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Australians, Russians take Urdu lessons

DUBAI - Language courses are gaining popularity among Dubai residents with increasing options available now.

The culture and history of the UAE ensure that English and Arabic are the most popular language courses available. Languages such as Urdu and Hindi are commonly spoken in the UAE but now, courses in these are also drawing a large number of students.

According to Moaz Khan, marketing manager at the Eton Insitute which recently introduced 31 new online language courses, said, "We already have people signing up for the online courses, especially corporates. The International Cricket Council (ICC) is planning to send a delegation to India. It has signed up a group for three Hindi language courses."

Urdu course is also popular. "We have a lot of Australians, Russians and even Hungarians coming here to learn Urdu," said Khan.

Most of these students either have friends from the subcontinent or wish to travel to India and Pakistan. This provides them the incentive to learn a language different from their own. In many cases, learning Urdu or Hindi also aids them in the workplace, he said.

However, Urdu and Hindi courses are not particularly popular among Arab or local students. Khan said most of them choose English. "Several Arabs can speak Urdu and Hindi fairly well. This is probably due to the day-to-day interaction with expatriates from the subcontinent who have been in the UAE for a very long time," he said

Learning languages seems to be a growing trend in Dubai. Easily available courses certainly accelerate that trend. Online courses in Arabic, English, Spanish, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Russian, Dutch, Polish, Turkish, Danish, Hebrew, Swahili, Welsh, Swedish, Hindi, Japanese, Chinese (Mandarin), Korean, Indonesian, Vietnamese, Irish, Farsi, Greek, Pashto, Tagalog, Thai and Latin are available on the Eton web site.

These courses are powered by the widely popular language learning software, Rosetta Stone.

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