Ek sal Afrikaans leer

Although I had forbidden myself to study any new languages this year, I just can’t help myself. But hey, the year is almost over, so that doesn’t really count anymore, does it?


There are 2 languages that have always been lingering in the back of my mind, Icelandic and Afrikaans. I had no plans to study these in the near future however. With Bulgarian (A2) and Korean at a lower level and Spanish (upper B1) and Italian (lower B1) at an intermediate level, I have enough on my plate as it is.


But … A few weeks ago I watched one of Lindie Botes’s videos, in which she answered the question: How long does it take to become fluent. If you look at the languages that a polyglot speaks, so she said, you might notice many languages from the same language family, such as Germanic languages. If you are a native of let’s say Dutch (like I am), she continued, you will easily pick up Afrikaans and on top of that, Afrikaans is a very easy language to learn.


And then it clicked. Why not go for it? I hadn’t picked up a new language in over 2 years anyway. But nothing is ever straightforward with me. Instead of going for Icelandic, I found a course on Faroese (very similar to Icelandic), so now I am trying to tackle that (horribly difficult to pronounce) language, but it is so much fun! I’m totally in love! Thanks to my knowledge of Danish, the vocabulary is (in most cases) not that hard … You’re right, Lindie, stay within one language family! (For the record, I speak Dutch, English, German and Danish as Germanic languages.)


I also downloaded Teach Yourself Afrikaans and put the app on my tablet (it offers free audio along with the course books). I have never used Teach Yourself before, so I was very excited to get started! And what a nice surprise that was! Being Flemish, I have absolutely no difficulties whatsoever in understanding the dialogues or learning the vocabulary by heart. Apart from some pronunciation differences, it is pretty much the same, if not easier.


Afrikaans is indeed a very easy language, pidgin it is called, which is a simplified version of the language (Dutch in this case). So far, I have gone over 2 chapters and I don’t see any major difficulties in grammar. There are only 3 tenses, past, present and future, and verbs are not conjugated. Personal pronouns differ just a little bit from Flemish/Dutch and the vocabulary is almost identical.


How do I go about learning a new language from scratch? First of all, I get cosy on the couch, I am not one for studying at the table. I have some highlighters and a pen, my tablet with audio recordings and my text book.


The first thing I do is listen to the first dialogue, a few times, while I repeat. I find it very important to start listening to audio in your target language from day one. You might not understand a word of it (such as was the case with Bulgarian – and still is actually), but you hear the rhythm of the language, the intonation, the particular sounds that are unique for that language. If there are any words with a particular pronunciation, I write that in phonetic spelling (see picture below).

The next thing I do is highlight any vocabulary in the text that is not in the vocabulary box (if there is a box on that page; if not I highlight all the new vocabulary). Sometimes that is a lot, sometimes that is nothing. While highlighting I repeat the words, say them out loud and memorize them.


Step 3: in the back of the text book, there is almost always a vocabulary list. I highlight all the words from the page I am currently studying in that list. This may sound ridiculous, but for me this is again a recap of the vocabulary. In the end I will have a long list of highlighted words that I am supposed to know, based on the pages I have studied. The list of words will grow while I study. Reviewing vocab in a text book is not always easy, especially with words that are hidden in the text itself instead of in a vocab box. This is a good way of going over all the known vocabulary.


When that is done, I focus on the grammar, again highlighting anything that is important or that will help me remember the rules/grammar (see picture below). For Afrikaans that is mainly everything that differs from Dutch (such as articles, verbs – you don’t want to see my text book for Faroese!). Whenever I want to go over a chapter, I have everything highlighted that requires extra attention. Handy if I don’t have a lot of time and still want to go over a few things.

And so I continue, page per page, dialogue per dialogue, grammar rule per grammar rule. Until I will, hopefully, reach the end of the book! I don’t want to give myself a fixed number of months to finish it. Last time I did that (with Korean), I almost gave up. This time I don’t want to take that risk anymore, but want to focus on the joy of learning, on the process of learning a new language, on the fun I have while learning new but strangely familiar vocabulary.


‘nough said! Ek beter weer aan die werk spring nou!


What about you? Do you have any plans for studying a new languages next year? What are your learning strategies?