Pronouncing stuff wrongly is very very common when learning a foreign language. You are not even trying to learn your co-worker's language, so it is not surprising that you should not get everything right.

You are already going out of your way by trying to learn pronunciation rules, which is nice. You should not feel horrible. Your co-worker probably either likes your wrong pronunciation because it is good for laughs/makes a good topic for small talk/he finds it adorable or whatever, or else he doesn't care. If he would care, he would probably stop using Swahili at some point

The graceful way is just to accept that your pronunciation is going to be wrong 50% of the time or so, and laugh about it. This is normal and by learning some of the simple rules you are probably already avoiding some of the worse mistakes (e.g. mispronouncing the x if your colleague was Chinese)

Pronouncing stuff wrongly incorrectly is very very common when learning a foreign language. You are not even trying to learn your co-worker's language, so it is not surprising that you should not get everything right.

You are already going out of your way by trying to learn pronunciation rules, which is nice. You should not feel horrible. Your co-worker probably either likes your wrong pronunciation because it is good for laughs/makes a good topic for small talk/he finds it adorable or whatever, or else he doesn't care. If he would care, he would probably stop using Swahili at some point

The graceful way is just to accept that your pronunciation is going to be wrong 50% of the time or so, and laugh about it. This is normal and by learning some of the simple rules you are probably already avoiding some of the worse mistakes (e.g. mispronouncing the x if your colleague was Chinese)

Pronouncing stuff wrongly is very very common when learning a foreign language. You are not even trying to learn your co-worker's language, so it is not surprising that you should not get everything right.

You are already going out of your way by trying to learn pronunciation rules, which is nice. You should not feel horrible. Your co-worker probably either likes your wrong pronunciation because it is good for laughs/makes a good topic for small talk/he finds it adorable or whatever, or else he doesn't care. If he would care, he would probably stop using Swahili at some point

Pronouncing stuff wrongly is very very common when learning a foreign language. You are not even trying to learn your co-worker's language, so it is not surprising that you should not get everything right.

You are already going out of your way by trying to learn pronunciation rules, which is nice. You should not feel horrible. Your co-worker probably either likes your wrong pronunciation because it is good for laughs/makes a good topic for small talk/he finds it adorable or whatever, or else he doesn't care. If he would care, he would probably stop using Swahili at some point

The graceful way is just to accept that your pronunciation is going to be wrong 50% of the time or so, and laugh about it. This is normal and by learning some of the simple rules you are probably already avoiding some of the worse mistakes (e.g. mispronouncing the x if your colleague was Chinese)