Thread by @sad_zaidi

I know languages have to evolve and adapt to survive, but a moment of silence for how diluted Urdu has become over time.

My great grandparents, at least on my mother's paternal side, literally spoke in poetry and metaphor. If they were alive, I probably wouldn't understand them

Of course, a lot of this has to do with decisions I/my family made. All my schooling was at "English medium" schools where we were literally scolded for speaking in Urdu outside of Urdu period. Like many, my school didn't offer Urdu as a first language option for O Levels

But such individual decisions, pooled over a population, have played a major role in diluting the language to what it is today

The first few years of my childhood was spent in London. I am my parents' firstborn. They were always anxious that Urdu would be eroded away from my tongue once I began school.

So all my childhood books were basically Urdu. I had a vast collection of Book Group titles.

At two, I could tell you that a volcano was an aatish-fishaN pahaaR, and name most of my body parts in Urdu: koni, ghutna, aeRee, guddi, baazu, maatha

I had a book of Urdu proverbs and, even though I couldn't yet read, I had them memorized and could complete them if someone started them off for me

"Ganji kabootri..." my mother would say.

"MehloN maiN Dera," a three-year old would chime in

I'm still unsure what that one means

Anyone who could speak to me in Urdu was strongly encouraged to not speak to me in English. I had already picked that up in daycare.

In 1997, the family packed up and moved to Karachi. The school I started going to was an English medium school, one that fell somewhere in the middle of the posh private school spectrum in terms of elitism in those days (Attending didn't mark one as "one of those people")

I was four and a half when we moved

For most of my childhood, I distinctly remember thinking in Urdu, and it being my language of choice, the language I thought in. I would speak it at home and at school with my friends (despite getting warnings from teachers and school staff).

And then, at some point, it changed

The first reason that springs to mind when I think about this is always Urdu class at school, how the language was taught and who taught it.

Urdu teachers often doubled as Islamiyat teachers, and the two roles were often intertwined. If we were done with our Urdu lessons, teachers would often lecture us in ways that I now think of as preaching.

You could always feel the presence of the State in Urdu classes. Every year, our Education Board approved textbooks predictably had passages on Independence, on our wars with India, the stories of Prophets, and Islamic teachings.

(Not saying that these ideas are not worth reading about, but reading about them year after year made it dull and repetitive)

IndoPak tensions were highlighted whenever possible.

Sentences explaining proverbs, for example daaNt khatay karna (meaning: to defeat) invariably talked about Pak forces defeating Indian forces in 1965.

(This was not a war we 'won'.)

Even back then I found this narrative uninteresting and distasteful

English classes, on the other hand, although not much better, were definitely more varied, refreshing, and interesting.

The second reason is that English is sometimes easier to navigate peer social situations with.

Although this isn't taught formally, Urdu has complex rules about who is tum and who is aap, and which set of verb forms to use eg daiN (give) vs deejiye (please give)

This is more clear cut across generational lines and less so when we're all roughly the same age.

My grandfather used to refer to a cousin of his who was a few months older as aap. People my age doing that feels a bit odd to me.

In English, the utilitarian "you" flattens all these distinctions and equalises everything.

For me, this addresses the discomfort of aap being too formal and tum being too familiar, especially in professional settings.

(Once, a White Cab driver -- not visibly much older than me -- driving me back from the Karachi airport was quite taken aback by my use of deejiye/leejiye/keejiye type verbs with him. He told me I had a "sweet way of speaking".)

All this, combined with the fact that I read almost exclusively English literature meant that my English vocabulary inevitably outstripped my Urdu vocabulary.

By the time I started my A Levels in 2009, English had become the language I thought in.

The institution at which I did my A Levels was definitely more elite than where I'd been before.

The third reason for the switch, therefore, is fitting in.

Most of my peers here spoke way more English than Urdu. Some came from schools where, allegedly, whining students were told they had to learn Urdu because "how else would [they] speak to the help otherwise?"

I think this really highlights two things: how Urdu is regarded as not a very useful language by the urban elite and how there is a deep, caste-like divide between those who can speak English well and those who cannot.

In 2011, I flew off to the US for college at an elite liberal arts college. I would fly back regularly, brimming with buzzwords like 'intersectionality' and 'heteronormativity' that I couldn't find Urdu counterparts for.

And herein lies the fourth, and possibly the strongest, reason for the shift; we have left Urdu behind in many ways. The language hasn't been allowed to develop tools and words needed for effective communication in the 21st century.

In my mind, this issue takes root in the colonial project of the British empire. With the English Education Act of 1835, English replaced Farsi as the primary language of education in parts of the subcontinent under the Raj, depriving Urdu of a language that nourishes it

Teaching Arabic, too, has fallen out of fashion.

Just as English owes a lot to living languages like German and French, Arabic and Farsi form a foundation for Urdu. Without knowing it, it is difficult to innovate new words for contemporary use.

Of course, not every English-speaker speaks the other languages, but enough do/did for a system to be developed for the creation of new words.

Want to make a smaller version of a noun? Attach the Greek prefix "micro" or the French suffix "ette". Most people my will understand.

But without, say, at least some working knowledge of Arabic roots and how they are modified, this is harder to replicate in Urdu.

And so we do the next best thing by code switching into English.

Not that there's anything wrong with that. But I do think it denies people who don't have a good grasp on English the opportunity to piece together the meaning of a new term from root words alone

Back to the word "heteronormative". Sure, many native speakers might not know what it means but it is significantly easier to explain it to someone who speaks English than not.

Explaining the term in Urdu without resorting to code switching ti other English words is hard.

[break in which I walked around Hampstead Heath with friends]

The wider implications of this is a deepening of the English/Urdu divide. This has always been class-based, but now other disparities can be mapped onto it, namely a divergence of left-wing and right-wing ideologies and access to contemporary ideas.

On average, Urdu media is more likely to have a more conservative stance, be pro-military, nationalistic, and tinted with anti-state conspiracy theories.

English media, on the other hand, tends to lean a little more to the left and be more open to ideas such as feminism. However, here one is also more likely to find elitist snobbery and tone-deaf think pieces unrepresentative to the masses.

I'm not exactly sure how I want to wrap this thread up, only that I have given a lot of thought to my relationship with Urdu, specifically as someone for whom it is a mother-tongue and on whom the ethnolinguistic label of Mohajir may be applied.

The bottom line is that I think effort needs to be poured into bringing Urdu into the 21st century. But this must not be done at the expense of provincial/regional languages.

I think we must always be cognizant of the fact that Urdu is, in many ways, as alien to this land as English, that it has ties to the State as a nation-building tool, and that it has "blood on its hands" after its weaponization against Bangla.

There is lots more I can probably say, but I've hit on all the points I planned to when I started this thread.

ختم شد

@threadreaderapp unroll please so I can show this to my mom