Local flavour

8220;There are aruond 29 official Indian languages which one of the most striking aspect of India, 8220;says Naath Kamal from Iraq. Kamal wants to stay in an Indian students8217; hostel so that he can pick up Hindi.

8220;Bollywood songs and dances attracted us to Hindi movies. My favourite words are namaste and chup raho.8221;

While Kamal is bewitched by Bollywood and cool sounding Hindi words , for Michichi Ro Ogawa, a Japanese doing his PhD in Marath, it is the script of the language that is more fascinating. 8220;I was fascinated by Indian culture and the Marathi language. To learn Marathi, I had to learn Modi language Modi lipi because a lot of notes on Marathi are available in that language,8221; says Ogawa, who can speak Marathi fluently.

Robert, a Kenyan, finds the accents of Hindi and Marathi fascinating and wants to learn Hindi before returning to Kenya. He feels that Indians are fortunate to learn at least two languages during their primary education. Ravind from Mauritius has learnt Hindi for six years in his school. 8220;I chose Hindi as a subject over many languages in my school. I loved to hear the language. I can understand a bit of Marathi by staying here in Pune for two years. But I think Marathi is spoken faster than Hindi.8221;

He can speak Hindi fluently but has problems writing it.

Kia Parsa, an Iranian working as an Indo-Iran adviser says, 8220;The Indian culture and Hindi movies attracted me. I love to visit different places in India and want to learn the national language- Hindi, so that I can communicate with various people form different parts of this country,8221; he adds, 8221; I am pleasantly surprised to know that there are many things in common between my culture and Indian culture.8221; Shukrat Sattarov, an Uzbeki, says that Hindi is similar to Uzbek language. He is planning to learn Marathi during his stay in Pune. He stays with Indians from different cities and thus knows a few Bengali, Gujarati and Punjabi words.

Abdullah, from Baluchistan, narrates an incident about his fluency with Hindi which he picked up in due course of time. 8220;Once I had bought tickets for a movie in E-Square and I misread the timing of the show. Later when I approached the management, the manager was so impressed by my command over Hindi that he let me in for free. It gives me a special feeling when I am able to converse in Hindi. Many people have told me that they were impressed by my jazba of having mastered the language though my mothertongue is Iranian.8221;

Shekha Jehangir from Mauritius is doing her M.Sc for which she had a practical assignment in villages. She had learnt Urdu in her college days and so could understand Hindi, but in those villages, the majority of people were speaking in Marathi. This made communication difficult for her and so she decided to learn a few basic Marathi words.

She says, 8220;Right now I can grasp Marathi and know a f ew Marathi words like basa, thamba, jevan kela. This language is very sweet.8221;