I see some unknown posters here saying they cannot read Urdu and those may or may not be born in Pakistani family.
SOME of those still can read ‘RomanUrdu’,… one of the the most oxymoron word.
Urdu being the national language of Pakistan, the country has a lot of written material in Urdu. What are the reasons the offspring of a Pakistani would not be able to read Urdu?
P.S. I hardly go in to parenting and don’t think it is only about parenting. Wish it stays here in AV and we discuss this focusing even adults born to Pakistanis and still not able to read Urdu. Forget about even writing.
Maybe it can be moved to culture, fine, but I will leave this to moderators.
Re: Sorry, I am born to a Pakistani but cannot read Urdu
I have people who I know who were raised in Pakistan but have since moved to UK and can't read or write Urdu because they don't come across Urdu everyday.
Personally I make an effort in making sure I never forget to read or write it but for me it helps because I read our newspapers a lot every other day.
Re: Sorry, I am born to a Pakistani but cannot read Urdu
Just like somewhere along the line arabic and persian was forgotten too, …considering most pakistanis trace lineage to persians, turks and arabs after all urdu is a very new language.
Re: Sorry, I am born to a Pakistani but cannot read Urdu
I will be blunt, to me its just not right to not know Urdu .. no matter how far away we are from a certain culture, a language cannot just be forgotten !
Amongst many of the people in my social circle here in the UK, I see that people just dont encourage their kids enough to learn Urdu .. they do this intentionally as well in a bid to associate themselves with the british lifestyle.
I grew up here and cannot imagine my life without Urdu or Punjabi , it was always around me in some way or form .. I accept that I was late in getting expertise in it, but I did eventually make an effort to learn to read and write the language , not only that but every day I make effort to learn Punjabi as well and plan to have my kid learn as many languages as possible too , in which , Arabic ,English, Urdu and Punjabi top the list, In Shaa Allah .
While some may have genuine reasons of not knowing this language , some others feel a sense of superiority in not knowing urdu or punjabi. To me, it always made me feel upset and insulting when people asked if I knew urdu, it motivated me even more to try my best to learn it.
By the way, this is not just an NRP issue, I see so many kids in Pakistan as well who claim urdu isnt their strength! I cant fathom the reason behind it when they make such claims. Urdu being such an important language in Pakistan
Re: Sorry, I am born to a Pakistani but cannot read Urdu
I have people who I know who were raised in Pakistan but have since moved to UK and can't read or write Urdu because they don't come across Urdu everyday.
Personally I make an effort in making sure I never forget to read or write it but for me it helps because I read our newspapers a lot every other day.
Dude one cannot forget to read or write urdu even if u spend 50 years outside Pakistan.
Re: Sorry, I am born to a Pakistani but cannot read Urdu
I wasn't taught it in school whilst growing up nor do we speak Urdu at home although my parents can read/write. I speak my mother tongue and I speak English and If someone speaks to me in urdu i generally understand or have a gist of where it is going. Sadly, I struggle to read it or at times speak.
Re: Sorry, I am born to a Pakistani but cannot read Urdu
Why is it seen as wrong/shameful/distressing that someone who is not born or raised in Pakistan, has never lived there and will never live there cannot read or write Urdu? What use will they ever have of it? Is it not enough that they can speak and understand the language?
Is it equally bad that a child of Muslim Indian parents who could read and write Hindi (along with Urdu fluency) were never taught to read and write Hindi? Or Telegu?
Re: Sorry, I am born to a Pakistani but cannot read Urdu
It's understandable if some people born and bred in foreign countries don't know how to read and write in Urdu. I think its fine as long as they can communicate in the language.
Re: Sorry, I am born to a Pakistani but cannot read Urdu
Just because your heritage is pakistani, knowing urdu is not a must. I have lots of pakistani friends that speak sindhi, pushtho, sariaki...but no urdu.
So?
I can speak it and so can my kids... dont care much for reading ...though knowing how to read quran helps in reading urdu... but still. I sont feel the need to read urdu, nor write it. Dont see the loss.
Re: Sorry, I am born to a Pakistani but cannot read Urdu
Yup agreed :k:
I moved to North America as a young teenager (14) and knew how to speak Urdu fluently and write pretty well. And my parents made sure we kept up with our urdu speaking and writing aspect of it too.
I have been living here for 20 years. I can still speak pretty well and nope I didn’t forget to how to write it either, not a single word. In fact some strangers have told me that I must have just moved from
pakistan because I can articulate it that well. Even now, my tea cup is sitting on top of a local urdu newspaper beside me…Some things never change
Re: Sorry, I am born to a Pakistani but cannot read Urdu
It's understandable if some people born and bred in foreign countries don't know how to read and write in Urdu. I think its fine as long as they can communicate in the language.
This!
It's not zindagi mout ka sawaal, is it?
If you know how to read/write/speak it.. then good for you.
If you can just speak and not do the other two... well then doesn't really matter does it? especially when you have no plans to moving back or reading akhbar-e-jahaan every sunday. :/
I can speak, read and write it fluently. But then again my urdu handwriting isn't really pretty. And I don't even live aborad. shocker shocker.
I know people born in Pakistan and have never seen plane ki shakal I.e. never moved out of the city heck country but take extreme pride in admitting moonh tairha kar kay "meray bachay urdu may kamzor hain" chhittar tau aisay pseudo angraizoan ko parnay chayayn. I don't see any bad in people living out of Pakistan not making efforts to learn urdu. Yeh kahan ki hadith hai?
Re: Sorry, I am born to a Pakistani but cannot read Urdu
It's understandable if some people born and bred in foreign countries don't know how to read and write in Urdu. I think its fine as long as they can communicate in the language.
^ This
My family immigrated to Canada many years ago. We all speak Urdu at home. My younger siblings understand Urdu just fine, but they have forgotten how to write it. They can read with difficulty because it is similar to Arabic, but they are slow in reading because it isn't something they do routinely.
Most people I have come across here who have difficulty reading and writing Urdu are those who were either born and bred here or they came here at a very young age (had bare minimum schooling in Pak). It's understandable.
Just like most Pakistanis read Arabic but don't know its meaning. And that's understandable too.
Re: Sorry, I am born to a Pakistani but cannot read Urdu
You must definitely not learn Urdu if your surename is Bhutto. :nono:…The only way to become the Prime Minister in that country is actually by not knowing the national language. Spectacular.
Re: Sorry, I am born to a Pakistani but cannot read Urdu
I am a born and bred Brit (oh Gosh I just hate using this phrase, how can people use it as a footnote in every single one of their post?) but I'm fairly good at reading, writing and speaking Urdu.
There are two main reasons why our parents made sure they empowered us with the knowledge of this great language. A) In our family, there's a 'proud' history of women being fooled to sign important land and property documents because they couldn't read or weren't allowed to read the documents. One thoughtless signature, you are robbed of your inheritance and ancestoral land. It almost happened to my mother. B) I have vested personal, political, economic interests in Pakistan - basically I am selfish and opportunist and think knowing bit of Urdu might be handy. Will save me the cost of hiring a translator. C) One day, I'd love to do some humanitarian work in Pakistan. Maybe just do some teaching if my all Machiavellian plans don't work out. Actually, I'm not that bad, I might just go back to Pakistan or become a consitutional analyst/expert - whatever they are called. I'd love to be one those consitutional reformers - if Pakistan or it's democracy survives.
Re: Sorry, I am born to a Pakistani but cannot read Urdu
Everyone seems to have the impression that if you can read Arabic you should be able to transfer that skill to Urdu, but without the zabar, zair, paish telling me how to pronounce the word I'm lost. I have no sense of where one word begins and where it ends, and Urdu letters change their shape depending on if they are written in the beginning, middle, or end adding to the challenge. I feel like English is more reader friendly.
I am American born and raised, and I can read GEO news headlines and children books because of the fat print, I can read recipes on the back of Shan masala boxes, and I can read cookbooks because I can usually guess unfamiliar words based on what the recipe is for. My other American Pakistani friends can't even do this much. We just didn't have the privilege to learn, and because its not resourceful for us nobody cares for it either.
