How I learned Afrikaans

I have decided to write this in English and I have already added some short comments about Afrikaans resources, so this is just a quick summary of my experience and thoughts. I am not trying to copy all the great advice that the language learning community online, just sharing some ideas I use.

A collection of the best books for learning Afrikaans

When I started learning in 1998 internet shopping was very new and the range of materials was quite limited. Linguaphone was the high end of language self-study and so was really quite expensive. (I did finally get a copy on Ebay really quite cheaply.) The few cassettes I could buy were just key phrases spoken in stilted Afrikaans which to be fair were quite funny – my favourite was a rather austere and sombre voice slowly intoning “Meneer” at the start of many sentences.

I go through peaks and troughs in learning when I plateau for a while and try to get motivated again. It’s only comparatively recently that good new and accessible technology has become available so for many years it was just books, a few cassettes and talking to strangers. These day sites like italiki.com, social media and others have made it easier to learn. Of course, it does depend a bit on how much you use social media as to how much you will get out of it.

As I said, the top provider of languages courses was Linguaphone but the Afrikaans course cost about £235 so I didn’t go with that, although you might find it available on the internet. (Actually someone sent me the PDFs, but I have not found the torrents for the cassettes yet.) Instead, I used Helena van Schalkwyk’s Teach Yourself Afrikaans which is a good book and I learned the basics and more really quickly. I think that Complete Afrikaans by Linda McDermott is the best book currently available.

Without any audio I had to rely on the pronunciation guide which was not always straightforward without a sound file; for example, o/oo is pronounced “like oo in loot but followed by a rapidly spoken w with lips pouted”. Later editions came with accompanying CDs and the grammar explanations were expanded to give more detail.

There is now plenty of good advice for learning languages available so I am not going to focus on that. The usual advice is to practise regularly, make mistakes, don’t wait until you are fluent etc. I think Benny Lewis’s advice that Mistakes are the only way to learn a language is really useful. Similarly, Olly Richards has some great advice is very good, How to learn a language fast.

If you are really motivated, this advice on How to learn any language in record time is pretty good.

My tips for learning Afrikaans
Here are some of the things that helped me to learn Afrikaans. Just remember that Afrikaans can create strong and negative reactions. A lot of people’s perceptions are not favourable even among South Africans. For me, Afrikaans is about communication and the chance to learn a new language and a different way to express myself and think. I stand against those taking ideological viewpoints.

1. Get a good teach yourself Afrikaans book
   I prefer learning from books rather than from websites and over the years I have bought quite a few, but I do think that Lydia McDermott’s Complete Afrikaans in the Teach Yourself series is currently the best. Of course, once you’ve bought it you need to use it but you can teach yourself a lot of Afrikaans. Learning Afrikaans is doable, so you should not be deterred. However, just listening to the audio without reading the text will not teach you a language, which leads me onto the next tip.

2. Write and learn Afrikaans with a pen and paper
   I used to write out the exercises from Helena van Schalkwyk’s Teach Yourself Afrikaans and mark them, and make word lists which I would actually then learn.
3. Take online lessons
   I have taken some lessons on italki.com because it is a lot easier to buy one-hour lessons for about $10 (it is priced in dollars) than to find classes or even speakers outside South Africa. There are some great tutors online and you can take formal structured lessons or informal conversation lessons. Other online language providers are available.

4. Read Afrikaans
   Whether it’s beginner and the intermediate books, reading is important and learning through storytelling will help you grow your vocabulary and understand use. This is bacically the Olly Richards StoryLearning method.

5. Use Afrikaans every day
   I read the Afrikaans Wikipedia every day and switch between the different language versions. I know some people are quite dismissive of Wikipedia’s usefulness for learning foreign languages citing the “bad” or “incorrect” language, but I really don’t think that should dissuade you.

   There are good newspapers, especially Republikein in Namibia which is not behind a paywall. I have installed a number of apps such as NetNuus, Maroela Media and Die Son so I can receive pop-up notifications throughout the day and read a little bit.

   I email and use WhatsApp with my South African friends in Afrikaans even though they are mostly English South Africans. I appreciate their willingness to write in Afrikaans. There probably are also Afrikaans groups on Telegram as well, but I have not looked.

   I have also written and translated some short articles on the Afrikaans Wikipedia on a range of subjects that just interest me and are not relevant to Afrikaans or South Africa or Africa. Knowledge in any language is still knowledge and I think it’s important that smaller Wikipedias (in terms of number of articles published) carry a good range of articles from across the world; just because it is a “small” language doesn’t mean the Wikipedia should focus only on topics immediately relevant to it.

6. Practise Afrikaans conversations with yourself
   Running conversations in your head is a really useful way to work out what you are trying to say and to think in the language so that when you do need to speak it you are confident about what you want to say. It can really sap your confidence if you trip up as soon as you try to speak a few words and Afrikaans speakers will usually switch quite willingly to English which won’t help you learn. All you can do is stick at it.
7. Dutch is a useful reference for Afrikaans
   I signed up for Dutch evening classes when I started learning Afrikaans. It left me with a bit of Dutch-sounding accent which didn’t matter, and it helped me a lot and Dutch can be really useful for vocabulary and grammar if you are unsure. Afrikaans certainly made the Dutch Duolingo course quite straightforward. Watching DVDs with spoken and subtitled Dutch has helped me to learn new words. As to whether Standard Dutch or Flemish is easier for Afrikaans learners I don’t have an opinion.
8. South African English is a good reference point for your accent
   I am going out on a limb here, but South African English is a good reference for your accent if you have no other reference. You hear far more South Africans speaking English than you hear Afrikaans speakers. This will help you pick up how words spoken in both languages are pronounced and some vocabulary.

   It’s not the exact likeness, but like the Dutch accent and pronunciation it is helpful. Language is about communication and not perfection or being totally believable. The more you speak a language with native speakers the more you accent will start resembling theirs.

9. And my final piece of advice…
   It’s OK use English words when you just don’t know the right word. This is not mixing languages, but if you are stuck don’t worry if you use an English word, phrase or a few words to get your point across.

   Hitting an impasse when you don’t know a word and you’re racking your brain to think of it, and then you go silent and become self-conscious and you’re lost; this will dampen your enthusiasm and confidence. A few words can help you over this point and back into concversation.

This list of South African slang words contains some good words.