U.S. includes Hindi as important language for Americans to learn

The U.S. Administration has identified Indian's language Hindi among half a dozen critical foreign languages vital for its national security, national daily The Indian Express reported in New Delhi Saturday.

It is reported that the U.S. now plans to spend millions of dollars in the coming years to recruit experts of Arabic, Chinese, Russian, Persian and Hindi. The experts will teach these languages to students from kindergarten to universities.

"We're going to teach our kids how to speak important languages. We'll welcome teachers here to help teach our kids how to speak languages," the paper quoted U.S. President George W. Bush as saying during a National Security Language Initiative in New York on Wednesday.

With an initial proposed budget of 114 million U.S. dollars in 2007, the National Security Language Initiative aims at expanding the number of Americans mastering "critical need" languages and start at a younger age.

It is reported that the program aims at producing 2,000 advance speakers of Arabic, Chinese, Russian, Persian, Hindi and Central Asian languages by 2009.

Source: Xinhua