How do I teach my child Urdu when we live abroad?
Speak it even when they answer in English, and keep answering in Urdu. Most children abroad lose Urdu not because nobody taught them but because every reply they ever needed to give worked in English. Reading and writing come later, and come much more easily once speaking holds.
Your child understands everything you say and answers in English. You have probably been told to "just speak Urdu at home", which is true and nowhere near enough on its own. This is what actually shifts it.
Why does this happen?
Not from a lack of exposure. From a lack of need. A child weighs effort against result without ever thinking about it: if English gets the answer, the biscuit and the conversation, Urdu is extra work for the same outcome. Understanding stays, because listening costs nothing. Speaking goes, because speaking costs something.
It usually tips at school age, when English becomes the language of friends, play and everything interesting. By eight or nine the child has decided — without deciding — which language is for home logistics and which is for life.
What changes it
- Keep replying in Urdu when they answer in English. Do not correct them, do not insist they repeat it. Just carry on in Urdu. This one habit does more than everything else here combined, and it takes months rather than weeks.
- Give Urdu something it is for. A grandparent on a video call who genuinely does not speak English is worth a year of lessons. If there is nobody, make something: a cousin, a weekly call, anything where Urdu is the only way through.
- Let them be bad at it in front of you. A child laughed at once for the wrong gender on a verb will choose English for a year. Reply to the meaning, not the mistake.
- Use it where it is fun, not only where it is practical. If Urdu is the language of homework and bedtime and English is the language of jokes, you have told them which one is the chore.
- Start reading before you start writing. The script is a separate skill and a slower one. A child who can speak will learn to read it far faster than one who is doing both at once.
A routine that fits a normal week
| What | How long | |
|---|---|---|
| Every day | You speak Urdu, they answer however they answer | all day, no effort |
| Most days | Ten minutes of something they like, in Urdu — a cartoon, a song | 10 minutes |
| Twice a week | A call with someone who does not speak English | as long as it lasts |
| Once a week | Letters or reading, if they are five or older | 15 minutes |
Nothing here is a lesson. The only thing on this list that cannot be skipped is the first one.
When should reading and writing start?
Around five or six for the letters, once they are reading a little in English — the idea that marks on a page are sounds transfers across, and learning it twice at once is harder than learning it once and borrowing it.
Nastaliq is genuinely harder to read than the print a child meets in English, because letters change shape depending on what sits beside them. That is worth saying out loud to a child who is finding it slow: it is not that they are bad at it, it is that this script asks more.
Is it too late?
No, and the belief that it is does more damage than the lost years. Older children learn languages perfectly well — what they lose is the accent, not the language. A twelve-year-old who starts now will speak Urdu. They may always sound a little foreign doing it, and that matters far less than whether they can talk to their grandmother.
Do we need lessons?
For speaking, usually not. Nothing a tutor does beats a household that keeps using the language, and that is free. Lessons earn their place for the script, where a parent who reads Urdu fluently often cannot explain how — and for the awkward middle case where a child will try with a stranger but not with their own family, which is more common than people expect and nothing to be embarrassed about.
This guide is about Urdu. See how 1-on-1 Urdu lessons work, and what they cost.