Indian Embassy to impart ‘Hindi’ class at US University

In order to promote Hindi language in the United States, the Indian embassy is soon going to start free Hindi language classes to the students of the country’s prestigious George Washington University. 

The six-week Introductory Hindi Language course is going to begin from August 28 and it will be conducted by Dr Moxraj, a teacher on Indian Culture at the Indian embassy in Washington.

Harsh Vardhan Shringla

Speaking to News Sense, Indian Ambassador to the United States, Harsh Vardhan Shringla, said, “a Free Hindi class at George Washington University was last semester (Feb-April 2019). This semester, Dr Moxraj will be teaching a for credit Hindi course at Georgetown University. We hope to reach out to American University and the DC consortium schools to propose free non credit Hindi language courses this academic year”.

He also added, “Promotion and propagation of Hindi is part of the cultural outreach efforts of the Embassy. In this case, we found interest in Hindi learning among many in George Washington University. Our Education Adviser and teacher of Indian culture proposed to carry this forward”.

Earlier this year, Indian embassy has conducted free weekly Hindi classes of 1-hour duration in its premises. The course generated an impressive interest, as 87 candidates from seven countries enrolled for the class, on a very short notice.

Seeing the demand for the language and after an approach from the University, the embassy started working on this project and thus it will be reality very soon. 

Benjamin D Hopkins, Director and Deepa M Ollapally, Associate Director of Sigur Centre for Asian Studies at the George Washington University said in a letter to Indian Ambassador, “This indicates that there is a strong interest in Hindi language learning and encourages us to build on the successful introductory course”.

In the Introductory Hindi Language course at the University, the students will be taught the basic aspects of the language, such as introduction to the alphabets and will be encouraged and taught to speak in Hindi.

Hindi with Devanagari script is one of the official languages of India. It is one of the 22 selected scheduled languages declared by the Constitution of India. Linguistically, Hindi is the fourth most spoken first language in the world next to Mandarin, Spanish and English.