God?s Language is Urdu Or may be English?

Hasan A.  Yahya, Ph.Ds

What language God speaks? When we imagine the languages God knows, we immediately imagine a large number of dictionaries displayed in a huge library, millions of books in all languages, even dictionaries for sign languages, animal languages, and wind and ocean languages. Angels carry computers, books, and typewriters to perform their job.

The question was asked by my seven years old daughter, makes me confused how to answer the question.

My surprise was great, but makes me think of the answer, which I don’t know about. I remember that this question came to me when I was thirteen, but I dare not to ask my Dad about it. I was afraid of physical and emotional punishment.

I thought of Urdu Language to be the answer. Because Urdu is a Central Indo-Aryan language covers a large communities worldwide, and one of the Indo-European family of languages, the national language and one of the two official languages beside English of Pakistan. It is also one of the 22 scheduled languages of India. One more thing about Urdu, is that its vocabulary developed under Sanskrit, Persian, Arabic and Turkic. But my daughter will ask more questions, I do not need.

And now, here it is. The same question was asked by my daughter in her first grade. What would you answer, if your son or daughter or niece ask you the question? How do you react, while showing your ignorance. Teachers in schools, mostly face this kind of amazing and difficult questions, but they have their answers ready. It’s not my area, they may say, or later you may know the answer, when you get old enough. Or a third category may say, I don’t know.

Languages come to your mind if you face the question, such as Chinese, Hebrew, Arabic, English, German, French, Armenian, Swedish, etc.,  but non of them save self defeat and embarrassment. You can’t tell the right answer. Simply, because you don’t know for sure! And you will find that you are ignorant in this area.

So my response was after a long pose of thinking, while my daughter was waiting for the answer, believing that I knew it. All what I came up with was, to redirect the question and return  it backwards  to my daughter. I said: what language do you think God speaks?

If you face the question as a reader, what would be better answer than the magic answer: I don’t know. A seven years, first grade boy or girl does not need philosophy. I know or I did not know is simple answer. Otherwise, change the question or the topic immediately, and come up with a counter question like: let’s go out and have Ice cream. Otherwise, it easy to say:  God Speaks Urdu oe may be English!  (591 words) www.hasanyahya.com

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