Times of India (Pune Plus) Jan
10, 2001
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Nurturing
relationships through language
In a world
torn apart by materialism, the finer nuances
of human relationships seems to have taken a back
seat. Yet, people yearn to be together, laugh,
and
cry together. For it is only when you share happiness does the pleasure multiply,
and when you share sorrows, your grief becomes easier to bear. How do you
do it? Through touch, through gestures, and through
language.
There are no special
skills to learn a language; the baby is the greatest teacher. It is only
in an environment where the sounds of language
can be heard that
a person learns to capture these sounds and speak.
In an attempt to nurture
human relationships across geographical barriers
through languages, Japan's
Hippo Family Club came to India recently, and
to Pune. Ten members of the Hippo Family Club,
founded
20 years ago by Yo Sakakibara, stayed with ten
families in Pune to understand the Indian family
life and culture and learn Marathi and Hindi.
As
fellow of the Lex-Hippo Family Club and leader
of the team, Waka Inouchi said,"Ours is an
attempt to leap over language barriers, and the
goal is not limited to just speaking many different
languages, but nurturing relationships across regions." Here
the members learn languages through experience,
experiment and exchange. No wonder then that almost
all of them speak 15 different languages. "With
this visit, we have added Hindi," Inouchi
adds with pride.
"It was so exciting. I even learned to make chapatis," said Watanabe
Rie. Staying with the Bhaves at Bibwewadi, Rie learned to drape a san and apply
mehandi too. "Ek, don, teen, char...mee Marathi bolu shaktey," she
said with a smile, having mastered a few Marathi sentences in three days.
If
that is not all, Rie says that she learned certain nuances of Japanese
tradition while interacting
with the faculty of the foreign languages department
at the university of Pune. Asked about traditional
Kabuki and Noh theatre, Rie said,"As in most
other countries, the young generation in Japan,
too, have drifted away from traditonal things."
The
Hippo family Club offers membership to anyone
from the age of zero, says Inouchi, adding that
the club has spread its wings to New York, Boston,
Mexico, Korea. It was at the initiative of Remesh
Divekar, president of the Association of Overseas
Techincal Scholarship Alumni Society of Central
India, that Hippo Family Club chose Pune as their
first city in India for their home-stay programme.
Through this programme members of the club have
already visited over 24 countries for person-to-person
interaction. They continue to sustain the relationship
by speaking these languages.
There are no classes,
no teachers, and no tests to find out how they
learn various languages. Inouchi
says, "It's just like babies learning to speak.
we sing and dance along, we mimic the sounds, and
then make a group and start talking simple sentences.
The idea is to communicate and understand each
other."
The club activities include its own
language tapes given to members, so that they
can learn and improve
speaking different langauges of the world, and
the trans-national exchange programme, including
the home-stay programme. Besides they have a
trans-national college of Lex, which is an institute
for language,
experience, experiment and exchange (LEX). Here
they research the phrnomenon of language acquisition
as a subject to be studied using natural science
methods. The result has been publication of research
books used even by the Boston University and
other educational institutes in the United States.
The
culmination of the three-day home-stay programme
in Pune was a unique cultural gathering that
gave the Indians a peep into the elaborate traditional
Japanese tea ceremony. The Japanese got an opportunity
to watch Indian dance performances by the children
of the host families. However, the surprise came
from one of the members of the Japanese group,
who sang the Marathi song Ye re ye re pavsa...which
she had learnt at one of the host families, Anaparna
and Prashant Chandrachood. Then she sang a Japanese
song translated by Anupama, a Japanese language
interpreter, into Marathi and sung it to a Japanese
tune.
"An experience we shall all cherish," say
the Japanese guests, and Indian hosts in unison.
Triveal Gaswami-Mathur
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