The idiot box will soon have much more than soap operas, news and sports as viewers can also learn a language, thanks to an initiative by the Mysore-based CIIL.
KOLKATA: The idiot box will soon have much more than soap operas, news and sports as viewers can tune in to television to learn a language, thanks to an initiative by the Mysore-based Central Institute of Indian Languages (CIIL).
"Taking advantage of the convergence of television and the internet, we have taken up the Bhasa Mandakini project to teach an Indian language to those interested," CIIL Director Udaya Narayana Singh said on Thursday.
The project will initially cover Marathi, Tamil, Kannadiga and Bangla and later take up other languages. One thousand episodes will be shot for each of them, Singh said.
Over 100 episodes for each of the four languages have already been shot. These will be telecast soon on Doordarshan and the Youngdarshan channel of the Indira Gandhi National Open University (IGNOU), he said.
Bhasa Mandakini will touch on paradigms like script, speech, culture, time and space. It will also have teaching material for language teachers, he said.
"Through this project, language teaching is attempted at not just in terms of the ability to speak, read and write but in a much wider sense covering the historical, social, cultural backgrounds and performative aspects," he said.
Coinciding with the birth anniversary celebrations of Rabindranath Tagore, CIIL will screen six films on the bard during May 11-13 at the Gorky Sadan here. It will also organise discussions on his talent as a poet, playwright, musician and painter.
There will also be an exhibition on Indian languages on the occasion of 60 years of independence.
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