Battle Of Languages: Urdu Against The World

Read this in: اردو (Urdu)

Have you ever felt the need to defend a language? I can tell you I have had to do it many many times, not always when I was aware of it. When I started this blog, I had decided that I won’t talk about my background in the Urdu language. But, as I have continued, I have realized that I need to talk about how my perspective changed about Urdu.

Why do I care

I studied Urdu in a government school till eight grade. Afterwards, we moved to Bangladesh and I had to study it on my own for the O level exam. So I experienced a different approach to Urdu.

My Urdu history

Since I had to sit my O level in Bangladesh and we had to come back to Pakistan afterward, I needed to sit the Urdu exam. I considered myself pretty competent at that stage in my Urdu skills so I did some past papers and that was it.

I got an A by a hair, which made the overachiever part of me upset. The Urdu London board O level exam was translation-based and pretty straightforward. I felt my score should have been higher.

But Urdu was nothing more than an admission rule, so it stopped bothering me after some time.

Fast forward a few years and I did not need to use any Urdu skills at all. I started thinking and writing in English daily. I even forgot how to compose a written sentence in Urdu. This dawned on me when I moved to the US and did not have any need for Urdu except for conversation with my family.

The immigrant mindset

When you move away from the country of your birth, you are making a very bold decision to start over. You are choosing to be away from the land you know, the people and places you are familiar with, and your parents. All these form your immediate social support network.

You do that in hopes of finding a better and safer, more developed environment for yourself and your kids. So as an immigrant, you want to make sure you follow all the rules. Your focus is to avoid breaking any unsaid, unspoken rules about how to act like an immigrant. You relearn how to speak and communicate.

After all, that is what our schooling and education teach us, to conform to the status quo!

Culture shock

I followed the footsteps of a good immigrant, blending in with the crowd. I did not want to stand out or raise suspicion. Everything was somehow linked to my immigrant identity. My worst fear was to have (God forbid) visa issues as a result of being careless.

Physician residency training in the US is brutal and exhausting. You have 80 hour work weeks and it is not a desk job. You have an unfamiliar group of people around you. You are on your feet, thinking, assessing your patients and your workflow. Anything that slows you down needs immediate attention. Getting through the initial days was an achievement.

An important part was interviewing the patients in the morning before rounds. Many of the patients were immigrants as well.

I had presumed that if you are an immigrant in the US, you would want to learn English (like myself). I thought all immigrants would want to blend in so we are not considered an outsider or a rebel of some sort.

That was when I came across a strange realization.

I came across my Spanish-speaking colleagues and patients. They loved their language and made no effort to hide it. Many of my patients did not know any English which made talking to them hard since I knew no Spanish. I had to rely on interpreters, which made it a more time-consuming process. As a result, without trying to, I picked up a few common Spanish phrases. I would at least get a headstart until the interpreter would become available. I discovered a need for a language I was unfamiliar with.

At the same time, I had a colleague with blonde hair and blue eyes who had Polish parents but grew up in the US. She knew not only Polish and English but also fluent Spanish. In fact, she had taken Latin in High School and then became inspired to learn Spanish while traveling. She spoke Spanish with a native dialect (attested by my Spanish-speaking colleagues).

I thought she was one of a kind; exception, not the norm. She knew her native tongue and English. What made her learn another language? The answer was her traveling inspired her love for the language.

I later learned that many native English speakers also try and learn at least one language. My idea of the limited purpose of language was turned on its head.

What language has got to do with it

My cultural image of language changed so much. I realized that language is a medium. You learn it when you need it. It also expands your ability to communicate with another group of people. The other attributes differ by the group of people who use it. Language does not have a religion or country.

Your interest could be due to curiosity(Spanish for me). It could be due to cultural interest (like Turkish for Ertugrul fandom). It could also be for study or work (German, Spanish).

Choose wisely

The most important thing I realized is that you do not have to choose one. Your brain has the wiring to learn more than one.
The ability to learn another language improves when you already know two. I had a guest post her experience learning French as a native Urdu speaker, (link here).

All this enforced my resolve to make my kids bilingual.

I wanted to take the easiest way to do that. English was going to be a part of their environment no matter what. The next available language that I could teach them was Urdu.

When I looked around, I did not find any good Urdu learning resources. The Urdu Qaida now included English words to illustrate the Urdu alphabet (hay for a helicopter). I got confused. How will I teach Urdu to my kids if I cannot even write a sentence without adding English words to it?

I decided that I need to revive my Urdu, and I need to find a way that helps me do it.

Starting with myself

I realized I had to read, write and listen to Urdu again. So I started reading Akhbar-e-Jahan (an Urdu news magazine) online in Urdu. I watched old Pakistani dramas (Sunehray Din and Dhoop Kinaray are Classics). I also started writing in a journal in Urdu. So I needed to revise my spellings and grammar that I had forgotten. I started collecting Urdu books when I went back to visit.

I have to add that this did not happen over days or weeks, it took months spread over years for me to see results.
This blog started as a result of that too.

I have now been able to visualize a whole world of possibilities. I have found wonderful friends who are appreciative of my effort. It motivates me to continue adding more content and more ways to make it accessible.

I got this poem forwarded to me by another Urdu enthusiast.

I know there is still a long way to go. But I can tell you I could not have done this if I did not listen to the voice inside me. The voice that told me to pursue something I knew mattered so much to me.

I hope this read puts in perspective some of the reasons that made me reignite my love for Urdu. I have still so much to learn.

I would love to hear your views.

Read this in: اردو (Urdu)