Author: Zaib un Nisa
What do r and غ have in common? Probably nothing if you are not familiar with French. I wasn’t either until I took some classes in college. I stopped after a year because the language program was intense, to say the least; an hour a day, 5 days a week with homework and you speak nothing but French in class from Day 1.
My Urdu to French learning journey
I knew I wanted to become fluent in multiple languages just for fun but forbade myself from learning any new ones until I finished what I had started with French.
After several years of abandoning this project, I decided to pick it back up on my own in August. I had already forgotten almost all of it except for some basic nouns such as voiture (car) and garçon (boy).
My French progress…
In about 4 months, I leaped from A0 (absolute beginner) to somewhere between A2 (Advanced Beginner) and B1 (Intermediate). I now feel fairly comfortable holding a basic conversation in French, reading texts, and listening to simple French radio.
It normally takes somewhere around 250-300 hours of active learning to reach this level with a study plan consisting of reading, speaking, and listening.
I spent an hour a day on active learning i.e. learning grammar, sentence structure, vocab, etc., and a couple of hours passively listening to the radio or watching cartoons. In total, I spent about ~150 hours on active learning.
My progress in these 4 months has exceeded my expectations, most of which I credit to growing up speaking multiple languages.
What helped me
My Language Background
I grew up with three languages being constantly spoken in my house; Urdu, English and Punjabi.
The schools I went to were English-medium where I took required Urdu courses. I came back home to converse with my family primarily in Urdu and sometimes English.
Punjabi scale
My parents and elders spoke among themselves in rapid Punjabi, a language also used for admonishment depending on the gravity of the situation; the worse the transgression the stronger and more pure the Punjabi.
I started speaking it with my sister later in life although it was (and still is) mostly one-sided.
My impression before I started
I was expecting it to be more similar to English than Urdu given that the latter is written in Persian-Arabic script whereas French is in the Latin script. However, I couldn’t help but notice the similarities between French and Urdu particularly when it comes to grammar and some distinct sounds.
Latin script vs. Persian-Arabic script
“Language of Love”
Both languages are incredibly poetic; French is known as the “language of love” and was the primary language used in international diplomacy before English took over with the rise of the United States.
Urdu, derived from Persian and Arabic, has a wealth of poetry to its credit which draws throngs of people to “mushairas”, or traditional gatherings solely for the purpose of listening to beautifully penned verses.
Pronunciation
I attribute my quick progress partly to the ease with which I was able to grasp French pronunciation. I feel that most people struggle with the notorious French “r” which requires one to use their “upper throat”.
Urdu has a couple of sounds which are also produced from the throat; غ and خ. This life-long practice of utilizing a plethora of sounds between all three languages has made it easier for me to adopt new sounds in other languages.
Grammar
Anyone who has tried to learn French will tell you that grammar is one of the most difficult things to grapple with; the language has over 20 different tenses. Phew! While Urdu only has 3 tenses (same as English), sentence structures are a lot similar to French.
For e.g. direct object pronouns are placed before the verb in both languages. Direct object pronouns are words used in place of the person or thing most directly affected by the action. Grammar is always complicated so let me demonstrate using an example in English, Urdu, and French.
English sample sentence: “I am giving it to him”
Verb: giving, Direct object pronoun: him
Urdu sample sentence (Persian-Arabic): “میں أس کو دے رہی ھوں۔”
Urdu sample sentence (Latin): “Mein uss ko dey rahi hoon.”
Verb: dey/دے, Direct object pronoun: uss/أس
French sample sentence: “Je le lui donne.”
Verb: donne, Direct object pronoun: lui
Male and female
Furthermore, everything is gendered including physical objects (like car, fan, plate etc.) in both languages. This was by far the most intriguing aspect for me since English does not have the same feature.
Words that sound almost the same
There are some words that are similar or exactly the same in French and Urdu. For example, chemise in French, meaning shirt, is the same except it is used more specifically for a woman’s undershirt in Urdu. Dent meaning “teeth” in French is very close to daant which means “tooth” in Urdu.
Click to play the video that plays the sound.
Code-switching
This is something I did not fully realize in the first few months but now that I think about it, growing up around three different languages all the time trained my brain to jump from one language and context to the other with remarkable efficiency.
This is mentioned in a previous post about bilingualism and is called code-switching. This skill has helped me immensely in switching to French when practicing it in my head as I try to relearn the world around me in a new language.
My Takeaway…
Who would have thought that speaking Urdu would help me go down a totally unexpected path i.e. learning French? I’ve come across multiple articles claiming that bilinguals have an easier time picking up new languages, but I was surprised to experience it first-hand.
Most importantly, the entire experience has been humbling; struggling to express myself or utter basic phrases in a foreign language is really frustrating and something I have never had to deal with as an adult.
Regardless, even if languages might be simpler to learn if you’re bilingual or a child, I highly suggest taking on the challenge as a personal endeavor. It’s totally possible and even highly encouraged to learn new languages in adulthood.
If you’re looking for a pandemic hobby to utilize your Urdu-speaking skills, it’s very easy to find a plethora of online resources via Google or downloading apps on your phone to aid you in your language-learning journey.
Here are some free beginner resources I used for French to get you started:
Bon courage!
Love this post. I am encouraged to learn French as an adult too! It’s very interesting to know that French also has male and female nouns and grammar similar to Urdu. Thanks for sharing!
Definitely! the more we look, the more we learn.
A very elaborate and motivational account on learning French. I am looking forward to someone’s experience in learning Arabic.
Thank you for reading. Yes, we are looking for more people to share their language learning experience so we can discuss how others can learn from it too.
Thank you! There are many different apps and online programs for learning Arabic!!! I will send you some details
I enjoyed that you were able to dig deeper and draw correlations between your multilingual background and your learning experience, as well as your native language (urdu) and french. Maybe you can elaborate more on your active studying habits (do you learn grammar first from textbook, or simply just actively learn more vocab on top of basic grammer, etc)?
so cool that you tried this out. you should try spanish and/or italian next. they’re super similar to french.