The English You Already Know

Before this lesson begins, count the English words you used today without thinking. School. College. Computer. Phone. Mobile. Charger. Ticket. Bus. Office. Doctor. Hospital. Tea, when you ordered it from a friend who calls it tea more often than chai. If you grew up in Pakistan, you have been borrowing English from the moment you were born. The language is not a stranger waiting at the gate. It is already inside the house, drinking your chai.

Linguists have a name for this. Loan-words. They estimate that everyday Urdu carries between 200 and 400 English loan-words in regular use. That is not a small number. It is more than the entire vocabulary you need to order food, ask for directions, and read a job listing in Karachi or Manchester. The reason most Pakistani learners say they cannot speak English is not vocabulary. It is confidence.

Try a small experiment. Right now, list ten English words you used today without thinking they were English. Write them on a paper. Look at the list for ten seconds. That list is your starting capital. A first-year freelancer in Lahore needs about 800 active English words to earn 60,000 rupees a month writing for foreign clients. You already have a quarter of that on your first day. The rest is reachable in twelve weeks if you read fifteen minutes a day.

Here is the harder truth. The shame around speaking English in Pakistan was built on purpose. The British colonial system trained a thin elite to speak English, and used that English as a wall. After 1947 the wall did not come down. It moved. Today an aunty at a wedding will laugh at your accent and call it rural. A teacher in a small school will tell a clever student that her English is not posh enough. None of this is about language. It is about who is allowed at which table. We are not going to ask permission to sit at the table. We are going to learn the language so well that the table comes to us.

One more reframe before we close. The goal of this track is not to make you sound British. It is not to make you sound American. The goal is to make you sound like yourself, accurately, in a second language, in front of any audience that will pay you fairly for your time. Faiz wrote in Urdu. Iqbal wrote in Urdu, Persian, and English. Both men knew that the language you choose for a sentence is a tool, not a flag. Pick the right tool for the room. Keep your flag where it belongs, in your chest.