Labyrinth of language learning

Urdu isn't the first foreign language I have taken up. In fact, I think it might be the 16th. About a year and a half ago I moved to Bury, Greater Manchester to work as the pastor of a local Christian church, Radcliffe Road Baptist Church. And a large proportion of the local population have Urdu (and/or Punjabi) as their other language. So I thought I should give it a go. Urdu, like Farsi, is an Indo-European language. That means that it belongs to the same family of language as French, German or Polish. Even though it might seem more distant and less familiar, plenty of words are recognisably the same, such as "naam" (name) or "aat" (eight). Also, the general rules of how the language works seem familiar too.  At the same time, there are plenty of obstacles/challenges: 1. Urdu is written in a version of the Arabic script called "nastaliq". This requires mastery of the Arabic letters (for example ب is "b"), the direction of the script (right-...

Since my last post on this blog possibly over a year ago, I have begun studying another language: Urdu.  On 30 June last year our family moved to Bury, Lancashire, where I now serve as minister of Radcliffe Road Baptist Church . Bury is a Lancashire mill town which is now part of Greater Manchester (Mancehster is about 25 minutes by car or tram). A large proportion of the population of Bury are Urdu/Punjabi speakers. I am keen to reach out to them, and have been learning their language with the help of my neighbour and also at least one another acquaintance I have made.  Urdu, as well as its sister language, Hindi, is part of the large Indo-European language family, and is therefore related to English and other more familiar languages such as German and French. For example the numbers (in Urdu: eek, do, teen) are recognisably similar, and there are many common words such as "naam" (name). Having said that, Urdu is quite challenging to learn, especially now that I am far older...