Language institute that helps bridge cultures

Dubai: The Polyglot Language Institute is located near Al Nassr Square, in the heart of Dubai's commercial district, where Russians shop for fur jackets, people lunch at Iranian restaurants and where you can purchase sleek but inexpensive Indian watches.

On the street you can hear myriad of languages being spoken. A group of Chinese tourists run across the busy street shouting warnings at each other. An Eastern European couple is bent over a map, speaking excitedly to each other, while a Filipino couple walk hand-in-hand commenting on the large discount signs on a shop window.

As you take the elevator to the fourth floor of the unassuming building, the din of the polyglot crowd down below in the street dies down. Here, two Russian women are seriously listening to their teacher who is pointing out the intricacies of the Arabic language.

Next door, two Japanese women are hard at work trying to learn English and giggle when we ask them if it was okay to take their pictures.

This language institute opened its doors to Emiratis and expatriates in 1969, a year before the British Council started, says a proud Mohamad Almawed, owner of the Institute.

"We have taught English to VVIP's here," he says and reels of a few names who are the elite of Dubai. "I have a letter here (from a governor of a country's province)," he says as he rummages through the drawer.

Top diplomats of British and American embassies have also learned Arabic at the institute which first opened on the banks of the Creek, says Almawed, who recently got his Emirati citizenship.

"Arabic is a very logical language," he says. "It is easy to write," he says, explaining that unlike English or French, where you do not know whether the ending 'shun' should be written as -tion or -sion. Or wonder how 'often', or 'd'oisseaux' is written. People are surprised when they find Arabic is easy to learn," says Almawed, who celebrated his Institute's 40th anniversary recently.

He plans to move to Shaikh Zayed Road and again start teaching German, Italian and Spanish languages.

Expatriates mostly learn Arabic as it would help them in their jobs, to understand the documents they are handling, some for the 'prestige' of knowing a new language and others to learn the local culture. "When you learn a local language you understand the people and their culture," he says.

Almawed assures that you can learn enough Arabic to be able to communicate comfortably, if you take the course of 60 hours (10 weeks) and another two 40-hour courses.

"To be fluent you will need 360 hours," he says and dedication in doing your homework. When it started, the Institute had offered courses outlining the cultural aspects of life in the Gulf, with the motto: "In mutual understanding there is peace."

In a backgrounder he explains that his institute was a boon for Dubai-based banks, hospitals and companies which had no training facilities in those early days of boon-town Dubai.

Companies opening up here required secretarial staff and many women accompanying their husbands to Dubai wished to take up some kind of employment. The institute then also branched off into teaching typing and secretarial courses. Today, it also has courses on Windows, Word, Excel and on how to surf the internet.

Almawed got into this business by chance. When he had free time after work, he visited this school owned by a German (Karl Badde, who has since passed away) and saw that he could improve it.

Badde gave him the school to run. Almawed then brought in his British wife, Diana. She was largely instrumental in publishing the 'School in a Desert', one of the series by Longman publishing on schools around the world. Diana is the brains behind the English language courses offered at the Institute.

"The students used to complain about me to her whenever I shouted," Almawed says. Times have changed as the years passed and today, the nationalities of the students are a greater mix than just the British and Indian students of the earlier days.

"The hectic pace of life in today's world has meant that people have less time to take language courses for enjoyment."

Did you ever try to learn a foreign language? How successful were you? How important is it to know the language of a country one lives in?