[Croatian] Language as an obstacle to a better understanding

[Dirgni]

Once I found some Croatian online dictionary: http://www.crodict.com/
Croatian <-> German seems to be quite good. Croatian <-> English I never checked. :)

First I learned English at school. Then a couple of years later I learned by heart the 1000 most used English words. Afterwards I started to read vocabulary-reduced thin books. After a while I read normal thin books. Now I read nearly everything but still check a online dictionary quite regularly. This way (from school English to reading quite fluently most texts) took me about 10 years. And I am still learning and learning is fun. :D

It may help you to read posts in the forum and check unknown words in (online) dictionary. Or you search in English Wikipedia and check if there is some Croatian page. When you want to write your own posts - do it yourself without translation tool. So you learn and improve your English skills. This way is slow but you learn a lot.

Online translation tools may give you an idea about the meaning of a text. But I found the translation quality is not good and normally has some errors. And they hinder you to improve your English. Just do not try to run before you can go. Just do it one step after the other.

Just my 2 cents. I hope this helps.

 

[casper]

for Dirgni

Thank you for your guidance, I will try to follow them correctly.
I apologize in advance to the slow response.
Reading your posts I realize how much you care to share knowledge and help.
thank you :)

 

[sToRmR1dR]

Hello casper

I understand your problem very well.I live in Macedonia :)
I use Google Translate,and I have a lot of problems to translate from Cyrillic.But I am learning ;)

 

[casper]

for sToRmR1dR
Translation looks like when our politicians try to speak English, half of them understand, and the other half guessing.

 

[Dirgni]

Thank you for your guidance, I will try to follow them correctly.
I apologize in advance to the slow response.

Just try and check what works for you. Drop what does not work for you, please. You may not want to follow. You are the one, who decides what you do an when you do it. Please always check advice before you decide to follow. :)

A slow answer is very OK IMO. You are doing fine, casper.

Yes I agree with you sToRmR1dR and casper. The result of Google translate is really strange and you have got difficulties to understand. ;)

 

[Persej]

I sincerely hope that you will never be in my situation (first financial because they can not afford a course of English), and other health care (again returns to finance because only private therapy unfortunately give concrete results)

You don't need money to learn English. There are tons of free materials for learning online. Both in text and video.

 

[sToRmR1dR]

casper

Pretty good sarcasm :D

Dirgni

Thanks for your understanding ;D

 

[Persej]

This year will have a leap second in June 30: _http://www.b92.net/zivot/vesti.php?yyyy=2015&mm=01&dd=11&nav_id=945465
You have a nice little explanation what is a leap second in that news article.

So, if you still don't know what some word or expression means, even after using the google translate, you can use the google search where you can try to find some articles or news about that. You have a special news category on google search page that you have to click on if you want to find only that. That is "vesti" in Croatian.

So, google translate, google search, wikipedia, news articles. And maybe some other translation website or program that you like. And here is one website for learning the English grammar: _http://engleski-jezik.com/index.htm

On a side note, I just learned that Czech people also say "prestupna sekunda" for leap second, although they write it a little bit different - "přestupná sekunda". Isn't that interesting?
See: _http://www.lupa.cz/clanky/prestupna-sekunda-proveri-servery-v-noci-na-1-cervence-2015/

 

[Flow]

Persej, you say you won't help casper, but you're actually the only one who helped him with his examples. That's interesting. You can say what you want, BUT "You will know them by their fruits": ;D
Šalu na stranu - Seriously, I think it's really great how much you help others. I'm one of those who talk but don't do much, so it's very inspiring.

casper, to answer your first question, I think there's a lot of people here who have language barriers. You're not alone. I think you're doing ok and I can only imagine how hard it must be to start learning English after all these years. So, congratulations! Keep learning and wish you all the best!

 

[Persej]

Persej, you say you won't help casper, but you're actually the only one who helped him with his examples. That's interesting. You can say what you want, BUT "You will know them by their fruits": ;D

Haha. I suppose so. :)
Well, I helped him only if he is serious about learning English.

Šalu na stranu - Seriously, I think it's really great how much you help others. I'm one of those who talk but don't do much, so it's very inspiring.

Thank you. :)
I was also one of those who didn't do much, while others were working beside me. But it took me some time (couple of years) to learn English sufficiently enough to be able to translate something.
And just by talking here you ARE doing something - you are developing your language abilities. So, just like G said, you first have to develop your BEing before DOing anything. But you have to ACTIVELY work on that.

How I did it? Well, I was reading sessions with C's and I had a little vocabulary program on the side, and every time I found a word that I didn't understand I would type that word into the program. Which was a LOT in the beginning. :)
But I was persistent because I really liked the C's and later on Laura's work, and as a side effect I learned English. And I'm still learning, and I'm still using the above mentioned tools. So, learning never stops. At least not if you are translating Laura, because she always somehow manages to find a new word that I never heard about. :)

So, it all depends on how willing is a person to ACTIVELY work on her English skills.

One more suggestion - you can open one of the translated texts on our page: http://hr.cassiopaea.org, then go to the English page: http://cassiopaea.org, and open the original, or open a C's session from here, and have both texts open side by side (you can do this if you have a widescreen monitor) and read the original in English while comparing it with the translation every time you don't understand something.

 

[Nević Nenad]

Maybe this can help. Great small free vocabulary software. It’s for Serbian-English translation, but also for Croatian too. With good explanation how to use it and even with constant phone support (as it is said on the page) :)

http://www.antivari.com/

 

[MusicMan]

I must say that I can follow casper very well, and I am English.
If casper is having trouble with a word perhaps he could put it in a square bracket [like this] and we might have a think about it.
I was helping my wife with a word on her phone today and the autocorrect changed it to something totally different. So even the English are struggling!
Keep at it, casper!

 

[casper]

For Persej,Avala and MusicMan
Thank you guys for your advice and links, you helped me with your suggestions, errors will be, but I'll try.

 

[Flow]

Thank you. :)
I was also one of those who didn't do much, while others were working beside me. But it took me some time (couple of years) to learn English sufficiently enough to be able to translate something.
And just by talking here you ARE doing something - you are developing your language abilities. So, just like G said, you first have to develop your BEing before DOing anything. But you have to ACTIVELY work on that.

How I did it? Well, I was reading sessions with C's and I had a little vocabulary program on the side, and every time I found a word that I didn't understand I would type that word into the program. Which was a LOT in the beginning. :)
But I was persistent because I really liked the C's and later on Laura's work, and as a side effect I learned English. And I'm still learning, and I'm still using the above mentioned tools. So, learning never stops. At least not if you are translating Laura, because she always somehow manages to find a new word that I never heard about. :)

So, it all depends on how willing is a person to ACTIVELY work on her English skills.

One more suggestion - you can open one of the translated texts on our page: http://hr.cassiopaea.org, then go to the English page: http://cassiopaea.org, and open the original, or open a C's session from here, and have both texts open side by side (you can do this if you have a widescreen monitor) and read the original in English while comparing it with the translation every time you don't understand something.

Yes, it seems like the best way to learn - when you have great motivation and you enjoy learning. :)
Thanks for sharing your experiences and suggestions, very helpful and inspiring. I'll keep that in my mind. And not only that, I'm going to work on PR of my article and it will be ready very, very soon.

 

[Human]

Maybe bit off topic...
In addition to what Persej said, now there is also newly "open" Croatian SOTT where whoever wants to, can comment in Croatian/Bosnian/Serbian about articles posted there.

Regarding the articles, if there is something in mentioned languages you find interesting and think it should be shared, it is always possible to post a link to that article and open a discussion (in English if possible) in Suggest an Article for SOTT - and Discuss board. I'm sure somebody speaking those languages will be here to help if help would be needed (as can be seen from this thread).

Apropos learning in general, I think one of good and fun ways to learn something is through interaction with others. In that way, if done properly, both sides should learn and "leave" the process "richer" than they were before.