Meet your friend Alif
So yes in case you missed it on the fridge flashcards, I secretly sneaked in the letter “alif”
OMG! yes, I cheated.. Technically, this vowel had to wait till Mahnoor got to meet three more of her friends from the set of consonants but I am in such a hurry for her to start reading, I thought once she knows alif (that btw sounds like “ah”) she can have her friends “buh” and “nuh” be pals with alif to make all sorts of fun combos like بابا and نان and what not!
So yes, we got busy getting them alphabets to be pals, heres how it went:
mama: ok so when “buh” gets to be friends with “ah” what does that become?
mahnoor: baa
mama: ok here’s another buh who has no friends and look who came along and said I’ll be your friend!
mahnoor: aa
mama: and what is that together?
mahnoor: baa baa.. *eyes twinkle with sudden realisation* BABA!!
Ok it went fine for nothing more than 2 minutes when she wanted to start writing! she pulled the pen from my hand and said I’ll write buh words.. I said sure.. what will you write.. and instantly she says
“booth”..
“huh? whats that mahnoor?”..I ask.
“mama that scary thing? a ghost?! a booth?”
and doesn’t waste a second in carefully jotting it down.. in ENGLISH of course..
I almost bang my head thinking if this summer project will go anywhere or am I doomed to raise a des-born-firangi who will end up learning to speak affected Urdu with an aussie twang, some rolling the “r”s and write it in Roman English and know nothing about reading it.. *sigh*
I am still in my thoughts when I hear her say look mama I made a scary “booth”
ugh.. mahnoor its “bhoot” “bhoot” say the “bh” sound.. she tries.. “b-h-ooth” no luck.. “b-hoooth”
..no jani forget it!
and I am most pissed thinking about where that “ب سے بھوت” (buh for bhoot) idea came from.. grrrr! more on that tomorrow..
Flash cards
Before I can have all the digital illustrations in place, I thought I’ll have some mock flash cards up on the fridge already just so she sees them all day and learns to recognize the alphabets.
she loves going up to the fridge to read them out aloud.
So we had a nice long playdoh session rolling out snakes and making ب and all things “buh”out of it! A nice fun ways to help remember the shape and sound of the alphabets.. dont you think?
To rub in the concept of “half shapes” some more, we actually went ahead and chopped off a ب into its آدھی شکل so she gets why “buh” suddenly looks different from the one she has seen so often.
I have had some brainstorming sessions with Rashda Aunty, our official advisor for the Lets Learn Urdu methodology who thinks its better that a child not be confused with both the full shape and half shape of the alphabets at one go. This is exactly what a teaching manual would suggest but somehow I don’t feel so strongly about isolating the half shape and full shape anymore. I’ll tell you why..
I have seen Mahnoor picking up both uppercase and lower case English alphabets simultaneously from the starfall.com website and much as I used to cringe at the idea of “confusing” her wee brain with A and a, I realised that wee brain can absorb far more than what we think it capable of. She took to it just fine and was never confused between the two.
Also, I think we will be needing the kid to be able to associate the “buh” sound with the letter ب as well for her to be able to read words like آب and باب too. What do you think?
and off we go!
Day 1: We started with the introduction of three alphabets ب ج ن and their آدھی شکل (half shapes) they were introduced with their phonetic sound.
ب was introduced as “buh” and not “bay”
ج is “juh” and its name is “jeem”
then came ن whose name is “noon” but sounds like “nnn”
the names were just mentioned but not stressed upon much. what I kept on repeating was the sound.
then we sat down and thought of urdu words beginning with b, n and j to go on little memory cards to go on the fridge. The idea is reinforcement and recognition of the alphabet shapes and sounds.
we spent the rest of the day finding shapes that looked like ن and ب in things all around us.. a slice of melon while it was being cut to an evening snack of cashews and raisins!
I want…
Ok, I confess, this thing of wanting a tiny 4 year old to be able to know Urdu is just my *gasp* desi-parent hang-up taking me over.. not only do I want my kid to know all that I ever knew but I want her to beat me to it..
As a little girl, it was heartbreaking to see a dad not thrilled that I stood second in class but asking me why I did not come first instead! It makes sense now.. it was because he knew of my capabilities and figured I could do so much more if only I’d utilize them to their fullest!
Never in my life had I imagined I will grow up to be this way; But each day I find myself in awe of what all a tiny 4 year old’s mind is capable of absorbing and processing and I think of ways to push her limits some more and this girl, she never fails to amaze me!
Mahnoor is home schooled. She could read simple English at 3.3 and now reads out entire story books, random road signs and billboards, is computer savvy, sends out tiny emails, live chats with family back in Pakistan, knows everyday duas, recognizes numbers, colors, continents and some. I think it’s only fair that I take that final plunge.. stretch her limits some more and give her a gift for life – a gift to connect with her roots, to be able to read and understand her mother tongue.
I want her to be able to read her cards and letters from nani ammi, I want her to be able to read out billboards even when she goes back to Pakistan. I want her to be able to read news headlines, local magazines, TV ads..
I know she will never know what it’s like to stay up post mid night solving calculus problems to FM100’s ghazal time, scribbling down shairs that seemed to leave one in awe 
*blush* …but I don’t want to see her missing out on the beauty of classic udru literature and poetry, the depths of sufi verses, the melodramatic “lovearia” /bleeding heart crap, not even the corny Faraz shairs of today.. I want her to step out on the road and be able to laugh out loud at the hilarity of rickshaw and truck poetry!
I know she will thank me for this one day!
A UAE based, Pakistan born mother with a dream to teach her 4 year-old to read urdu before she starts big school this September.
