Well, thats quite an interesting topic. Which reminds me of an old, ghissa pitta joke…
A paindoo family after living 3 years in UK comes back to their gaon to meet their relatives… The mother says to her son, “Son, window close kar de, thandian thandian breezaN aandian ne”. Khair, I don’t know to what extent is this true. But I have seen my cousin who had this kind of inqilab in his angrezi… he spent 5 years in UK on political assylum, and returned back home just couple of years ago.. now he speaks somewhat the above mentioned kind of lingo.
I got educated in Pakistan and i have come across many of those wannabe angrez people, who proudly say, “Uff!! I am so terrible at Urdu, pata nahien pass kaisay ho gaie”, “I have got Urdu tution, I can’t even read anything in Urdu”. And I was always like, “c’mon gimme a break.. you people are in 10th grade (or above). How come you don’t know how to read urdu, and how did you pass your previous exams?”
And the situation became even funnier when the Urdu teacher asked those wannabies to read the lesson infron of all the class. We could see that they know what they are reading but still they delibrately made their accent as such so it seemed that it was a hard job to be given to those poor souls.
Anyway, I will quote another example here of my own cousins, who are born and bred in London. They came to pakistan a few years ago, and came to meet us. Their mother did a good job at teaching them Urdu. They tried their best not to mix any english word in Urdu, and I liked that and appreciated that too. But I was rather embaressed to see some people’s attitude. Trying to interact with them in English, even when they were responding in urdu.
And yet another experience with some parents who want their children to speak english “far far”!! When we asked some parents, why are your children studying in Indian schools, not in a Pakistani? The response you are most likely to get is “Kionkeh Indian schools main English achi hoti hai”… what do you mean by english achi hoti hai??? Just because in the Pakistani schools children talk to eachother in Urdu in break doesn’t mean that their english is not good. I have been educated in Pakistan and I speak urdu all the time.. does this mean my english is bad? And what if I am not good at speaking english? To kia hooa? No one will kill me for that!
And I will never understand why people talk in english when they know the other person can understand their home language… why speak this farangi language? Can’t we deliver our message in our sweet language Urdu? Its right that Urdu has be distorted by 50% mixing of english words, but still its Urdu… Our Urdu.. its our identity, why should we feel ashamed to talk in Urdu?
Just the other day I was reading a lesson in Udru text book of 10th class, the title of which was “qoami Zuban” by Molvi Abdul-huq… and it said…
“Hamaray aslaaf (ancestors) ne kaisi kaisi mehnat aur mushaqat se isay pala posa hai aur apnay khoon se saincha hai. Yeh aik muqadas meeras hai jo naslan baad nasal hum tak pohnchi hai. Hum na-khalf (nalaiq) ho gay agar hum ne isay qaim na rakhain aur is ki tarraqi-o-farogh main poori koshish na ki.”
“zuban aik bari qouat hai aur qomiat aur tehzeeb ki jaan hai yehi wajah hai keh mukhalif sab se pehlay is per haath dalta hai aur usay mitanay ya kamzor karnay ki koshish karta hai. Zuban walay agar is raaz se waqif hon to unhain is kay bachanay ke lieye har qism ki qurbani karni parti hai.”
“jis qadar koi qoam ziada taraqi-yafta ho isi qadar is ki zuban wasee (wide) aur us main nazuk khialat aur ilmi matalib ada karnay ki salahiyat hoti hai aur jis qadar kisi qoam ki zuban mehdood ho isi qadar tehzeeb o shaistagi balkeh insaniat main is a darja kam hota hai.”
And the most important one…
“Qomiat kay lieye yak-rangi ki, yak-rangi ke lieye ham-khiali ki, aur hum-khiali ke lieye hum-lasani (aik zuban) ki zaroorat hai. Jahan zuban aik nahien wahan khial ka rang aik nahien, jahan khial aik nahien wahan dil bhi aik nahien. Yeh dilon ko jorti aur beganon ko yagana bana deti hai.”
Well this is all I have to say right now…
Later.
http://www3.pak.org/gupshup/smilies/smile.gif
The light you see at the end of the tunnel is always a train.
[This message has been edited by Clementine (edited August 15, 2000).]