Nurturing relationships 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