Landour Language School, being run from the Kellogg Memorial Church in the Landour Cantonment area, is teaching Hindi to foreign students in the salubrious environment of Mussoorie.
Over 20,000 foreign students have received basic and advance education in the Hindi language. The centre is known for teaching other regional languages, namely Punjabi, Urdu, Garhwali etc, that too without any help from the state or Central governments.
The school was first started in Lucknow and Edwin Greaves, a missionary in Benaras, was its first principal. Edwin had already championed the use of Devanagri as the script most appropriate for Hindi.
Later, the school was shifted to the Kellogg Memorial Church named after Reverend Samuel H. Kellogg, a contemporary of Bharatendu Harish Chand and a Presbyterian missionary from Allahabad. He was the first linguist to make a distinction between Urdu and Hindi and integrate 14 different languages and dialects to create modern Hindi.
The missionaries, who wanted to penetrate deep into the Hindi heartland, found the courses at Landour Language School useful during the British period. Officials from various foreign embassies have also used the services of the school.
The principal of Landour Language School, Chitranjan Dutt, said, “It has been serving as an important centre for promoting Hindi and other regional languages and is very popular among the foreign students who come from across the globe to study Hindi, Sanskrit and other regional languages. He said it gives an immense pleasure to him to see the foreigners learn Hindi and other Indian languages.”
He said the craze among foreign students to learn Hindi was growing.
Dutt said earlier the scope of Hindi was limited but with the declaration of Hindi as the national language, it has grown immensely and most of the foreign universities now have dedicated Indology department where Hindi is taught regularly.
He said at present around 45 students were enrolled in the school and they were learning different Indian languages. It was a pleasing moment that the school was still teaching people Hindi. Loretta, a student from Hong Kong, said her mother tongue was Cantonese but she had come all the way to learn Sanskrit in the language school and her experience was memorable.
Leslie, another research scholar from Australia, said she was here to improve her language skills so that she was able to interview people during her research in Delhi. She said, “Hindi is a lovely, poetic and phonetic language. People feel happy when I make an effort to speak in Hindi. Foreigners should learn the Hindi for better cross-cultural understanding.”
Dutt said the draft of new language school Hindi learning course book was ready and would be available to the students soon. He said it was their duty not only to preserve Hindi but also other indigenous languages in the country.
Over 20,000 foreign students have received basic and advance education in the Hindi language. The centre is known for teaching other regional languages, namely Punjabi, Urdu, Garhwali etc, that too without any help from the state or Central governments.
The school was first started in Lucknow and Edwin Greaves, a missionary in Benaras, was its first principal. Edwin had already championed the use of Devanagri as the script most appropriate for Hindi.
Later, the school was shifted to the Kellogg Memorial Church named after Reverend Samuel H. Kellogg, a contemporary of Bharatendu Harish Chand and a Presbyterian missionary from Allahabad. He was the first linguist to make a distinction between Urdu and Hindi and integrate 14 different languages and dialects to create modern Hindi.
The missionaries, who wanted to penetrate deep into the Hindi heartland, found the courses at Landour Language School useful during the British period. Officials from various foreign embassies have also used the services of the school.
The principal of Landour Language School, Chitranjan Dutt, said, “It has been serving as an important centre for promoting Hindi and other regional languages and is very popular among the foreign students who come from across the globe to study Hindi, Sanskrit and other regional languages. He said it gives an immense pleasure to him to see the foreigners learn Hindi and other Indian languages.”
He said the craze among foreign students to learn Hindi was growing.
Dutt said earlier the scope of Hindi was limited but with the declaration of Hindi as the national language, it has grown immensely and most of the foreign universities now have dedicated Indology department where Hindi is taught regularly.
He said at present around 45 students were enrolled in the school and they were learning different Indian languages. It was a pleasing moment that the school was still teaching people Hindi. Loretta, a student from Hong Kong, said her mother tongue was Cantonese but she had come all the way to learn Sanskrit in the language school and her experience was memorable.
Leslie, another research scholar from Australia, said she was here to improve her language skills so that she was able to interview people during her research in Delhi. She said, “Hindi is a lovely, poetic and phonetic language. People feel happy when I make an effort to speak in Hindi. Foreigners should learn the Hindi for better cross-cultural understanding.”
Dutt said the draft of new language school Hindi learning course book was ready and would be available to the students soon. He said it was their duty not only to preserve Hindi but also other indigenous languages in the country.
