KO Photo by Abid BhatBy Dr. Rashid Manzoor BhatFewer than 25 percent of schoolchildren in Srinagar speak Kashmiri fluently at home. Among Kashmiri families living abroad in Jizan, Saudi Arabia, 69.8 percent of children speak Urdu with their parents, 26.4 percent speak Kashmiri, and 3.8 percent use English. In many urban households, children understand only basic Kashmiri, responding instead in Urdu or English when grandparents speak to them. Children who cannot speak Kashmiri lose access to cultural references, historical idioms, and moral lessons encoded in stories. Children must hear, speak, and experiment with Kashmiri at meals, during storytelling, and in casual conversation.