Keya Choudhury is a Berlin-based intercultural trainer: She helps individuals and organisations prepare to work in different cultural environments than their own. Taking some time off from her current assignment in Bangalore, Keya recently came to Delhi for a short holiday. Being highly energetic and proactive, sight-seeing and meeting friends proved not fulfilling enough, so she enrolled in a week-long intensive Hindi course with Language Must. In this refreshingly lively interview, Keya shares some of her experiences learning Hindi, living in India and navigating different cultures.

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Anil Misra is a senior expert in the field of renewable energies, having worked both in India and abroad for the last 27 years. As a student he spent one year at the University of Siegen, Germany, where he later also taught. He currently works with GIZ as Senior Programme Advisor. As part of a Germany-based multinational organisation, German is part of his daily work. He has previously joined one of the German courses offered by his employer in collaboration with Language Must.

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Nitin Misra, a senior IT engineer from Delhi, recently completed a one-year MBA programme at the University of St. Gallen. Located in the German-speaking part of Switzerland and only half an hour away from the German border, he realised that knowing some German would significantly improve his experience abroad. Prior to his departure, Nitin therefore enrolled in a short-term One-to-One German language course with Language Must. In this interview, he talks about his motivation to go to Switzerland, his love for Focaccia bread and the peculiar length of certain German words.

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Garima Mohan is part of an international research team at Freie Universität Berlin working on Indian perceptions of the European Union. After a year in Berlin she came back to Delhi, her home town, for field work. During her 5 months stay, she decided to enrol in a One-to-One German language course with Language Must. In this interview, she talks about her research project, her experiences with German and why she believes it is a must for people living in Germany to pick up the language.

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Sudha, Gaurav, Jeetendra & Niraj work at the Delhi office of Fackelmann, the German household article manufacturer. Being an international company with offices across the globe, their working language is English. Learning German, however, has proven to them not only to be fun but also of great use at work. Read the interview below to find out more about their experience studying German with Language Must.

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Hinduism, India's banyan tree of diverse religious traditions, reflects much of Indian people's behaviour, values and world views. With a growing interest in yoga and meditation in Western countries, Hinduism and its rituals have gained many followers outside India as well. Knowledge Must had the chance to interview a young German Hindu woman in her mid-twenties to find out about her experience, how she found her spiritual mentor and her understanding of Hinduism and India.

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My first contact with the German language was just two weeks before arriving in Germany. It was a crash course to pass an interview at the embassy. Finally, five years ago, I set my foot on the Teutonic lands and since this time my life has been undergoing big changes. If you are unlucky enough to have a passport from one of the post-Soviet Union countries, your world ends at the border to the next EU country. A round trip to Paris for ten days could be the biggest dream that you can afford. I was yet a naive girl and tried to live in Germany without knowing German for the next six months, but I was fortunate enough to learn English to get me by. Sure, I could have been getting by like this, but my destiny said "No!" and I soon found myself in a line to submit my application for a German course.

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Teaching your native language and with it your cultural background in a foreign country like India is an adventure in itself. Let me give you some examples. Little did I think about that a cartoon picture of a woman can make grown men blush and turn their heads down when mentioning “der Po” (German word for “bum”) while talking about body parts. Also, as I am used to say “Gesundheit” (“bless you”) to a sneezing person in Germany, here, people just apologize for sneezing. Another one: Once, one of my students asked me with an expression close to horror in his eyes “I heard Germans eat food that is not completely done!” It took me a moment to realize that he was referring to some of the ways meat is prepared in Germany and once more realized the differences between Germany and India when it comes to perception, behaviour and food.

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Ever thought about picking up a new language but not too sure about which language to learn? German could be the right choice for you, whatever your background or your plans in life. There are numerous arguments that speak for learning German language, especially if you already know how to use English. What makes it difficult for many language learners to successfully learn a new language is the initial effort needed to build up a solid basis of vocabulary and grammatical understanding. English and German both being Indo-Germanic languages and having lots of interaction throughout history, you will be surprised at the many similarities you will be able to detect between the languages.

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