Songs take Hindi-Vindi to foreign classrooms

Ahmedabad: Few would know that the 1988 chartbuster, ‘Ek, Do, Teen…’ from the Hindi movie, Tezaab, had numbers as dummy text for which the music directors, Lakshmikant Pyarelal, composed a tune. The lyrics of the song were later written by Javed Akhtar.
The song was such a hit that it was a must at shindigs for a long time. It seemed to bring out the dancer even in people who knew nothing about dance.But neither the lyricist nor the music directors could have known that one day the song would be used to teach numerals to foreign students learning Hindi.
Anjana Sandhir, professor of Hindi at Gujarat Vidyapeeth, has taught at US universities like Princeton and Columbia. She is considered a pioneer in the use of Hindi film songs to teach the language to foreigners.
She began to use Bollywood songs in the late 1990s to make learning Hindi fun for foreign students. Today, her method is emulated at several universities in the US.
Sandhir had published a book, ‘Learn Hindi and Hindi Film Songs’, when she was in the US. The book, which had 25 Hindi songs with their English translation and grammar lessons, became a bestseller.
She has recently brought out a second edition of the book which has 75 additional songs along with their English translation and instruction about their grammar.
Sandhir recalls that her experiment with Hindi songs as a teaching tool began in the US.
“It all started in my early days as teacher of Hindi to multicultural students in the US,” she said.
“I used to present a radio programme with Hindi film songs translated into English to make them comprehensible in the American context. This helped me see clearly the grammar and syntax of the songs,” Sandhir said.
Now back home in Ahmedabad, she has continued teaching Hindi to foreign students.
Nicole, a student from Spain, had heard the song, 'Senorita', used in the Hindi movie ‘Zindagi na milagi dobara’. She could understand the parts of the song that were in Spanish but not the Hindi lines. But she wanted to understand the whole song.
"We then had students from eight countries,” Sandhir said. “Hence, we translated the entire song into English, then into Hindi and then into eight languages!"
Sandhir recalled another incident in which Henry, a student from Belgium, wanted to know the gender of 'goade', the Hindi word for lap. He found a few references in Bollywood songs and came to the conclusion that it was feminine.
“Foreign students learn Hindi to connect to local culture and experience it firsthand. They refer to Bollywood songs to understand word usage and context,” said Sandhir who teaches more than 30 international students every year.
She says that innumerable Hindi songs have survived in the past one century of Indian cinema. They evoke nostalgia because there is a Hindi song for every imaginable situation and they also reflect Indian culture like few other art forms do, Sandhir said.
EFFECTIVE PEDAGOGY
Some songs used to illustrate concepts of Hindi grammar
Tenses
Song: ‘Sau saal pehle mujhe tumse pyaar tha, aaj bhi hai aur kal bhi rahega’ (Movie: Jab Pyaar Kisise Hota Hai)
Interrogatives
Song: ‘Ye kya hua, kaise hua, kab hua…’ (Amar Prem)
Echo words
Song: Dil-vil, pyaar-vyar main kya jaanu re…’ (Shagird)
Demonyms
Song: ‘Mera juta hai Japani, Ye patloon Inglistani…’ (Shree 420)
Future tense
Song: ‘Mere sapno ki raani kab aayegi tu…’ (Aaradhna