Kunal Jain, 18, a second-year student at D.G. Vaishnav College, Chennai, is learning Mandarin. And he's learning the language from Chinese who are in Mainland China via China’s most popular online chatting service QQ and trying to make friends with Chinese people in Chennai using Weixin’s Look Around function. Weixin, called WeChat in English, is a growing private messaging mobile application.
“I have some Chinese friends. They are financially independent, disciplined and hardworking people. I respect Chinese people,” Kunal says. “I am also interested in their long history and rich culture. I want to improve my Chinese in China after graduation.”
Jain is one of a growing number of young Indians who are leaning away from Western languages towards studying East Asian languages.
This is because of an influx of Asians and their companies in India, the growing penetration of internet usage and the booming economies in the East Asia, which could offer lucrative job opportunities.
Shiv Shankar Nayak, head of business development at the Chinese Institute of Chennai, says that Indians have traditionally studied European languages but now more and more Indians are interested in studying Chinese, as learning the language is more directly linked to job opportunities.
“Chennai has so many industries and we see a strong demand from IT, manufacturing, steel and telecom, infrastructure industry. For example, many Chinese engineers come here to installmachines in factories and they need to set up and explain how to use them to Indian workers. In that situation, they need Chinese interpreters and translators for documents,” he says. “Further, more Indian manufacturers and IT companies are making inroads to China and need to build business relations with China in high-tech engineering and software development.”
H. Shrithula, 16, is one such student who wants to acquire Chinese to make herself competitive.
She comes to the class at the institute and studies Chinese for three hours on Saturdays and Sundays.
“I went to the Beijing Olympics in 2008 and realised that I need to speak Chinese to communicate with the local people,” she says. “The future is going to be China and India…There is more job opportunities for me in the near future. I want to keep studying until I master the language.”
The Korean language is another new language young Indians want to learn.
Chennai is home to Hyundai Motors, confectionary maker Lotte, and Korea’s major bank Woori Bank. There are an estimated 160 small and medium enterprises (most of them are suppliers for Samsung and Hyundai), according to Rathi Jafer, director at The Indo-Korean Cultural and Information Centre in Chennai. She says that students see the “immediate effect” of learning the language compared with learning European languages.
The centre dispatches a visiting faculty to SRM University to teach Korean to engineering students. She says the centre is discussing the possibility of offering Korean as an optional language to arts and science colleges.
The growing penetration of the internet has prompted Indians to access something new and different.
“Learning Korean is something cool, new and different. We are not exposed so much in the past as you’ve see a lot of cultures coming from West. The East is a bit new and mysterious,” she says, adding that the growing penetration of internet usage helped Indians learn more about Korean culture, including dancing to Psy’s phenomenal hit, Gangnam Style.
Sanjay Ramjhi, 30, started learning Korean at the centre last year because of his fixation with Korean music and dramas.
“I wanted to understand the meaning of lyrics of popular Korean music and what actors and actress say in Korean dramas. I also want to travel to Korea and make Korean friends,” he says.
(Shinichi is studying at the Journalism Media Studies Centre of The University of Hong Kong. He interned with Business Line for a month as part of his journalism programme.)