Don't drive the hujur away

I spent a considerable amount of my early teen days to cook up compelling and innovative stories to keep Lokman Hujur at bay. Awful I thought were those days when Hujur used to show up in lazy, hot, humid afternoons to teach me the Quran and how to pray properly. Lokman Hujur had a legacy of giving 'sohi koran shikkha' to many of my cousins, uncles etc. who, along with me, had spent some quality time in mugging up basic excerpts (suraas) to manage day to day prayer requirements. I also remember during my 16th birthday, my late Nanabhai presented me a blue-cover 'Shohoj Arbi Shikkha' (Easy Arabic Learning) language learning book fresh from New Market. He was my inspiration and mentor to ignite my interest in foreign languages. However, perhaps with one exception that of Arabic. Everytime Lokman Hujur and even Nanabhai used to portray and preach to me Arabic as the language to achieve divine guidance and licence to salvation, my teenage mind used to rebel relentlessly. After all, Hujurs and people who are good in Arabic are stereotyped of belonging to certain school of thoughts, doctrine and even their appearances and activities are also labelled unfortunately not in the intended way always.

I wish Lokman Hujur had made me realize early on that Arabic would turn out to be the 5th most widely spoken language of the world. I wish Nanabhai would have convinced me early on that learning Arabic as a foreign language might have some earthly benefits associated with it too, say a job at UN or somewhere in Dubai...may be my tender mind would have given in to the mere greed of earthly ambitions. Perhaps the desire to attain residential permit of Jannatul Ferdous with my Arabic language skills were too confusing for a teenager to comprehend. So I kept on ignoring their calls, I denied the urge to learn only to read a language like a parrot and understand nothing at all. I didn't see any glamour or element of coolness in learning it, unlike French, which is so well-branded. They arrange parties, they talk about art and culture and they are so happening. But Arabic? Why waste time dosto...molla hobi naki?? That was the thought.

So I look at the top 10 most widely spoken languages of the world now and wonder where does our comparative advantage lie as a nation. If we agree that manpower is single most best natural resource, then what exactly is their skill that sets them apart from the global competition? They are cheap labor perhaps, but does cheap mean good and all round quality too? Why not language? Mandarin, Hindi, English, Spanish, Arabic, Bangla, Portuguese, Russian, Japanese, German, French..in that order. Think how many do you speak or understand? Even if you leave Mandarin aside for a while, doesn't it seem that we are pretty much familiar with all top 5 languages other than Spanish? Hindi...due to our neighbourly 'love' and culture vulturization, English is self-explanatory, Arabic due to our Hujurs and Nanabhais and finally Bangla is our mother-tongue and pride. So we are in a pretty good position to attain some sort of language dominance over others it seems.

Having an edge in foreign languages would give our semi-skilled, skilled, export-ready manpower great advantages and preferences in the global market. Alliance Francaise, Goethe Institut, even the reputed foreign language school in Dhaka university, never catered specifically to the need of the manpower market. Its only in the last 5 years that a number of schools have mushroomed around Dhaka city who claim (atleast) that they give certification courses in languages which are spoken in countries where Bangladeshi manpower is exported more often such as Malay for Malaysia, Korean for South Korea etc. No wonder our fellow countrymen learn it the hard way when they actually reach the foreign shores to chase their dollar (or riyal) dreams. With ornamental Bangladeshi diplomatic missions, absence of any legal cover and sub-standard living and working conditions, they also somehow 'manage and adjust' to all learning requirements, learning the host language is a small peanut in the ocean of miseries for them.

Its important to think and look again at what we already possess, rather than nag about things we are never supposed to have, as a nation. If manpower is our strength, proper foreign language training at home will be a small step in equipping them better to settle down in foreign territories. A change of perception at our language expertise and workforce, especially the young, is vital now.

In fine, I am sure that Arabic has its spiritual values and (heavenly) benefits of learning, but for those who oppose the idea for any such notions, the counter-argument (earthly benefit) is atleast worth pondering and considering. So learn any language that is spoken in the target country of business, it opens doors. By the way, please focus on Mandarin too, as I have heard it helps to give useful hints during bargaining with Chinese counterparts, also useful when they swear or say something silly, assuming that we know nothing at all what the ching-chung-chang they are talking about.

What else to do in a Barista in Dhaka?

Pretty much like aggressively growing mushrooms, I was not surprised to see Barista coffee shops in happening locations in Dhaka. Having walked into the shops in Uttara and Gulshan on two different occasions, it reminded me of my good old days of under-graduate studies in Delhi, India, when hanging out in Baristas with my yaars during 2000-2003 was a cool thing to do. Other than the great coffee experience and checking out coffee lovers of the fairer sex, there were also that acoustic guitar waiting patiently round the corner for a gentle strum, board-games such as chess and Scrabble for people to play and pass away their time sipping over great blends of coffee.

Robi gets a Bangla website for itself

Secret cables from @Robileaks confirm the fact that senior management of Robi (erstwhile Aktel) have secretly taken into heed the request from Bangladesh Corporate Blog to have a Bangla version of its website. Irated with the akika from Aktel to Robi, we did give them quite an earful in this post here, which also included a tip to have a Bangla website. Although we haven’t received any note of thanks from senior Robiuls as we Bangalees usually prefer not to acknowledge our sources of inspirations and ideas and generally claim all to be our very own. So never mind.

Hats off to Robi for taking the lead to have a Bangla version of its website, not only as the first Bangladeshi telecom operator to have done that but also the very first Bangladeshi leading brand to have done that I believe. Please let me know if you are aware of any other Bangladeshi companies who have a website in both English and Bangla. Although just having a website in Bangla may not have any direct impact on increasing its popularity and profitability, it goes without saying that those 1. in rural or urban Bangladesh 2. who are more comfortable consuming information in Bangla than in English 3. who want to know through internet more about Robi - would find this initiative to be very timely, locally sensitive and culturally adaptive.

Robi sets an example for companies in other industries too. Say for example if you are an IT company and if you are trying to woo new clients, partner companies in Denmark primarily – then try having a Danish version of your website too. Just having a target market language version of your website will not be a clear cut guarantee for winning new business but somewhere there is this social element regarding languages in business that it creates a first impression if you attempt to communicate or represent your credentials and expertise in the language of your customers. In the end of the day, you will not win any IT outsourcing business if you have a great Danish version of your website, but your programmers and management included are incompetent and unnprofessional.

Its going to be even more important to have business content in local languages available online. Not only will this increase the outreach of that content to an audience who are more comfortable with local languages, it will also push up local language search engine optimisation, which I guess is still in its infancy.

Learning English the BBC Janala way

The need for being multi-lingual to gain an edge in the global business stage has been mentioned in this blog before. Its good to see some signs of innovative teaching mechanisms to spread the language learning drive. This time its BBC who has come up with a bi-lingual website to help learners of the English language in Bangladesh to take lessons over internet, mobile phones etc. Read here to know more.

Some initiative is better than no initiative at all, so hats off to BBC Trust for thinking how relevant digital technologies in the Bangladeshi context can be applied to provide language education. Some constructive observations and feedback though.

1. I think its important to segment and identify the learning audience. When you arrive at the website at http://www.bbcjanala.com, there is no clear navigation to identify myself with any learning group. For example, say I am a housewife, kid (minor), graduate, business executive, businessman (or woman) etc. Users online would like to identify themselves with any of the services being offered, as every user's needs are unique. So BBC Janala could look into the issue of segmenting the audience and tailor made their language courses accordingly. It is expected that the English learning needs of a housewife might be different from those of a business executive who encounters English speaking people almost everyday. So 'English for housewives' and 'English for businesspeople' can be packaged to cater to two different groups.

2. It might be a possibility that this service is promoted in the rural areas through various telecenters spread around Bangladesh. Since they are working with Grameen Phone (along with all other telecom operators) any ways in this project, might be possible to promote the service through the Grameen Phone Community Information Centers (GPCIC).

3. The fact that the lessons can be listened to through mobile phone sounds good but the cost associated with it (3 taka for a 3 minute audio lesson) still remains a bit high in my perspective. No doubt that the service shall never be free. But at the same time, we need to keep in mind that the vacuum the service is trying to fill is a failure of the overall education system of Bangladesh which somehow does not take into realistic consideration the need to be able to converse in fluent English (also not other languages). Also, if someone just decides to call up a friend or a person who happens to possess better knowledge of English then the whole point of having these lessons available through airtime becomes less useful. In my opinion, I really don't envisage many people to call up this service spending 3 taka for 3 minutes just to know English from perhaps an automated machine response, so better need to look at the alternatives available and how to make this service exclusive.

4. Finally its very important to demonstrate and make explicit references to real stories of real people on how knowing English aided someone in their personal, professional lives. Unless I know why or how or when exactly learning English will provide me visible benefits, chances are that I would still remain a bit doubtful in becoming a loyal and long term user of the BBC Janala service.