World News | Three Books Launched to Mark Vishwa Hindi Diwas at Singapore University

Singapore, Jan 10 (PTI) Three books containing stories and poems in Hindi related to the island city state have been released at the National University of Singapore (NUS), marking the World Hindi Day, also known as Vishwa Hindi Diwas, that is celebrated every year on January 10.

The books, released on Wednesday by India's Deputy High Commissioner to Singapore Pooja Tillu, promote the Hindi language and its usage worldwide.

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The three-hour event was organised by the High Commission of India, NUS, Singapore Sangam Hindi Association and publisher Vani Prakashan Group (VPG) from India.

“For the first time, we got a publisher from India (VPG) to bring out two books of poems and stories written by members of the Indian community living in Singapore,” said Dr Sandhya Singh, Hindi and Tamil language head at NUS, where non-Indians are learning Hindi as a language and as a part of their studies.

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Speaking about the event, Dr Singh said, “This year, we combined the two celebrations.” The organisers held celebrations of World Hindi Day with Pravasi Bharatiya Divas which is held on January 9 every year to mark the contribution of the overseas Indian community to the development of India.

“The 18th Pravasi Bharatiya Divas was celebrated with enthusiasm, featuring a captivating Odissi dance and Lord Jagannath's statues inaugurating the event,” Dr Singh told PTI on Friday.

Students learning Hindi at NUS Centre for Language Studies received certificates from Deputy High Commissioner Tillu at the event.

Chinese-origin students, Jonathan Lee and Gregory Neo, recited poems in Hindi by Pravasi writers like Padmesh Gupta, Divya Mathur and Vinod Dubey.

Both the Chinese Singaporeans learnt Hindi at the NUS Centre for Language Studies, which has several language programmes, including Tamil, one of the four official languages of Singapore – the other being English, Chinese and Malay.

“Hindi is an interesting language to learn. I'm a fairly fluent speaker and aim to use the language when I visit India soon,” Jonathan, a computer science graduate from NUS, was quoted as saying by Friday weekly Tabla!

Reading a Hindi poem “before a big crowd was an eye-opening experience”, he said.

Gregory, who is studying philosophy at NUS, said, “It was initially difficult to learn the language. Now I can construct sentences and understand what is being spoken.”

NUS has five Hindi courses which give students a working knowledge of the language – which, along with Mandarin, is spoken by the most people in the world.

(This is an unedited and auto-generated story from Syndicated News feed, LatestLY Staff may not have modified or edited the content body)