My experience with trying to read and write in Urdu was not without trouble. Urdu's writing system isn't anything like I have tried using before. The "squiggly" curvature to the writings was something that was aesthetically pleasing for me to look at yet horrifying to try to get used to. Some point into the semester, Hadee and I decided that for what I want to do, it is irrational and a little too advanced to try to learn to read and write Urdu. After all, I am a complete beginner and I don't intend to use Urdu for academical reasons. Hadee and I decided that it would be a lot more beneficial for me to focus my efforts and time into learning to speak and understand the language. So instead, I will be talking about my experiences with learning to speak the language.
The hardest part was learning to make certain sounds that I was totally not used to making. Taking for example,
Mera bahi us fauj me hai (my brother is in the us military). The word fauj is a unique sounding word that I have never tried making before so it was hard for me to sound and feel natural saying that word. Another example, Ap ka nam kya hai
(What is your name). The word kya is also a word that I had a tough time trying to say naturally. According to Hadee, I apparently sound a lot better than most people who just start speaking Urdu. I want to attribute that to the experiences I built up learning English, Chinese, Spanish on top of my first language, Korean. It felt amazing to be complimented by Hadee since I thought I would be totally awful at speaking Urdu. It was an amazing experience trying to learn a whole new language at the age of 21 despite knowing that I would never use it for academical or any serious purposes. It definitely opened my eyes up to a whole new world in terms of linguistics and also the culture of the Urdu speaking countries.
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