Students are getting what they ask for: Hindi classes are back
Maressica Sawyer, Staff Writer
When students ask, they receive free Hindi classes.
Shurajit Gopal, broadcast media instructor, is teaching conversational Hindi again. Gopal
started the Hindi classes at North Greenville University when two Intercultural Studies
students asked him to teach them Hindi.
Shurajit Gopal talks with a student after one of his mass communication classes.
According to BBC, Hindi is the “language of the land of the Indus River” and about 425
million people have Hindi as their first language. Hindi is the official language of India, and is also spoken in countries like Mauritius, Fiji, Suriname, Guyana, Trinidad, Tobago and Nepal, according to the site.
Learning how to speak Hindi is helpful for communication in Nepal, and Hindi speakers can easily pick up Urdu, the national language of Pakistan, according to BBC.
Previously, Gopal taught the class twice a week and eventually the class grew into one that students could get credit for. Hindi 1 through 4 allowed students to take Hindi as their language requirement, but without a teacher to teach all the classes, the courses came to a halt a year and a half ago.
At the beginning of this semester, Gopal was emailed by a student wanting him to teach
her Hindi. When she met with him, he decided that if he was going to teach her Hindi, he might as well teach a class.
Gopal sent out an email to the entire student body before chapel one morning, and at the
end of that day, 24 students had signed up for the class.
“I was overjoyed to know students were interested in learning Hindi,” said Gopal.
The first class was last Friday, Sept. 12. The classes this semester will be held every
Friday in Avery 203 at 12:15 P.M.
