What Language Do We Speak In?

How the language used by people in Pakistan has changed can be said to be both humorous and tragic. Whether it is Urdu or English, it seems we cannot use a language without ruining it and tearing it to shreds.

Urdu, our national language, is considered one of the most beautiful and expressive languages in the world and yet most of the time, when you hear someone speaking in Urdu these days they chew up half the letters and at times even entire syllables of words. A pleasant salam used to be the generally accepted greeting. Somehow, nowadays, greetings aren’t ‘in’. I’m not going to say much about Urdu. This is because phrases such as ‘kya scene hai?’ or ‘kaisa hai boy?’ have led me to believe that our beloved language is now in danger of extinction. For me to start pointing out where we lost Urdu does not require a blog, it needs an entire book!

Now please allow me to hit out at the English speakers. Right, I’m referring to all those people out there that are ashamed of speaking Urdu because speaking in English just makes them sound so much ‘cooler’. In fact, I believe the official terminology used to describe such people is ‘mummy-daddy’ (I won’t even start with everything that’s wrong with that term). How English lost its way is a much simpler task to assess when compared to Urdu. Firstly, we can blame our own efforts to be cool or to try and fit in. If other people start using slang, then we probably should too. People may have forgotten that the word slang actually is an abbreviation for STREET language.

Secondly, the hip-hop culture!! Perhaps, if I could go back in time, I would warn the likes of Tupac Shakur of the everlasting damage he was unknowingly about to inflict on the English language. ’Sup, dawg?’ is all I need to say to prove my point.

And then there’s instant messaging. ‘Lol’, ‘brb’ and ‘tc’ are just a few of the commonly seen abbreviations found in a typical instant messaging conversation. Now there probably is no need for me to tell you what any of those stand for as it is understood that EVERYBODY knows what they mean. That fact, in itself, serves as a pretty good indication of how far this decay has spread through our society. One may argue that, fine, there is nothing wrong with using such abbreviations or acronyms since it is just instant messaging. What bothers me, though, is that a lot of people actually use the abbreviations in verbal conversations as well. Is this what we’ve come down to? Have we actually become too lazy to say (or type) complete words? At this rate, soon enough a normal conversation between two people could end up with them just spitting out random letters at each other only for it to make complete and absolute sense.

Lets hope we can find a way to solve this growing problem. Until then i'll TTYL!