Practice makes perfect. This mantra is used regularly when people are struggling to learn or master something. Language learning requires this probably more than just about anything else (except maybe math?).
Meeting people was easier than I thought it would be, and I was surprised (still am even now) how excited people get when I tell them I am learning Afrikaans. In the beginning, obviously I didn’t really know very many words and my pronunciation of words I did know was pretty rough. The fact that I was trying seemed to really impress people, which made me feel quite awkward.
Awkward because I knew that I wasn’t doing things correctly most of the time. Awkward because I felt lucky to have people offer me their time and patience to help me and awkward because I was learning a new language and the words felt funny in my mouth (they still feel a bit strange sometimes but I’ll go into that a bit later).
Finding people to practice with me didn’t end up being as difficult as I originally thought it might be. Finding the time to practice that worked with both my time zone in California (GMT -8) and the time zone in Cape Town, South Africa (GMT +2) turned out to be the more difficult part of practicing.
Using WhatsApp helped, as audio messages were easy to send whenever, and could be listened to hours later at a more convenient time for the other person. It also allowed me to listen to correct pronunciations multiple times in order to replicate the sounds in each word or phrase (lots of voice messages that were meant for teaching me new words or correct pronunciations I listened to at least ten times before I attempted to say the word myself).
As of now, certain phrases I have said enough times that they are second nature, at least as far as meaning and use goes (pronunciation will always need work… pretty sure that American accent isn’t ever going to go away completely no matter how much I practice!). As I continue, a positive outlook on the tediousness of ‘practice makes perfect” is the only way to get through to the other side (also known as fluency :P).
Quest For Afrikaans 