Linguistic Comparison Between English And Urdu

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Linguistic Comparison of English and Urdu

Introduction This paper will attempt to compare certain aspects of English and Urdu from a linguistics stand point. English is my native language while Urdu is my second language. I was born in America but have also lived in Pakistan for a significant portion of my life. In different stages of my life, I was exposed to English and Urdu to various degrees. For purposes of this paper, I will divide my life into three segments. These segments being my time in America prior to moving to Pakistan, my time in Pakistan and my time in America after returning from Pakistan. I was born in Virginia in a primarily English-speaking community. From the time I was born till about age 11, I was almost exclusively using and interacting with English. My communication with everyone in my house as well as my school was primarily in English. I learned English because I was socially immersed in it but also the rules of prescriptive grammar in my classes. My only contact with the Urdu language was

I moved to Pakistan and began building my vocabulary word by word. I would often speak in part English part Urdu sentences. After developing an arguably adequate vocabulary, I was taught formally in my high school classes. I don’t recall being taught the rules of grammar simply recall being corrected if I misspoke. I mentioned earlier in this paper that during heated debates I unconsciously revert back to speaking English. The reason for this may be because I still have a difficulty to express complex thoughts in Urdu and in interest of keeping the flow of the argument going I revert back to English. In speaking Urdu, I often catch myself thinking in English and then translating into Urdu. Initially, I had a strong America accent when speaking Urdu but as time progressed it became less obviously. Oddly enough, sometimes I receive comments of having a Pakistani accent when speaking