Re: Sorry, I am born to a Pakistani but cannot read Urdu
I see nothing offensive, judgemental or out of line going on in this thread. Nobody is being attacked either. So why are some perceiving it as such?
I just see a healthy debate going on with some excellent arguments being presented.
Nothing wrong with it.
Re: Sorry, I am born to a Pakistani but cannot read Urdu
U did too long
tusi barri lammi keti ae
Re: Sorry, I am born to a Pakistani but cannot read Urdu
I cannot speak all those languages fluently. You know why? Because it was never spoken around us except in the oral lessons every now and then. Even in those lessons, they often used audio cassettes that were pretty easy/basic to follow compared to how the language is actually spoken by the natives. Even my friends who were made to learn Irish since primary school still cannot speak Irish fluently. I could probably decipher phrases for you in those languages but that’s about it. This is why I think speaking the language is actually much more important. For example, we’ve been taught how to read and write Arabic but that knowledge is pretty useless to me here in Saudi Arabia since I don’t speak/understand Arabic. Though when we lived here around 20 years ago, my mother tells me that I did know enough Arabic to be able to go down to the shop and buy something. I can’t even do that any more. Younger kids pick up accents and languages much faster. My 2 year old nephew can’t speak yet but he has started using both English and Urdu words because these are the two languages he’s been listening to since birth. He’s going to grow up speaking both languages and this might not have been so simple had we introduced Urdu to him only when he was old enough to attend classes.
Fair play to you for making the extra effort to learn the language.
Sorry, I am born to a Pakistani but cannot read Urdu
^ But if you have been living in Saudi for so long and spoke Arabic well enough as a child, why weren’t you able to keep acquainted well enough it when it’s all around you as well? Just like English and Urdu I imagine the exposure has been equal for you? Or am I missing something? I think children do pick up language quite easily, theres no doubt in that but anything without practice doesn’t stick and that goes for anything in any subject, even the stroke of a brush for a painting. Speaking at home allowed you to practice your skills better and it helped you develop going off your parents skill level. I still don’t believe thats enough for a lot of people. It may have been for you but clearly there are a lot of children of Urdu speaking parents here who do not speak Urdu fluently. That reason being the lack of a structured and systematic foundation of learning. My husband is also an example of that. His parents didn’t know any English, even grew up with his grandmother around and he never picked it up. Why? Because sometimes its just not enough. It doesn’t take away from his intelligence or affect him negatively. It doesn’t make him any less of a person. If he lived in Pakistan he would face difficulties but he does not. I don’t understand why some people are having a hard time grasping the fact that not everyone learns the same way as they do. Your lifestyle may have been very different than mine and your parents probably don’t speak any less of Urdu than my parents.
Our lives revolve around always being on the go. The lifestyle here may be just different and that’s also hard for people to get that home life is only a portion of your day to day time. Until college your pretty much engaged in learning everything else and speaking at home just isn’t enough exposure. That’s what I fail to get from some of you. If it was so easy we wouldn’t be having this debate. My husband and I would be an experts considering our other accomplishments. Your lifestyle allowed you to thrive in your mother tongue, for others it didn’t. Just because you did it doesn’t mean I should be able to, too (and I don’t mean you Huma, I mean in speaking generally to those who think its their way or the Highway.)
That goes back to the reasoning of speaking Urdu played only a small portion of what made up my culture. Not everything about culture is centered around the language and its to bad if some people think of that as a shame. Good for you. Priority has nothing to do with how much we love or don’t love the culture or language. We all take interests in many things. If we could sit around reading our favorite books or watching movies all day we would be but that’s not real life. Just because I love it doesn’t mean I can make it my life and devote 100% of my time to it even if I wanted to. Considering I plan on living here for the rest of my life, Urdu does not play a role in my every day lifestyle and there are just OTHER aspects of my life that are more important for me that I wish to instill in my children first over speaking Urdu. More so now that I don’t live at home. You don’t have to understand that. It has nothing to do with the love or hate of Pakistan but through my experiences of having grown up and raised here I have concluded that teaching my children to balance their beliefs and real world exposure first is more important than teaching them how to speak Urdu. That’s it.
Sure, if you say so.
Re: Sorry, I am born to a Pakistani but cannot read Urdu
Loads of people have commented that “teaching Urdu isn’t rocket science” and that teaching it shouldn’t be difficult. I find this rather disingenuous. The fact that something is not difficult, does not mean that it is not time-consuming or that everyone has the time for it. This is especially true of learning to read and write, which actually require actively teaching a child and having them practice on a regular basis.
We must also take into account that not everyone learns in the same way or as easily as we do. Now, this does not mean that some people are less intelligent or less capable of learning. It simply means that they require more time and effort to learn certain things, such as learning to read and write a language, and given the fast-paced lives many people lead, they may not have the sufficient time to devote to such pursuits.
Another factor which people seem to be ignoring is that some people never learned to read and write Urdu themselves and thus, they would have difficulty teaching their children. While it isn’t impossible, it would not be the walk in the park people are making it out to be and would definitely require more time and effort.
Re: Sorry, I am born to a Pakistani but cannot read Urdu
my post:
didnt really think passing on a language you already know to a young, developing mind was a huge task that could take away from religion, careers, or how to be kind to neighbors, or how to survive in this world.
and jesus, being concise never hurt anyone.
and your response:
???
do you ever read what the person is saying or just pick n choose and then assume things mean what you want them to mean? I highly doubt you’ll still get the point, but it’s worth a try. I was saying that i dont care if you call knowing a language silly [because it’s your opinion] but just pointing out how you flip/flop between the meaning of your words to make a point.
I don’t even know how any of your post is logical. baffled you’re like the female diwana, only with opposing views.
and no idea what you’re going on about when you’re talking about courage, but you don’t have to get back at me for everything i say, i was actually referring to the long posts of other guppies [in jest]
Re: Sorry, I am born to a Pakistani but cannot read Urdu
See, if you had known punjabi, you wouldn’t be saying that.
Sorry, I am born to a Pakistani but cannot read Urdu
^I really wasn’t concerned with what you meant so by all means, humor yourself. Your line in English was enough to not make sense. I am not Punjabi.
Re: Sorry, I am born to a Pakistani but cannot read Urdu
^I did, was good.
Re: Sorry, I am born to a Pakistani but cannot read Urdu
Sorry Reha, your problem is that you do not read/understand what is written, make up things along the way, and response negatively without thinking.
Interestingly enough you show your pride to be born and raised outside Pakistan and yet have not learned the basics of understanding written English.
I clearly gave my reason why ANY language should not be considered or advertized as romantic. Did you even think about that or just want to continue on believing french is romantic language. If you still do then it is fine and refute my reasoning, if you cannot then my reasoning is better than you.
In case you missed that, a language is not, thoughts are romantic.
I like sushi. And if I were not to like it, I would give you reason. If you do not agree with my reason, then go ahead, try your best to negate.
When I said those who do not love themselves enough can get easily overwhelmed by others, I clearly meant that there are people who have some kind of inferiority complex about their own culture or language. Again: Try your best to negate that if you do not like that.
Try answer that with reasoning, instead of comparing me with you. I am very glad that I am very different from you in that regard.
The reason you are not making sense altogether is that you say I love Urdu or whatever, but failed to show that.
Like someone else and I myself said earlier:
Just say I like the language but I have no intention to pass it on to my offspring and be done with. More power to you. You do have the choice to ignore other comments.
Anyhow:
Those who say they have no reason to find teaching their offspring Urdu (add any native Pakistani language here) or those who say despite they are born to at least one Pakistani but cannot read Urdu are the main focus here.
And reasons for that is being discussed, not you and I.
Re: Sorry, I am born to a Pakistani but cannot read Urdu
right so you dont argue with the rather rapid loss of heritage language at 3rd gen and beyond. Good, we are on the same page on that then.
Obviously, the experiences, interactions, feelings on an immigrant who has event considerable amount of time in his old country would be very different than that of his children.
The links get weaker with each generation. Its not simply a matter of not people not feeling related to their heritage but how they relate is different based on their experiences. immigrants have friends, family, teachers, colleagues..a whole host of people, their kids may have uncles, aunts, grand parents..those that dont have a very different experience, with each gen, the close relatives, and bonds with people in the old country decrease. So when a new immigrant, a first gen, a 2nd gen and a 3rd gen person evaluate it, they have completely different lenses.
People may carry on different aspects of their culture, ….food, music, language, family lifestyle, etc. language though is usually the first one to go by a wide margin while others stay on longer
Re: Sorry, I am born to a Pakistani but cannot read Urdu
I dont know about my experience because I know those of varying levels of being into the culture. But statistics paint a broader picture than my own observations.
*The authors found that although the generational life expectancy of Spanish is greater among Mexicans in Southern California than other groups, its demise is all but assured by the third generation. Third-generation immigrants are American-born with American-born parents but with three or four foreign-born grandparents.
In the second generation, fluency in Spanish was greater for Mexican immigrants than for other Latin American groups, and substantially greater than the proportions of Asian immigrants who could speak their mother tongue very well. In the third generation, only 17 percent of Mexican immigrants still speak fluent Spanish, and in the fourth generation, just 5 percent. The corresponding fourth-generation figure for white European immigrants is 1 percent. *
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Re: Sorry, I am born to a Pakistani but cannot read Urdu
Thanks for proving some of my positions correct.
**
I said the beauty of a society is in its multiculturalism and not in homogeneity.**
The author himself said:
"“To the extent that language fluency is an asset and that knowledge of a foreign tongue represents a valuable resource in a global economy, immigrants’ efforts to maintain this part of their cultural heritage and pass it on to their children should not be discouraged,” the authors said.
Now,
All you have shown is the attrition is inevitable. Fine.
To which extent? We simply do not know.
Whatever the rate of attrition would be for a given immigrant population in future, we cannot say it cannot be stopped or slowed down enough so immigrants cannot overcome attrition rate and will not be needed.
I know I wrote a long sentence, but it will make sense in reading the second time if not in first time.
Your link does not show any or whatsoever statistical data in regards to how many were called, responded accordingly and how many simply hung up not understanding the question(s).
We have to remember, the survey targeted people who are either foreign born or decedents of immigrants.
They feel threatened when questions are asked over the phone.
Many of them are just scared to even answer questions over telephone.
Moreover, a lot of immigrants just don’t feel so much interested in answering ANY question over the phone.
Spanish population is also most likely to have illegal immigrants and the statistics based on their population would not apply to their population to draw any conclusion.
However, it will be very interesting to know those numbers which brought the conclusion of this survey.
While I agreed immigration is one factor which kept Punjabi afloat in Canada, I am still curious to how just Immigrants were able to do so?
I have thought about starting a thread on some questions I had related to this discussion and will bring on the table later but cannot tell now.
It is the clothing, attire eating habit or selection of dietary item and foreign looks which disappear first… long before language goes.
Re: Sorry, I am born to a Pakistani but cannot read Urdu
Yes it is 
You still don’t get it. Do you?
Let’s try this again, shall we? You’re smart…I am hoping this will make sense now.
I have no doubt about the intelligence of my future kids. I don’t think it’ll be too hard to pass on Urdu at all.
However, IT IS NOT IMPORTANT TO ME AND NEVER WILL BE. I’d rather spend any and all of my energy focusing on areas I find more important and worthy of attention.
What part of that is not sinking in now? Why is that so difficult to understand? And what makes people think passing on Urdu is just about the best thing you can do for your kid?
Re: Sorry, I am born to a Pakistani but cannot read Urdu
That was for the sake of example…no need to get touchy.
What makes you say this? How do “foreign looks” go first?
Re: Sorry, I am born to a Pakistani but cannot read Urdu
^It’s very much wrong regardless. Cooking/food is the last thing to go and probably survives the generations the best.
Sorry, I am born to a Pakistani but cannot read Urdu
That’s why I asked. I was really curious about what was going to be presented to prove that claim.