Catalan at Jamia

Updated on: Tuesday, March 31, 2009

New Delhi: In order to increase awareness about the languages spoken in Spain, Jamia Millia Islamia University has decided to offer a short-term course in Catalan language. The one-month course will be offered by the university’s Centre for European and Latin American Studies (CELAS) during the month of April. The Centre will offer the course in association with Institut Ramon Lull in Spain.

The course is open to anyone who wants to learn the language and not limited to Jamia students. Also, the university will not charge any fee except for the registration fee of Rs 100.

“We teach five European languages at the centre — Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, French and Russian. When it comes to teaching and learning the languages of Spain, maximum attention is given to Spanish. But apart from Spanish there are three more official languages spoken in Spain — Catalan, Galician and Basque. And Catalan is one of the minority languages in Europe” said Sonya Surabhi Gupta, director of the centre while explaining the university’s initiative.

According to Gupta, those who are fluent in Spanish or any other European language can take benefit of the course as Catalan is spoken in four European countries ie Andorra, Spain, France and Italy by more than nine million people, but understood by almost 12 million. “Catalan has its own value in terms of history and literature. There are students who are doing translations of Catalan literature into Hindi. Moreover, there is an increase in business between India and the Catalan region,” she said. While the institute in Catalan will offer the course material, the faculty would be from Jamia.

The course will provide a comparative approach to the grammar and morphology of Catalan in comparison with other languages related to Latin. “If the course picks up well among students we are looking at two developments. One is that at a later stage the institute will provide a residential faculty to the centre at Jamia. We will also be signing an MoU with the Open University of Catalan for providing online access to the literature available with the Catalan University,” she said.

CELAS plans to take 30 students for this course on a first-come-first-serve basis. The last date for submitting the application form is March 31.

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Catalan at Jamia

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