City sees spurt in language learners

1,369 people register for Urdu and Arabic language courses this year

There was never a dearth of language learners. But this June, the city seems to have churned out Urdu and Arabic learners by a dozen.

A total of 1,369 people have registered for these language courses across the Centre and State-run institutes in the city, a 12% increase from 1,223 people who had registered for the course in June-2016. In 2010, the number of takers for crash courses in both the languages was as low as 520.

Job opportunities

To the surprise of many, a total of 436 youngsters in the age group of 25 to 35 years have joined the language courses offered by the Urdu Ghar and Maulana National Urdu University. Reason: global career opportunities.

As many countries, including Dubai, Qatar, Bahrain and Saudi, have started considering the knowledge of spoken Arabic language an added merit in job interviews, the demand for the language course too has increased.

“I am trying for a job in defence in Qatar. It will be the best if I could get a training in Arabic,” said Shabbir Shah, a student who is taking a second Arabic crash course.

Maulana Azad National Urdu University has a total intake of 25 people, who are MNC professionals, doing a crash course in Arabic. Those taking Urdu tuitions are foreign nationals settled in Hyderabad for four or more years, who intend to take a shot at education or employment in Turkey or Pakistan.

Poetry and religion

University of Hyderabad (UoH) and International Institute of Information Technology, Gachibowli, have the distinction of developing a system that translates Urdu to eight other languages, including Hindi and Telugu.

“Among them, 10% new learners of the language try to read original texts of poetry and history which are integral to Indian history,” said Rahmat Yusafai, who worked on developing the Urdu machine translation system in 2014.

The long-term Urdu learners mostly pursue the language for five to six years before they become proficient, he said.

“I started learning Urdu as I was struck by the poetry in the language. I lost touch after I took a break from continuous learning three years ago. So I joined the crash course,” said Anjum, a research scholar at Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS), who is a native of Hyderabad.

Advanced courses

Most crash courses stop with alphabets, words and syntax. Advanced courses teach original texts. Other than job-seekers, city’s Arabic learners mostly pursued the language for religious reasons.

“The number of people taking the Arabic course increase before Umrah or Hajj as the language is lingua franca of Saudi Arabia,” said Liaqat Hussain, a scholar of Islamic studies.