Sorry, I am born to a Pakistani but cannot read Urdu

[Le_Pakistan]

Re: Sorry, I am born to a Pakistani but cannot read Urdu

@Reha

Family and heritage is…some people cling to it desperately but I don’t want to emphasize culture over the things I find more worthy of attention. Its how I think and what I believe. Its being downplayed because I don’t think second generation kids here will have the same connection with Pakistan that I did or the stronger bond my parents did. I will not force them to pretend to be a part of a culture they have never lived in or know too well. Why would I do that and have them constantly struggling between two worlds…one they live in and one they’ve only seen vague shadows of?

Their priority is not to learn how to cook handi or how to wear a dupatta, its to learn to be kinder to their neighbors. I don’t care if they don’t know an ounce of Urdu but they better be a part of benefiting the less fortunate. That to me is much more important and yes learning Urdu takes a backseat to that absolutely. 100%. Their religion comes first, their careers second and then their culture. Their religion teaches them to be good human beings, their career ensures their survival in this world as well as their usefulness to others. Their culture can teach them certain things relevant to a region their forefathers belonged to but that’s it.

I live in a practical world…not in ideals. I don’t want to guilt my kids into thinking they need to be a certain way. They are Muslims and in order to identify with another Muslim, that should be more than enough. God did not create people Pakistani or Indian, he created them Muslim. I am not worried about their Urdu skills that can only come in handy when speaking to relatives that all speak perfectly sound English anyway.

I don’t care how anyone raises their kids or what they teach them, but you are making it seem like it’s either one or the other. Either they are going to learn urdu and stay ignorant to everything else, or they will learn how to be good humans, but in order to achieve that they must not learn urdu. Learning urdu will not disadvantage on the other skills.

Teaching your kids your mother tongue or teaching them something about your culture is not enforcing anything on them. It will only enrich them and make them aware of other customs.

It comes all naturally. You speak to them in a certain language, or in more than one language and they will pick it up easily and that is it. In the mean time the learning process doesnt stop there: they learn how to be kind to others, how to be good humans, how to eat decently, how to behave, the Qaida/Quran-e-paak, religion, they learn to socialize, at school they learn (and maybe at home aswell) to read, speak and write in english, they learn tons of other skills and subjects. And that goes on till death.

Learning everything overlays eachother. You don’t learn one skill and only move on to the other when you have mastered the previous one. They don’t teach you only maths on school, and move on to geography only when you are good at maths. No, you get to learn all subjects, and each year and semester the level goes up. Nobody gets confused, and nobody gets to compromise on their human and social abilities.

Again, I don’t care if someone doesnt see the need to not learn their child urdu or whatever, but these arguments you used make very little sense.

People know their mother tongue, are bilingual, are good muslims at same time, and have great careers. They don’t lack in one thing because there parents learned them another. Nothing new on the face of earth.