Teaching Urdu

[khawateen]

Re: Teaching Urdu

@somegroovychick

i agree with the folks here who say its important. i want my kid to be able to communicate with my side of the family, like understanding jokes without needing translation (ruins the punch line :p) and speaking to his great grandmother iA too who doesn’t speak any english. plus, because he’s a mixed race kid, i want to ensure my culture/religion are represented properly and thoroughly to him so he doesn’t grow up feeling left out of anything. i don’t think i would be so sensitive about it if i had married a desi, to be honest, because we do speak a lot of english at home and always have, over urdu. my younger brother barely speaks any urdu and when he does, you can tell he’s not comforable because its not his first language. i’d feel terrible if my kid was the same, frankly. i have a very good friend who married a french dude. she only speaks to her kid in urdu, he only speaks to him in french. kid is 3 now and he responds in urdu to his mom, french to his dad. it helps that both parents also mostly understand both the languages involved, but i think they’ve got the right idea. a lot of the credit goes to my friend for being so consistent and diligent about it.

i speak to the baby in urdu primarily but when hubby is home, i do a mix of urdu and english so hubby doesn’t feel left out (he’s not desi), and my parents only speak to the baby in urdu. so far, he responds more to urdu than english. hubby hasn’t spoken to baby in his language at all thus far so i’m not sure how much of it he’ll grasp as he grows up. it doesn’t help that its an extremely difficult one and sounds like garbled klingon. doh!

i don’t speak any of hubby’s language and i’m constantly reminding him and his family to translate their conversations for me. it gets super annoying, honestly.

Thats the right attitude and im sure if you remain consistent… It will pay off…and how amazing isit…a kid k owing multiple languages… Such an edgeover others!

Why doesn your husband speak tp him in his lingo? How cool would it be..a desi kid knowing *********

Awesome!

A close friend is polish married to a pakistani guy.. She speaks to the kid in polish… He speaks in urdu…and they speak to each other in english or danish… The kid goes to kg and hey speak danish tjere…

He is midget’s age… And he speaks…get tvis…english, urdu, polish and danish!!! He learned to speak very late..nearly 2 yrs cuz its normal for multicultured kids that have paents actively speaking their own languages at home… But he understood it all… And now that he speaks…he speaks all 4 lingos perfectlyø… Im gobsmacked !!!