Personally, I love learning new languages, though in all honesty I am not the best at it. I love it because it makes me feel smart, and it helps the culture make more sense to me. When you move to a country where your first language (in my case, English) is not the predominant one, it can be daunting, intimidating, and downright terrifying to comprehend how you will ever cope, or order a glass of wine at a restaurant ever again.

For me there were a few actions to which I owe all of my current language capabilities. If you are facing your first expat post, I strongly recommend you consider making the effort to learn the local language, regardless of how long you plan to be there, and I hope that some of the following resources can help along the way.

If I have any regrets about learning Swahili, it is only that I did not start sooner.

Here are a few things that I found unbelievably helpful on my journey to ‘Swanglish’ comprehension:

• Find a real-life tutor

Firstly, I do recommend joining an in-person class or finding a tutor in your new country. I think there are few places in the world where you would struggle to find a language school, or a local/fluent speaker who would object to teaching you a few choice phrases. Your local chat-buddy could be a friend from work, the lady who runs the till at the grocery store, parking attendants; anyone.

For me, it took me some time. When I first arrived in Tanzania I was completely intimidated by the concept of learning Kiswahili, and even though many people in my immediate day-to-day interactions spoke English to some degree, I knew that it would be integral to my success in job searching and satisfaction with life that I learn to communicate better in the local tongue. My first ‘teacher’ was my gardener, Juma.

Juma didn’t speak great English, and so most of our communications were an exchange of each of us taking turns to point at something, with the other person naming it in English/Swahili. Unsurprisingly, this method of learning was limited. BUT – it did give me enough confidence and familiarity with some introductory vocabulary that I felt confident enough to pursue some more formal lessons, and with both of us stumbling over a foreign language, I learned to abandon any shyness that I held about speaking incorrectly.

• Consider formal, structured lessons (particularly if you plan to use the language in a formal or business setting)

I only ever attended one language school in Dar es Salaam, and in that time, I only ever had one teacher. Sayi Michael was recommended to me by a girlfriend of mine from the UK, also an expat, who had taken lessons with him for years and could not stop singing his praises; which were not unwarranted.

With Sayi, my ability to communicate increased exponentially; learning to conjugate verbs, an increased vocabulary, and the confidence to ask questions for clarification when I did not understand what someone was saying to me.

After several months of lessons, I unfortunately gave up formal learning. I had been taking them one-on-one (well worth the investment), and as my job had taken a more intensive turn, I no longer had the time or energy to take language classes before and after work twice a week. While at the time it made sense, in hindsight I wish that I had kept them up as I genuinely think I was only a few weeks away from a grammatical breakthrough; to this day my grammar is not the best (although functional), and I deeply wish that I had hung on long enough to build a bigger vocabulary. That said, I still have all of my learning materials, and so perhaps I will revisit it again in future.

If you are interested, the school I attended was Swahili Dar Language school; available via this link: http://www.sdl.ac.tz/

• Talk, talk, talk. Do not shut up, at all, ever.

I think one of the best things you can do when learning a new language is to use it as much as physically possible. For me, this was the most embarrassing thing; I was so scared of making mistakes and speaking incorrectly, that it hindered my actual speaking. If only I had of jumped on that insecurity a long time ago, I would probably be a lot better at Swahili than I am currently.

Talk to yourself, your partner, your co-workers. Greet people on the street, try teaching family back home a few words. DO NOT STOP communicating in your new language. Consider setting your internet home page to a local news website in the local language. If you’re feeling REALLY brave, even consider setting one of your devices to operate in your new language once you have built up some vocabulary that is suitable. The learning curve will be very steep, but it may be what works for you. Personally, I found a lot of support-staff were great help when practicing my greetings and basic communications; tellers at the supermarket; cleaners at hotels or restaurants…. People who didn’t necessarily expect a drawn-out conversation, but were appreciative of my efforts to speak my halting, broken Swahili. A smile goes a long way when trying to make yourself understood; remember that.

For me, I was spoilt. My boyfriend speaks Swahili fluently, and so while I would practice with him from time to time, I also came to rely on his language skills more so than I would have had I been living alone, or had he not known the language as well as he does. So whenever I have a question on grammatical ordering, or colloquialisms, I make sure to ask him first, before just throwing them out there.

These days, while a lot of day-to-say stuff comes relatively easily I still mutter to myself and have little conversations with myself. Planning out various answers to questions that I am not asked; just in case one day I need them. Tiring, yes. Possibly useless, maybe. BUT, it makes me feel more prepared. When you are a woman living abroad, it is inevitable that you come across some people who make comments about your accent, appearance, or otherwise. Having an articulate (however, ideally kind) response up your sleeve can relieve some of the anxiety you might face with the prospects of going for a run along the streets; buying things at the local market, etc. Stay one step ahead of your counterparts. Anticipate what information other people might want to know about you, and learn how to talk about it. Then when you actually find yourself faced with the question, you’ve already learned how to address it.

• Keep a journal

As someone who likes to write, I tend to keep a journal of sorts to document my day to day activities. Things like exercise, what I’ve eaten, who I’ve seen. Doing so in Kiswahili was a bit of a brain-warp, but helps to reinforce the vocabulary that you are trying to learn, and help you to become more familiar with context and conjugation. If this is something you want to try, I do recommend that every so often you have a native/fluent speaker read over your writing to make sure that your use of the language is correct; the last thing you want to do is reinforce bad habits.

• Read and listen to your native language both actively and passively

Along with setting your internet homepage to a local news station or website, try tuning your car radio to a local channel. Find a few local musicians that you enjoy and play their CD’s. Pick up guidebooks or advertisement flyers in the local language, rather than those written for tourists. Sure, you might learn and lot of useless junk, or pick up vocab that you might never feel the need to retain, but your familiarity with conjugation, vocab and sentence structure will increase and deepen with each new piece of information that you gather.

I find children’s books or social media is a good place to start; the storylines are pretty simplistic and usually intended to be easily-consumed. Inference can be drawn from the pictures and photographs, and sometimes the content is just more INTERESTING than reading/watching the local news. Are the farming restrictions and job adverts from the local paper relevant to my life in this country? Not really. Am I interested in the development of education and women in this country? For sure! So, when I look at local papers or magazines, I look for those that contain references to things that I might already be interested in; books, movies, food, etc.

The thing to remember is that no one expects you to be fluent; either right away, or porbably ever. Most people are appreciative of the effort you make to communicate; no matter how well you speak ‘correctly’. Over the last five years of living abroad, I’ve found that most people are very forgiving, and more than happy to meet you halfway when it comes to a conversation. You speak what you can and use interpretive dance to convey what you haven’t yet learned how to say. Anyone who claims complete and utter incomprehension is probably just being an ass (or your interpretive dancing needs serious work), so who wants to talk to them anyway?

Hopefully you are feeling a little more at ease about learning a new language as part of your new life as an expatriate, or supporting spouse. If you are a bit nervous about going gung-ho and signing up for lessons, try the following websites and apps for resources that may help, depending on the language;

• FluentU
• Duolingo

Personally, I love both of these, and combined with the occasional iTunes course, have been extremely helpful when learning to speak.