Mandarin and Japanese flavours of the season

THANE: At a time when the German versus Sanskrit in schools has gripped policy-makers in Delhi, locals in the lake city are showing aptitude for other foreign languages such as Japanese and Mandarin.
From school going children pushed by parents to young working professionals improving their CV for jobs abroad and others looking to boost their skills, enrolments in foreign language learning centres have seen a steep rise lately.
Hitixa Vora, founder of Value Words foreign language learning class in Thane’s Hiranandani Meadows, said that many locals have opted for Japanese and Mandarin in the recent past. “Mandarin is the most widely spoken language in the world and there are many good job opportunities for people in Japan and China-based companies if they know the language. We have had numerous inquiries and enrolments for these two languages recently,”
Vora said.
Nitin Rao, head of Career Crafters, an academy that teaches Japanese and Mandarin, in addition to seven other foreign languages such as Italian, Arabic, French, German, in Thane and Navi Mumbai, too, has witnessed a growth in the number of students learning Mandarin and Japanese in the past two years.
“We have three kinds of students opting for these two languages—those who want to go for further studies abroad, , those who work in India-based Chinese and Japanese companies, and those who are deployed there by their companies,” Rao said. Some language academies believe that the new foreign policy has brought about more opportunities for people and this has led to the rise in the number of those opting for these languages.
Dipti Surve, founder of Naupada-based Acme education, attributed the sudden rise in the number of students to the new government’s foreign policy. “After the friendly relations with countries like China and Japan were cemented by Prime Minister Modi’s visit there, Japan has shown interest in investing in India. Job opportunities there have now opened up to the people here. People are aware about this and want to be prepared. My batches have doubled from three to six following Modi’s visit to Japan. It can’t be just a coincidence,” said a very confident Surve.