Sorry, I am born to a Pakistani but cannot read Urdu
Gosh, sorry this turned out to be so long, I am just tuning in. My apologies I tried to keep it simple.
For me, both Arabic and Urdu were VERY hard. My parents were fresh immigrants from the 80s and only spoke to us in Urdu. That however was NOT ENOUGH for us to get a solid grasp of it. I spoke it as a child but struggled with it a lot. Why? Because there were so many different elements of language and culture being thrown at me from all different directions and yes I DID become confused. Urdu and Arabic almost go together because as a Pakistani your learning one and as a muslim your learning another. You spend most hours of your day at school learning about the complicated history of your local nation and the culture of the country you live in. Everything you learn is structured and systematic in English. Then you go home and your exposed to it in a different way, alongside Urdu which you never really learn in the same way as English. Pakistani culture and religion become “YOU HAVE to do it because you are a Pakistani and a Muslim”, and not only that for me, “you are a girl in Islam born into a Pakistani family and with that comes great responsibility.” Those were just some of the arguments used by my parents to try and convince me WHY my culture was important. I always realized it WAS important but to put it into action was much more difficult on top of everything else that was around me. As babies we begin to learn our abc’s and 1,2,3s ALL in English. It’s the language we are taught to read and write in first or most exposed to through books and TV and radio and posters and news and movies and print…NOT urdu. At home you are exposed to it further as studies and homework becomes our lives. The only urdu most learn is what is enough to casually converse with in our home lives. There were attempts to teach Urdu and Arabic along the way through Sunday school but those systems were never as developed as our other educational systems and therefore I never picked it up as easily as I did English. My parents definitely tried but with the other obligatory expectations, it got pushed to the back burner and they were never as effective because they weren’t teachers. It just did. Sorry for those who don’t understand that and therefore not accept this as a valid point.
When you grow up in a multicultural society learning about a bunch of different languages and cultures at once, some stick out and others don’t. If Urdu was as important for me to learn in the present then so should have been Cantonese, Mandarin, French (which was another national language), German, Spanish, Polish, Egyptian, Turkish and so on and so forth. There were bouts of exposure to all of these but NEVER properly taught in a systematic way. Sometimes it takes more than your parents just speaking at home to learn a language. I think with our generation that’s quite a proven fact otherwise we would all equally be fluent as most of our parents were new immigrants from Pakistan. For those of you who dont understand why it was so hard to learn and therefore think we are hiding behind an excuse well quite frankly you never will understand because everything you learned from the very beginning has been in your national language and its all you know. Your parents never worried if you would grasp their culture, not only do we have to learn it, we have to learn to explain it and defend it in a tolerant way. Culture and Islam go hand in hand and is a way of normal life in Pakistan. All of the history and literature you learn with is blended well into Urdu and then some English. It’s never about learning one or the other because you don’t have to. Everything is taken care of for you in Urdu and mostly that. How many Pakistanis have horrible English? (with many examples in this forum), a bunch. There’s only one culture to learn and there is no doubt about where you come from.
It’s much more difficult for people born abroad to find their identities and for some its their parents culture and for others it’s the culture of the land we were born into. It’s just different for different people because again like Reha has tried to explain a few times, it boils down to your own priorities. Its hard to teach your children to balance your ancestral culture with religion all the while being mindful and respectful to the country we now live in. With all of that being said, my Urdu is the best out of all my cousins who grew up here, people get surprised with it. However I have struggled to find the balance and still do into my married life. When I think back to the things I wish could have been done differently so I could have had an easier time learning and balancing my culture with Western culture and one of those is not forcing my children to learn Urdu. If they would like to, that’s great, I will aid in that anyway I can to feed their interest but for me that is why it is not a priority. → Because its much easier said than done in a society where everything and everyone is shoving their beliefs down your throat about something other than Islam and Pakistani culture.. Your priority is to make sure to instil and enforce good character in rulings with Islam and there that is why language goes to the back. Thinking back to how I can hopefully do it effectively for my children (instilling religion and culture in a relatable way to the time and place we live in) where my children have some better clarity than I did, Urdu is just not on top of that list because it didn’t serve as much purpose growing up as the other things did. Not to say its NOT on the list, but it won’t be the foundation of my teachings.
From my personal experience, other than reading the Quran in Arabic, everything even about Islam was taught at the masjid in Urdu for the longest time. And again it was so hard to relate it back to my life even if I wanted to. Only until they started teaching us English did religion really start to speak to me and pull me towards learning more because I never fully understood it as it was never taught in an applicable way. I came from a small town so everything at the Masjid was in Urdu and it was never relatable to our lives. That is something I do not wish for my children to go through and that is the reason why instilling Urdu won’t be on top of the life’s learning list.
