Phonetics Fanatic

Table of Contents

1. Monthly Stats
2. Highlights
3. Anki
4. Writing
5. Speaking
6. Listening and Reading
7. Watching
8. Overall and Next Month

First, as always, before I get into the meat of the update, here are my Anki and Toggl stats.

My Anki

My Toggl

Highlights

Two big things stand out if you look closely at my toggl picture above.

1. I wrote for a grand total of 50 minutes this month (but Andrew, aren't you prepping for the C1 writing exam?!)
2. A new category (Phonetics) has been introduced and I logged nearly 11 hours!

I'll get into those things in the writing and speaking sections!

Anki

Anki was going well until the back half of the month. My tiles started turning red because I wasn't adding any new words (wasn't reading consistently enough to keep up my 15 new words per day rate). And then my grandfather passed away, and I had to fly home to help with that, so my anki fully fell off for a few days. Back on the grind already, though, after uploading the words from my most recently finished book (info here: reading.)

Writing

So I, once again, barely wrote, despite my attempting to dub this month "The Month of Writing." I'm finding that the activation energy needed to get started on writing is far higher than other activities, and it's also just not a skill I'm particularly interested in developing. As a result, the "you-need-to-do-it-for-the-exam" tagline isn't providing enough of a bump to get me going.

Ultimately, passing this exam is a near meaningless feat, done only to satisfy my overinflated ego and to have a fancy certificate on the wall. But fancy certificates can't be disregarded!

There is some shred of irony in the fact that I do enjoy writing in English (see: this blog) but the drudgery of writing summaries of articles in Russian has proven to be too much for now. I may still, of course, have a chance at passing the writing section, but my hopes are dimming with every passing day.

Re: the exam. I delayed it until Nov 9 due to the funeral, so my next wrap up should include the results of that. Stay tuned!

Speaking

The unofficial month of phonetics came and went in a flash! As I mentioned in my last post, I took a class on phonetics over the course of this month. To maximize my chances of improving, in my language exchanges w/ my usual two partners I didn't speak any "spontaneous" Russian at all (as in, my own words from my own brain without any preparation). Instead, I had a text in front of me and read it out, word by word, with a request to call out anything that sounded even slightly wrong. I'm finally attempting to conquer the beast that is soft and hard consonant clusters / pairings.

So why am I doing this? Am I trying to become a spy, able to fool even the most savvy of Russian counter intelligence agents with my crisp, perfect Moscovian accent? Well no. Ultimately, having flawless Russian pronunciation is a goal of mine for three key reasons:

1. The American accent sounds like dog shit in Russian and completely decimates any of the beauty that this language possesses (which it has in strides, in my humble opinion). Despite Russian natives telling me my accent is "cute" or "unique" or "very easy to understand" or "representative of the downfall of modern society", I still think that it sounds bad.
2. Proper pronunciation significantly lowers the energy needed for others when speaking to me. If you've ever spoken to a foreigner with a thick accent before, you know that it can require much more energy to parse their speech IF they mess up one of the core phonetic aspects of the language (did they say ram or rum or room or rom??). In English, this is our many vowels (we have 20!). In Russian, it's soft/hard consonants.
3. It's a neat party trick.

With those reasons in mind, I cancelled all of my italki lessons for the month, and focused exclusively on perfect pronunciation whenever I could. I've still got a long way to go, especially in undoing previously fossilized errors (I've been saying ци like ци instead of цы!!). Planning to make some anki flashcards to work phonetics into more of a habit instead of it dying as a one month sprint, never to be heard from again.

Listening and Reading

I listened to zero (whole) audiobooks in this month:

1. I'm currently about 75% of the way through Agatha Christie's Объявлено убийство. Should finish it up in the next week or so.

I also read a book:

1. Ночной Дозор Сергея Лукьяненко

I'm reading The Night Watch (Ночной Дозор) as part of a buddy read with some members of the Russian Refold Server. For those who are unaware, this is probably the most famous fantasy series to come out of Russia (ever?). It's urban fantasy set in Moscow a few years after the fall of the USSR with clear philosophical undertones (or maybe even overtones, but it's not quite War and Peace levels). It's not too long, has a gripping pace, and is a great level for B2+ learners looking to read native content. Highly recommend. I'm definitely going to keep reading the series (there are 6 books in all).

The book does a great job of slowly introducing you to the world and how it came to be. The state of humanity fundamentally hinges on the representatives of the two polar opposite forces (Light and Dark) having agreed to a kind of cease fire. Every action from the Dark side begets an equal and opposite action from the Light, and vice-versa. Newton would be proud. Lots of interesting dialog on how the members of these two sides reckon with what this really means for the world and for regular people.

I also started listening to a "new to me" podcast called Закат империи (The Sunset of an Empire) which is all about the last few years of the Russian Empire before the 1917 Revolution(s). It's quite interesting but there is a LOT of vocabulary that I don't know, so it's one of the harder things I've listened to in a while (or awhile?). I'll keep on listening, but I may have to actually re-listen to some episodes, which theoretically is good for learning things well.

Finally, my favorite podcast Привет, ты иноагент (Hello, you're a foreign agent) released a new season and it's a in new form for them. The whole season is called Сёстры ([The] Sisters) and it interviews women whose loved ones (mostly brothers) have gone off to fight in Ukraine for one reason or another and what the consequences of that are. It includes privately recorded conversations with a guy from The Wagner Group (of The Wagner Rebellion, if you remember that), and other harrowing stories. It's up there with На западном фронте без перемен (All Quiet on the Western Front) in terms of being emotionally draining/difficult to listen to, but I highly recommend it. They've kicked their production quality up a notch, so the whole thing is just very well done. However, you have to be in the right headspace to listen to it, as they aren't pulling any punches in terms of content. Listen with caution.

Watching

I watched a lot of Кухня this month and though I'm about halfway through the series, I'm going to stop. It's just gotten incredibly boring and repetitive. Every single episode is either Chef or Max lying about something stupid, getting caught, and then pretending like they've learned some valuable life lesson from their mistake(s). It's literally every episode. There is virtually no movement or progress in the show and absolutely zero character growth, despite each episode ending with a "moral" about how to grow as a person. It's actually mind numbingly bad after so many episodes of the same thing.

The first season is pretty good if you can stomach Max being a complete and utter moron, but I couldn't keep on keeping on with this show.

Luckily I found a new 19th century detective show, so I'm going to binge that over the next month!

Overall and Next Month

Ahh jesus, who knows. My writing exam in on the 9th, so if I pass it, I can just chill and do whatever I want for Russian. Being realistic, I'll write once or twice more before the exam and then just see what happens.

I'm at a somewhat frustrating stage of learning where most content is effortless to consume, so when I come across content that isn't effortless, it drives me up a wall. Shouldn't I be able to understand this, damnit? I realize this is still just part of the process, but my impatience is getting the better of me. I am, however, resolved to just keep on trucking along knowing that these issues will iron themselves out with time. After all, aren't these moments just opportunities to hone my Russian even further?

Thanks for reading! Закругляюсь!