end