Since it is now February and I am no longer in Wantage, I have been trying to make some progress with my New Year Resolutions. Some of these have been going better than others. Buying a laptop was achieved before the new year even began, because Babel did a rather wondrous thing and bought one for me I love my new present so much that I occasionally just want to stroke it – perhaps the reason that it is now covered in finger prints. My aim this week was to buy a duster to clean it with, but I have failed most spectacularly. Does anyone have any ideas where I could buy a nice sort of duster? I’ve looked in all the homeware departments I can think of, and no one seems to be selling them

Saving money also went well in January, probably because I was in Wantage and there aren’t any shops Saving money is going less well in February, because I’ve gone overdrawn on my current account to pay off a credit card bill of more than a grand. The grand being work expenses which I will eventually be reimbursed, I hasten to add, but eventually seems to be the operative word at the moment. They should have been reimbursed last week, but the snow meant the accounts processing department in Northampton couldn’t get to work, creating a significant backlog

Learning to drive was deliberately postponed in January because I was too busy. I have now contacted a friend to ask him which local driving school he learnt with, and once he gets back to me I am going to book a lesson. In fact if if he doesn’t get back to me soon I’m going to text him, because I asked him on Facebook and he doesn’t log in very often.

Eating less unhealthy food has proved difficult whilst working away, mainly because you end up forced to buy shop sandwiches which for reasons I don’t understand uniformly contain mayonnaise, and hence tonnes of calories. I’ve been really well behaved for the past two weeks though, and not bought any crisps or chocolate. Babel has been impressively good this week too, and apparently gone to the gym TWICE

Learning French, after an initial effort, has been postponed until the summer. I don’t seem to have as much spare time as I was hoping to have, and that which I have is being concentrated on my other resolution, learning Czech.

Learning Czech is going quite well. Not well as in I’ve succeeded in learning a lot of Czech, but well as in I’ve been trying very hard Several lunch times this week I’ve gone for a walk with my mp3 player and listened to the Pimsleur course which Tim downloaded for me a while ago. It’s not terribly good as courses go, and I’m not sure I’m learning a lot from it beyond how to tell people I’m an American man, but it’s nice to have it on as background sort of noise. I think it’s hard to come to a language and learn it completely cold, so I’m hoping that listening to it will help me develop a better feel for how things sound; not just pronunciation, but emphasis and intonation as well. It is, however, peculiar, quite how many lessons have been dedicated to the relatively simple task of explaining that you’re an American, and I can’t help wondering whether Pimsleur think this is the only Czech phrase you will ever need to know – utter it once, and everyone will immediately start speaking English and help you out

I’ve also been revising the first few chapters of my Teach Yourself Czech book. I’ve ordered the accompanying CD, and despite the fact I’ve not received it yet, so far it hasn’t mattered. I learnt the first few chapters so thoroughly when I was at uni that I can still hear the opening dialogues playing in my head It’s quite a good book, which doesn’t shy away from grammar. The first chapter is the normal saying hello sort of stuff which you would expect to find in a language book, but the second chapter includes the four conjugations of verbs in the present tense, and the third chapter covers gender rules and the locative case.

I don’t like learning from just one book though, because to be honest, I dont trust language books as far as I could throw them, which is approximately to the end of my bed. I’ve learnt with several different German books over the years, and a couple of French ones as well, and sometimes they tell you things which are downright wrong. For this reason, think it’s cool to have a couple of sources to compare. Also because sometimes I really can’t understand the explanation in one book, but it instantly clicks when explained differently in a second. I’ve found an ebook to download now too and have been reading through that in the absence of an internet connection the past few nights. It’s a bit more difficult than the TY Czech, but some of the explanations are really excellent and I’m enjoying using it. I read the chapter on pronunciation earlier in the week, and suddenly the whole voicing and devoicing business started to make a lot more sense, so I felt happy.

I don’t think I’m ever going to be terribly good at Czech – I’ve already given up hope of ever being able to pronounce the word for four (sadly I can’t type it here because I’ve still got no internet and my phone won’t support the accents) and sentences without vowels quite frankly frighten me – but it will be nice if I can go on holiday and at least understand the signs

Tags: czech, new year resolutions

This entry was posted on Friday, February 13th, 2009 at 11:30 pm and is filed under Random rambling. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.