So I'm verbally proficient in Urdu, mainly because my parents spoke it all the time growing up. I can easily hold a conversation with them or with natives back home in Pakistan.
Problem is that I can't read or write it, I don't even really understand the grammar rules to it. It just comes naturally since I've been speaking it for my entire life as a second language.
The bigger problem is that my vocabulary is limited, since my parents are really my only frame of reference and I don't consume any Urdu media.
When I recently went back home, I was able to hold conversations with everyone like a native speaker, but a lot of words I didn't understand. I could still understand the general idea of what they were saying, and ask for the unknown words meaning. It was much harder when listening to the news, I felt like I understood like maybe 50% of what was being said, the language included more uncommon words, phrases, metaphors, etc. Here I genuinely couldn't understand what they were saying and would ask someone to explain it to me.
I wouldn't say the language was esoteric, rather it wasn't common in the vocabulary of my parents, hence foreign to me. Meanwhile my family back home interact with various people daily, so they have exposure to multiple styles and flavors.
How do I bridge this gap of knowledge?
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