Still Talking About Baby Urdu

Just a couple of wrapping up points and things I wanted to clarify about the last post and its resulting comments.

First, I would absolutely never judge anyone who chose NOT to teach their child another language for any reason they might have. I do think that it's a good thing to do, but just as I think that taking a lunch to work is a good thing to do. I don't look down at those who go out for lunch instead. How could I possibly know about others' siutations, motivations? We're all just trying our best in this our, trying to do our best by our children.

Second, even if one wants to teach another language at home, it is HARD. We are all sorts of gung ho about it in my house and even then, one or more of us will slip, will revert back to English. Will repeat a sentence in Urdu too many times and finally give in, translate it to English for the sake of time preservation. And we're not even dealing with a revolt from the kid yet, telling us he doesn't want to speak in Urdu. I can only imagine how difficult it is or will be then. Because I think that's a common experience. I've heard a lot of parents talk about it, at least, about when their children start refusing to speak in Urdu, answer questions in English only. I wonder if its a stage that all kids being raised bilingually go through? Having never been in that situation before or yet, my only thought is to try and persevere through it, hoping that it's a minor power struggle and that on the other side lies more language acquisition waiting.

Third, even if you're dedicated to speaking in Urdu and try your best to surround your kids with Urdu speakers, there's no guaranteeing that they will actually speak to your kid in Urdu. For some strange reason I can't figure out, in my experience lots of Pakistanis seem determined to speak to kids in English. Even Pakistanis that don't speak english will cart out the few words or phrases they do know when speaking to kids. Even Pakistanis that ALSO know that we are trying our best to drill Urdu into our kids, and those who feel the same way, will slip. Maybe they'll say something in Urdu but then immediately repeat it in English, as if the defauly language of children is English. And it's not just for my white American kid, either, I see this happening in Pakistan when we're there to Pakistani kids too (Though I know the motivation there is often that they want their kids to be as fluent in english as possible so that they will have a brighter future, so it's different.)
Lastly, is the flip side of the coin. I touched briefly on it above, the idea of an impending rebellion against Urdu. Maybe it will just be an elementary school age thing, or I've even seen it persist into adulthood, the hatred of a parental heritage language. The last post I wrote about was all about our enthusiasm and overemphasis of the Urdu language in our home, but it's not all Urdu all the time no matter what for the rest of our lives, either. I have two stories that I keep on the other, cautionary side of my brain also.

The first is my aunt's husband, whose parents emmigrated from China and spoke only Chinese at home. My grandmother tells me that they berated their children's Chinese - in an attempt to encourage them to progress and develop linguistically - saying "You speak third grade Chinese!" As a result, my uncle refuses to speak Chinese at all to anyone else, even though he still feels like he can only speak Chinese to his parents. When Chinese solicitors call his house - they have a very Chinese last name - he will say that no one speaks Chinese there. He didn't want to teach their kids Chinese either.

The other story was from a friend of mine in law school, whose parents were from the middle east (I don't remember exactly, but I think one was from Lebanon and the other was from a different, neighboring country.) Once, over dinner and talks about teaching children language, she told me that her parents also emphasized Arabic in their home growing up and while she was grateful for it, she also remembered being a teenager coming home from high school excited to relay some story and having her mother respond to her excited, quick ramblings in English that "Speak in Arabic! I won't listen to you unless you're speaking in Arabic!" and feeling like saying "Well fine, I don't want to tell you anything anymore!"

The point of these two stories is that while we try to encourage Urdu, I don't want to go so far as to poisoin my son's vision of the language, the culture. I don't know if that's even possible, though. Like many commenters said, it's all an experient, I guess. We just have to do the best with what we've got.

Urdu for Babies

Before my son was even born, we knew that Urdu would be an important part of raising him. It was our intention to shove as much Urdu as we could in his general vicinity, including forcing him to study it into his teenage years, in the hope that he will have some fluency as an adult. The only thing we are intent on avoiding is that he'll feel cut off from his heritage and decide to become a filmmaker and make a coming-to-terms-with-my-father's-homeland movie.

In all seriousness, I think that it can only benefit him to feel connected and comfortable with the places he comes from - Pakistan and America both. We live in America, we speak English all the time and live a regular busy American life and he's close with his American grandparents. His Pakistani half is always in the background, but it's just that - the background. So we overemphasize it in some ways so that it hopefully some of that background sticks. I just want him to be a well adjusted, self assured adult. I want him to know where he comes from, where his parents came from, and to feel as comfortable as possible moving around in the world. Who hasn't heard of a person who has some discomfort with their parents heritage - I just don't want that to be my son. Language - Urdu - is a big part of that.

Not everyone is okay with that. I have heard people tell me that we shouldn't teach him Urdu, for varying reasons, none of which I buy into. That it will slow down his language development, that he's a poor confused baby, that he's in America now with no use or benefit to be derived from wasting his time on Urdu.

I'm not a linguist and I have no background in language except that I am an amateur English grammar freak. But even then I don't actually know how to diagram a sentence, I just know when something *sounds* right, generally. And I use proper punctuation, even in text messages. And I took 2 years of forgettable French in high school. But the methods of teaching language are a mystery to me. I read up a bit when I was still pregnant, and our pediatrician spoke with us after he was born and suggested that we stick to our own languages; M should speak in Urdu, exclusively, and I should speak in English, exclusivery. And that's what we did, mostly.

The baby picked up a bit, but not much. I read and worred that his language development would be delayed because of being exposed to two languages, and honestly, it was. By his 2 year old checkup, his pediatrician said he was supposed to have 50 words and he had only a dozen. The doctor wasn't worried though "Oh, he's being raised bilingually?" she said "Oh then he's doing fine, good job, keep it up!" I talked to other mothers about it too, whose kids were chatting up a storm. Don't worry about it, they said, he's being raised bilingually! I even called out county, which gives free language screenings "Bilingual!" they all said. I couldn't seem to explain it properly. It wasn't that I was overly worried, or that I was considering stopping the Urdu, I just wanted an evaluation of his language abilities. Surely linguistic evaluaters of children would be able to factor in the biligual part into the evaluation of his language ability, right?

Then one day, everything seemed to click into place for him and he was speaking a lot more Urdu and English both. Strangely, it seemed like it was our most recent trip to Pakistan that straightened out his language. Like fianally being immersed in Urdu, even for just 30 days, got him to realize the difference and whens and whos of speaking Urdu. Mommy = English, Abbu=Urdu. America=English, Pakistan=Urdu. Then just a month later, Chachoo arrived. The his chachee, Dulhan. And then his Urdu REALLY picke up.

After Dulhan, the baby's Urdu just exploded. Within the first week, she corrected something that the baby said, that he'd been saying for a long time actually, and I realized that Mian hadn't been correcting him barely at all. He was just so excited to hear Urdu coming from his son that he hadn't thought to correct his mistakes except a few really glaring ones. But Urdu has so many things to get wrong, subject-verb agreement, gender of innanimate objects, levels of respect. As soon as he had Dulhan correcting him, it was clear that helped his Urdu a lot. (And now everyone corrects him.) Dulhan also holds Urdu lessons with the baby, where he's learning the Urdu alphabet and has begun writing the letters these days. Before Dulhan, Mian had a powerpoint presentation of the letters that they used to go through occassionally, but not every day.

Since Dulhan's arrival and ther baby's Urdu advancements, we've even reevaluated our language policies. I'm not sure now that one-language-per-parent is the best strategy for our son. I'm worred about speaking Urdu in front of him though, because if I speak incorrectly, I'm worried about negatively impacting his Urdu. Pidgin, right? But the things I know I say correctly, I try to say in Urdu. It can only help to have as much Urdu exposure I think. Because it's clear that it was increased exposure that helped our son. Before Chachoo and Dulhan, it was just Mian and me around the baby. You'd think that means 50% Urdu and 50% English, but that's way off. ALL conversations between adults in our house, the conversations with the big words, were held in English. Now, I'm a tiny minority and the baby hears lots of new words in adult conversations held entirely in Urdu.

One confession though, I often use Urdu when I want to yell at him in public without being overheard-slash-judged by people around me, especially his doting grandparents and great grandparents. And nowadays when I speak in Urdu, he'll say "No, Mommy, you speak English!" and when I say "Ji nahin, main Urdu bol sukti hoon!" he just laughs at me. Not the best confidence booster, let me tell you.

Impending Sass

Sass - it means mother-in-law. I call my mother in law Ammi, which means mother in English but has always just seemed like my mother-in-law's name to me. So the title means that my mother-in-law is coming. But in English sass means "having a spirited attitude; possessing an impertinent, insolent, or saucy quality; derived from sassy." Which alludes to the fact that you probably wouldn't want to be in my house in the upcoming week while I stress out and probably yell a bit about getting the place in order before her arrival. I don't know if you know what it's like to have your mother-in-law coming for a visit, but I get stressed and want to make everything look nice and have everything tidy and welcoming. Tidy is not something that comes to me by nature.

She arrives Sunday night, and I have a 70+ hour work week between now and then. Also, my entire main level is in disarray because Mian has been building and painting some built-in cabinets for us. Then comes to carpet cleaning, so the disarray isn't getting any better anytime soon. The in-law's bedroom is mostly okay, just a few things need to be done in there. We painted it blue a few weeks ago, and bought a new down comforter that has to be stuffed into its duvet cover. I'd like to go through the clothes that Ammi left in her cabinet and wash them for her. The last time she came, they'd been in a cabinet for a long time and she smelled like a pine tree for the first few days before I had the sense to wash everything. I'd like everything to be ready and waiting for her this time. I'll also have to cook something special for her arrival night. I wonder, what meal do you think is best for the night after a 24+ hour, multicontinent journey?

My mother-in-law probably won't be staying with us very much, maybe 10 day to two weeks in the beginning, but then she'll be off to the midwest where M's sister is soon going to be having a baby. Ammi will probably come back once in the middle, and stay with us a week or two or three at the end. No definite plans yet. And we'll want to do some  fun stuff with her while she's here. So far we've only talked about maybe going to Maine, eating some lobster and going on a whale watching tour. We took her to Disneyworld and Sea World on her first visit, and on her second we took her to Niagara Falls. On her third, we had a baby, so no time for tourism. I don't know what we did last time. Do you have any suggestions for fun things to do with Pakistani parents-in-law between the Eastern seaboard and the Ohio River Valley?

What's The Opposite of Multiculturalism? Uniculturalism?

Are you married to a Pakistani? Do you ever feel like your life gets a little TOO Pakistani sometime? Perhaps after the fourth uninvited guest drops by your house to visit, preventing you from leaving to take care of your errands. Or after you've eaten through your fourth straight day of biryani. Mayeb you're just tired of sitting in on conversations you can't understand, except when they involve people speculating on your weight, THAT you seem to understand just fine. (That actually happened once. I'll have to tell you about it.)

Well, if you'd like a brief foray away from all that Pakistaniness - a place where you will find no masala at all in anything stronger than a chili dog,  might I suggest attending a Monster Truck Rally? I can almost guarantee your husband will be the only brown person there. And the audience will be made to sing and/or several patriotic songs. Then, there will be a lenghty tribute to the various American armed forces, transitioning into a tribute to all service workers such as police and EMTs and doctors. (I made my Mian stand up when they called for doctors to stand. Hey, a Ph.D. counts!)

I joked as we were sitting down that I was positive there was no one I knew in the audience - non of my friends would be that kind of crowd, I thought. Later, one of thr truck drivers signed a t-shirt and was going to throw it into the audience and M yanked our son onto his shoulder and began shouting for the driver to throw the t-shirt in our direction. And he DID! And we ALMOST caught it to, it grazed M's hand and then my hand and then fell into my seat, but the evil teenage girl sitting behind us nabbed it (nabbed it from a four year old boy, I might add.) Later, M said "Wouldn't it be funny that probably the only Pakistani guy here gets the signed t-shirt?"

Minutes later, a coworker of his sent him an email "You almost got that shirt! I saw you on the Jumbotron!" I guess the Pakistani has more sterotypical American friends that I do!





A trip to the museum first, to see a woodturning exhibit (Mian's choice, it was his birthday weekend afterall.)



Pizza at the only restuarant we ever eat at when we visit DC.

Heritage Speakers and Code Switching

Two separate topics. Two separate questions for you, my dear reader:

First, heritage speakers. Lucky Fatima said this word to me once - someone who grew up with a different language spoken in their home. In this blog post, it refers to someone who grew up speaking and.or writing, to varying degrees, Urdu in their home and who now, as adults, have decided to take a greater interest and attend classes to further their language skills. A few of my fellow students. One in particular, in fact. We'll call her Rude Girl (R.G. for short.)

Last week, back when I was trying my hand at different levels or Urdu class, I was back in the Urdu 1 class and assigned a part of a dialogue to speak out loud. It's very simple, just the first chapter of our book, so I am able to pronounce all or almost all of the words correctly already. The teacher rarely calls on me, I think because of this. Sometimes I'll need a little help with retroflex or aspirated letters, but mostly I'm allright. Towards the end of class, I got picked to speak the part of Mr. Aslam, and another girl in class was picked to speak for John, the doctor from London who can't find his hotel.

She also spoke really well. All her bohots were very bohot, no bohoots to be found. Nice short vowel sounds. (Or long? I could never remember which are which.) Toward the end of the dialogue we stopped talking about John's hotel and instead start talking about Bohri Bazar, a marketplace in central Karachi. R.G. pronounced Bohri Bazar just like I would have and our teacher told her to make her bazaar a little longer in the first vowel sound - baaaaazaar. Then we finished up, and the teacher asked if we had any questions. R.G. raised her hand and said "I have a question. I grew up speaking Urdu and we say bazar, not baaaazar." To which my Urdu teacher - nice and humble and soft spoken - hemmed a bit, hawed a bit, and told her that he thought the longer vowel sound was more correct.

My question to you is - are heritage speakers always this difficult to teach language to?

My comments to her would have been different. Like perhaps a "Why are you even in this class, if you're not open to receiving instruction and/or criticism in order to improve?" or maybe even a "Would you ask that of a teacher who was Pakistani and a native speaker?" Not that I would know what it's like for her at all. The only heritage language we spoke in my home growing up was Pig Latin. But even in studying pig latin would try not to be ain-pay in the utt-bay, if you know what I ean-may.

Now, on to code switching. It's when you go back and forth between two languages. UmmIbrahim brought it up in the comments to my last post. I have no opinion on the matter. I watched (a bit) of this talk about how code switching, where Tariq Rahman says something along the lines that code switching helps keep a language vibrant and most importantly, alive and in use rather than dying out. I can see his point. But my teacher, in his Youtube sensation video, makes a point of saying as few English words as he can, a purist perhaps. I can see the point of that too. And M's family is more the latter than the former, they talk about how beautiful Urdu is and try to use old, some say antiquated words. They (some) even rant (a bit) about the terrible state of contemporary Urdu in Pakistan and how there's no need for it to be littered with so many English words.

What do you think? About both questions!

Tales of Urdu Aquisiton - In The Beginning

Last week (I wrote this over the weekend and by the time you read it, it will be Monday, so I guess I mean the week before last week) I attended my first ever formal Urdu class. It was fantastic and now I annoy all my friends and family by wanting to talk about Urdu and Urdu class every single waking moment of every day.

I had signed up weeks ago, and fretted in the meantime. I have tried to review a bit in the weeks before but never found the time. There once was a time when I knew the whole Urdu alphabet. On my first trip to Pakistan I even read the names 'Bilal' off the back of a rickshaw and 'Mah Rose' on the sign at the beauty parlor. That was the end of my Urdu adventures for almost five years though, as life got busy and I never had time during law school to continue my solo efforts to tackle the Urdu language. I was really most nervous about the writing. In the seven years of my marriage I have picked up a fair ammount of spoken Urdu purely through osmosis and three Pakistan vacations worth of immersion. I have a good sized vocabulary and a lot of pre-memorized full sentences. LuckyFatima told me once I even have an allright Urdu accent, so that's nice. I thought that would give me a leg up in class and partially make up for the disadvantage in the writing part. I could spend less time memorizing the vocabulary words I mostly already knew and more time trying to get the writing and reading down. That was the plan, anyway.

So then came class day. I had to leave work a bit early and walk to class. It works out pretty well that my classes are only about 10 blocks from my job. Back when I was unemployed, it seemed like more of a hassle to have to get downtown to take these classes but now that I'm working, I'm nearby at those times. I walked to class, checked in at their registration desk, and was told to wait in a room "upstairs at the end of the hall." When I walked in the room there were three people - two caucasian women and a desi guy. I sat down, starting filling out a questionaire given to me by the registration desk, and started introducing myself. Turns out the two white ladies - married to Pakistani men! Hurrah!

More people started coming into the room. Many of them were for the French class and the French instructor came soon after and kicked us out ("Just like colonialism, all over again," someone joked later) so we had to wait in the hallway. I joke "Well, who here expected the Urdu class to start on time anyway!" Turns out our teacher was already in another class, teaching Hindi, and they'd just run over a bit. The director of the language school came by to get them up and moving and as the Hindi students straggled out, and we Urdu students straggled in, I got to see my new Urdu teacher for the first time. And you'll never guess who it is. Mr. Youtube Urdu sensation himself! 
 
I was so shocked - I'd tried to research who the past instructors for the class were and he was not among my researched possibilities, nor did I think he taught language, from what little I knew about him - that I went right to him and said "Hello! My husband stood talking in the back of a hotel conference room with you for more than an hour a few months ago!" I'm not sure what he must have thought about me then, but he smiled nicely at me at least. Class went well. Until the writing/reading part. He was only going over the first five letters of the alphabet but I still couldn't quite keep up. At the end of the 90 minute class, he had everyone try and read tiny starter words and everyone else at least tried, or did in fact read them. I was the only one who stared blankly at my page and finally, defeatedly, said "I can't even begin..." At the end of class, as we were walking out, he said "Now was your husband the actor...?" and I said "Oh! No, he's a computer geek guy." Mian tells me I should have told him about the 0% of his Urdu comment, as that was something they had talked about. But I think I'll keep that emotional scar to myself for now.

During the rest of the week and weekend, I practiced and studied as much as time would allow and by Monday morning, on the metro ride to work, I was able to read very small words. More than just Bilal and Ma Rose! On Tuesday morning, my teacher emailed all the students from Urdu 1 that those of us who felt more comfortable with the script might want to try our hands at Urdu 2 instead. He'd already worked it out with the school's director that we could try one class of Urdu 2 free of obligation, and I decided to try it out. That's how I ended up going to two different Urdu classes this week, Urdu 1 on one night and Urdu 2 two nights later. I actually hemmed and hawed about it for a little bit just because one of those Gori Wives from Urdu 1 had seemed really likeable, but luckily, she also decided to try out Urdu 2, and she's decided to stay in the second level class, as have I.

I still feel like I have a lot of catching up to do in the reading and writing department, but as I told the professor when I was asking his opinion on which class was right for me, I did once have these letters memorized and it might just be a matter of days before they dig themselves out of the recesses of my brain. And I also live as a small minority in a house full of native Urdu speakers, all willing to help me brush up on my language skills. The Professor, I think we'll call him Ustad-ji, said that he thought I might have to spend a week doing catch-up work, but that he thought the Urdu 1 class would keep me behind. With that pat on the back, I decided on Urdu 2. The only sad part is thinking that after these short weeks of Urdu 2, there's no Urdu 3 - that will be it for my language instruction? Surely I won't be fluent or even proficient by then?!
We shall see, I guess. It's already Week 3 out of a ten week class. Of course, just like in real life, this will probably be ALL I talk about here now.

Poetry Night

I have a story I want to tell you guys, but I have to tell you another story first, kind of as a backdrop. It happened maybe 2-3 months ago and I meant towrite about it right after it happened, but I just have no time these days! I wish one of some uber-loyal reader could accompany me on my work commute and transcribe my words because I swear I have like 4 or 5 ideas for blog posts every day, I just don't get the chance to write as often as I get ideas!

Moving on. This background story needs its own background as well. First, there was a time when all desi people I know were reposting links to some Youtube video of a white guy speaking flawless Urdu. I followed the link, watched the video (understood a little bit of it too!) and then watched it with my husband. I wrote about it here. While watching it I mistakenly asked him how my Urdu compared with the man in the video's - not expecting it to be at all similar but perhaps I have 5 or 10 percent of his skills - and then my husband obliterated my years of hard work trying to absorb Urdu.

Another tidbit of background is that we have these friends. They are a maried couple who are both the Us-born and bred children of Pakistani immigrants who came to America decades before Mian did. They were raised here and are very American, but they also speak Urdu and aften wear Pakistani clothes and participate in Pakistani and Muslim events. We met them at a dinner at a mutual (Bengali couple) friend's house and all three of us couples often hang out together as well. When this Pakistani American couple had a baby, we met their parents as well when we visited them and their new baby. Over time, we saw their parents at various dinner parties and events at our local mosque as well. The guy's father puts on a lot of events to promote the Urdu language and once, at an Urdu book sale, Mian got to talking with him. My Mian gets along really well with 'the Uncles' - older Pakistani men - because he is old at heart. He is only 36 and he is already an Uncle.

So this friend's father was helping to put together a Poetry night to celebrate the famous old Poet Mirza Ghalib, and he asked my Mian if he could attend, if he could also help with setup, and if he could please invite as many people as possible so that the event had some possibility of turning a profit or at least breaking even. Mian agreed to do all three. Then he found out that the main speaker at the event was going to be that same white guy from the Youtube video. I was so excited! To which my Mian replied "Oh, but it's thirty dollars..."

(That man is crazy. I've tried to learn his language and he's going to suggest I not go to an Urdu language event because $30 is too much? Let me tell you what some people might consider too much: having to live half your life not understanding what's going on around you. That's too much. $30 is nothing compared to that. I told his as much (perhaps not in very kind words) and he reconsidered. Not that I have stopped telling people about it. And eventually I did not end up attending because of other reasons. It was really far away, someone had to take care of the baby, and I wanted to encourage Chachoo and Dulhan to go rather than stay home with the baby because I thought it would be more enjoyable for them than me.)

Everyone really did enjoy it and it turned out that my Mian spent almost an hour in the back of the room talking to white Youtube guy. He raved about him when he got home. It turns out that the Youtube guy and Mr. Youtube's original urdu professer were the main speakers at the event along with a man in charge of the organization who put together the event. The organizer was Pakistani and a native Urdu speaker and he spoke in English the whole time! At an event meant to prserve and promote the Urdu language! Even over the boos of the crowd!

Some picture from that evening:

Mr. Youtube sensation himself!

Book fari outside the event hall.

Mr. Youtube's professor

Thank God for Sisters-in-law

I have been working some crazy hours, with even crazy hours looming in thr future. Right now I'm out of the house 13+ hours a day - that's generally a 2.5 hour roundtrip commute and a 11 hour workday. Soon, though, I'll also be working the same schedule on Saturdays. Most weekdays for the past four weeks I haven't seen my son awake. I leave before he wakes up and I come back after his bedtime. The only days I did see him awake were days he hadn't fallen asleep right away or I left work early due to some workflow problem.

What, tell me WHAT would I do without my sister-in-law? Mian drives the boy to half-day preschool three days a week and uses his lunchbreak to take him back home. But Dulhan takes care of him the rest of the afternoon and then all day long the other two days a week. She has to wake up earlier than usual, enfore naptime even though he's always been a fighter of sleep, and then she even continues his Urdu lessons every afternoon. She spends lots of time each day skype-ing with her family and our shared in-laws, so he also gets to talk in Urdu lots throughout the day. Then - THEN - she even cleans and prepares dinner for us all every evening. She makes sure it's ready at our usual dinnertime (7pm) even on nights that her husband Chachoo doesn't get home until late. (And on those nights she also waits to eat with him, so she finishes dinner hours before she'll even be eating it.)

I cannot imagine how do normal people work full time. I am barely holding the threads together and I have full-time, always there childcare. Snow day? Unplanned daycare closure? Two teacher workdays in a row? Eh, what do I care, I can still get to work on time and I don't have to leave early either! PLUS, the boy's still in his own home, being taken care of by his own family who love him. When I get home Dulhan and I chat for a long time each day about all the cute things he did or said, it's clear that she's as smitted with him as we are. She even takes lots of pictures and videos every day and calls me on the phone when he says he wants to talk to me, so I feel like I'm still apprised of his daily activities. At least once or twice every day Mian or I will look at each other and say something like "What would we do without Dulhan?" or "Alhumdulillah for Dulhan!"