Zabaan School for Languages | |
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Location | |
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India | |
Coordinates | 28°33′16″N 77°14′27″E / 28.554420°N 77.240718°E |
Information | |
Opened | August 2009[1] |
Website |
zabaan |
Zabaan School for Languages is a language school based in Delhi and Mumbai offering classes on Indo-Aryan languages. Classes offered include Hindi, [2] Urdu, [3] Sanskrit, [1] and Pashto. [4] Some coverage of Dari, Persian, Arabic, and Braj Bhasha is also available. [5]
Zabaan was established in August 2009 by Ali Taqi and his former student Christoph Dusenbery, both United States citizens, who had been teaching Hindi in Seattle. [1] They saw a need for a quality language institute in New Delhi to cater to expatriates living there for work. [1] The initial business goal was to provide only Hindi language instruction starting with 25 students. [1] After some time the institute began offering classes in Urdu, Sanskrit, and Pashto. [1] The school offers classes on reading and writing Nastaliq, the Urdu alphabet. [3] [6] The interest in Urdu matches a rising demand to understand Urdu use in Bollywood and to appreciate Urdu poetry. [6]
Most students at the school are expatriates who wish to learn local languages of India. [2] [7] [8] Taqi has said that student interest in Hindi has grown with international interest in India. [9] Many of the students are learning Hindi for international business with India. [10] Native professionals attend grammar classes of all sorts to prepare for the entrance exam for the Civil Services of India or to complement studies at the Indian Institutes of Technology. [11] By 2013 the school had provided instruction for more than 850 students. [1]