grandparents won't encourage urdu

[layla100]

hi - was wondering if anyone can give me some ideas on encouraging my sons to speak urdu at home. my own parents speak it fluently but actively disagree to me and my husband teaching our kids. as a result my elder son is heavily influenced by his grandparents a lot and is refusing to speak urdu more and more. plus, he has started to go to playgroup a couple of times a week which has made him fluent in english. now he only utters the odd urdu word here and there. my eldest son is only 3 and even though my husband and i are persevering with urdu in which we are relatively fluent, it is to no avail as our son succumbs to his grandparents, playgroup and television.

Why don't your parents want your children to speak Urdu? Obviously it is in the childrens best interests to be able to speak English but a 2nd language opens up so many opportunities.
Don't worry that the children are forgeting, as long as you keep on speaking it they will not forget. Some friends of ours recently came to the UK from Egypt. Their DD spoke Arabic and despite the mother always talking to the child in English she was very reluctant to speak it. Within 2 weeks arriving she spoke fluent English, so had obviously listened and taken everything in despite not speaking the language.

Could you speak to your local library and find out if there are any kids books or videos available in urdu?

hi guys. my parents are of the opinion that you can't succeed in life without english and that we are all british now and that urdu is a redundant language. my parents fail to see the importance of heritage and emotional ties to a country, and also the enrichment another language has to offer. i think they are slightly embarrassed to be paksitanis themselves. it's a shame because the best people to help my kids learn would have been my parents who could have made the learning active and relavent. i will have to now resort to videos and switching on the pakistani channels which do not really cater for kids - it's going to be a bit of a struggle to make them find it interesting.

Language is a conduit of culture. By denying your son the language of his culture you're cutting him off from his history and his past.

Have a look at the kohanga reo movement in NZ for some ideas about how important language is to young children.

My husband and I speak to both our girls in urdu at home, though they both speak in english at school, it works, they understand and speak urdu perfectly.

This is not to the detriment of them learning english either, I don't see why your boys cannot speak both languages, it's how I grew up and I'm not held back because of my urdu speaking ability, in fact it has helped on many an occasion.

Could you present it to your parents in a different way? They might not see the value in keeping up cultural ties but perhaps you could give them other reasons to make sure your kids are fluent in urdu.

For example, it is highly marketable in many jobs to have a second language like Urdu. Obviously you don't know what career your kids will end up with, but Urdu is a great CV booster for dentists, doctors, civil servants, teachers, etc etc. Many universities prefer bilingual students. Studies have shown that bilingual people find it easier to acquire third and fourth languages.

Perhaps your parents might be persuaded by the economic/practical arguments for giving your kids a second language?

My FIL is Turkish and felt the same when he was raising his children, so didn't teach them Turkish. He now really regrets it as they cannot really communicate with his side of the family. Speaking Urdu at home shouldn't interfere with your sons' command of English at all. I hope you can get some practical suggestions on this thread - good luck.

my parents just ignore my requests and i don't think any more pleading is going to work. urdu for them is a backward step, no matter how i dress it up or try to make it more appealing. i think it's their way of controlling the boys too which is making me wonder whether they should spend as much time as they do with their grandparents. i will persevere however, even if it means getting a tutor or taking them for regular holidays abroad.

I'm really surprised as it's the opposite with us. I would really like dss to speak Urdu but as dh and myself speak to each other in English this is what they have picked up. Older people always comment that they should learn Urdu as well, and I've heard of some research which suggests that speaking more than one language makes children better at maths.

Your parents' view was very prevalant when I was growing up and people were ashamed of speaking their native tongue. I think the only way to combat it is to speak a lot of Urdu yourself. My dss understand it but rarely, other than the odd word here and there, speak it.

I have one friend whose dh has banned his parents and ILs from speaking English to his kids as he thinks they will then speak English with an accent.

Layla, it might be an age thing too. 3 year olds can be pretty stubborn! And there's lots of other things they are learning atm.

Perhaps also don't make an issue of it (not saying you are but ykwim), I'm sure things will fall into place eventually. Good luck.

yes Mercy i think you may be right. it has crossed my mind that my kids are processng lots of information at this stage so possibly the sudden halt in language is may be just temporary. let's hope so!

Just ensure both you and your husband speak to your children in Urdu, they can't but help pick it up if you do that.

so long as you only speak urdu at home he'll still absorb it

it is quite common for multi-lingual children to refuse to speak in the language used at home .. some french friends have their children constantly answering in english

my father speaks urdu and other dialects from southern india and yet none of us are able to which is incredibly sad

slug - that's a good website and i completely agree with the sentiments it expresses

Layla,how sad to hear your story.
Unfortunately it is common.

I am a speech and language therapist and come from a home where two languages were spoken.
My father always spoke Welsh to us despite the fact we lived 10,00 miles away un the middle of the pacific.He always made us proud to be from where we were and that pride and love remains with me today.

My sisters have married men who speak other languages,and between us and our children,you will hear Welsh,French,Korean and English.

If you perservere with speaking Urdu at home all the time,then your children will learn it.Your parents view is sad but understandable.A lot of immigrants just want to blend in as quickly as possible and yet one can be a happy and stable product of two (or more) cultures.

Remind your parnets that the vast majority of the world is bilingual.Those who only speak one language are in the minority!
How would they feel if their grnadchildren were unable to communicate with relatives back home?

More importantly,if your sons are not taught Urdu,they in turn will feel resentful as adults.It will be as if you have slammed a doorway to a whole other world which they have been denied the opportunity to participate in.

Keep on speaking Urdu,be proud,be positive,mix with as many Urdu speakers as you can (and encourage them to speak Urdu with your children) and hopefully the grandparents will see how silly thay have been.

I just saw this message and I can only say, keep on speaking urdu and never answer in english even if they speak english to you.

My dh speaks 3 languages fluently, urdu, hindi and bengali but he refused to speak any with the dc and now they are trying of their own free will to learn urdu but it is so difficult. If he had just spoken to them naturally when they were born they would not have to work so hard (now they are 7 and 8). Dh said pretty much the same as your parents and on top of that we live in Germany so he didn't want them to get confused with english, then learning german and urdu.
Now he regrets it and he will have to invest alot of time into helping them just learna few words.

I would persist with Urdu at home. My Dad was a fluent Irish speaker but never spoke it at home and now, as an adult, I feel sorry that he didn't as my siblings and I would love to speak Irish but only have school Irish which sadly falls far short of the mark.

I Agree with Fuzzywuzzy & Twiglett.
I remember when my nephew was 3, he wouldn't speak our mother tongue (Gujerati) but memebers of the family would constantly speak in both English & Gujerati and now he speaks Gujerati - or tries to. He's now 13.
So it does take time, so long as you speak Urdu at home, and he understands what is being said, there shouldn't be a problem.

Please do continue to ONLY address your children in Urdu. It is such an advantage to be able to speak more than one language, and in fact also helps them in English:

"Preschoolers who speak one language can usually recite the alphabet and spell their names but cannot read without the help of pictures. But bilingual preschoolers can read sooner because they are able to recognize symbolic relations between letters/characters and sounds without having visual objects," said psychologist Ellen Bialystok, Ph.D., of York University and author of the new study."

So regardless of how 'useful' one might find a particular language, speaking more than one language appears to help children intellectually in general.

My dh's parents held the same view as your parents Layla and he only speaks English.
He feels like he's missed out and is at a great disadvantage when relatives, community members and even shopkeepers speak to him in Urdu as he doesn't understand a word.
Dh's parents also regret it now and admit they were wrong when they see how none of the other bilingual (tri-lingual and more!) Asians have been disadvantaged.

the thing is my situation is hard because many of the families we know as i was growing up who practised enforcing the asian languages have turned out with kids in mediocre jobs which isn't actually anything to do with the language but more to do with the low aspirations that those parents we know had for their kids. even if the kids we know have grown up to do well my parents will always criticise the fact that they don't speak the Queen's English. for example i have a very successful relative who writes occassionaly about her profession in the media - my parents pick holes in her style and grammar allllllll the time. i was lucky in that i picked up the language early on, before my parents had a chaneg of policy, so i know the language relatively well but hid the fact from my parents in case they be horrified to hear me speak it. unfortunately all the educated families we know who turned out with successful children (and i know success is relative) but i mean middle - class families who only enforeced English. so i don't really have any good examples to cite to prove them wrong. the indian community i know is very different because i know that inspite of some familiies encouraging their kids to speak the mother-tongue, the kids do very well. success in education and profession has a lot to do with the education and aspirations of the community and not down to language. unfortunately most pakistani familiies who came to the uk are from illiterate backgrounds the educated ones went to the states - i think there would be much better examples over there. anyways i dont try to prove them wrong anymore it just causes problems and is like banging my head against a brick wall.

If you carry on speaking it at home, I'm sure they will grow up fluent.
Perhaps you could encourage a rule of only speaking Urdu at home?
My dad did that and we all grew up fluent in our mother tongue even though nobody around us spoke it.
I'm afraid it looks like you'll just have to leave your parents to have their views and continue in English. It doesn't look like they're going to change.

Goodness me, I can't see why your parents are so dead against their grandson speaking his mother tongue.

My grandfather in law spoke, Urdu, Hindi, and Gujarati as well as English, he was interpreter to Lord Mount Batten (he's dead now obviously).

My entire family speaks Urdu as well as English, we've all graduated from top universities and hold down suitably ostentatious jobs (except me, and I'm rather happy in my mediocre job as it allows me the flexibility of being a mum)..... is that good enough???

Never mind what your parents think is better for your child, speak only in Urdu to your son and he will speak it, oly if he never hears the language will he be unable to speak it. Both my girls are fluent in Urdu, Arabic, and English, and the eldest is not yet 4.

my kids dont sppeak anything but english. why? dh and i speak to each other in english, except when angry at thekids when we revert to our mother tongues.
both sets of grandparents speak in english tothe kids,why?
recently we went to pakistan, i had some stupid hope they might learn urdu there. we stayed for over a month. everyone spoke to them in english, from various grandparents, through aunts and uncles to cousins, servants, and even shopkeeperss.
so my kids have returned with possibly even less urdu than they had before going out there, (i didnt lose my temper as much yousee)

layla, if you are looking for examples, all my sisters and i have turned out with suitably ostentatious jobs, except for me, who s sahm. we are all not only fluent in urdu, but also literate.. dsis a qualified surgeon, other one doing something where she is always traveling all over the worldd etc..
in fact most of my class friends went to medical school. all literate inurdu