"Mera naam Martin hai (My name is Martin)." This is how Martin Smith, the district world language supervisor of Edison in New Jersey, introduced himself on his visit to the city on Monday.

If learning foreign languages has become popular in India , Hindi, too, has found a rather large following back in the United States of America (USA). According to the US Federal government, Hindi is one of the critical-need' languages and is important to U S diplomacy, national security, and economic competitiveness.

Acting on this directive the Edison School board in New Jersey has introduced Hindi as an optional subject in high schools there. A team of 14 teachers from Edison were in the city to study how teachers instruct their pupil in the language. They visited a school in Nigdi and the International Study Centre, University of Pune and studied their Hindi curriculum meant for foreign students. The programme has been coordinated by International Education and Resource Network (iEarn).

Edison is the third such district in New Jersey to have introduced Hindi in high schools. Earlier, Huston and Dallas schools, located in Texas, had also made similar efforts and have been successful in making American students opt for the language.

Presently, US high schools have Asian students opting for Hindi, however, "the larger aim is to make the non-Asians learn the language. The effort is to popularise Hindi among Americans, which is a government directive," Smith informed.

Sunita Bhagwat, country coordinator, iEarn, who arranged the visit, said, "There has been a great demand for learning Hindi in America, and we have tried to create a platform for students in the US to interact with students here. Sometime back we had arranged a video conference through which school students in India communicated with their American counterparts in Hindi. Interacting with their peers in Hindi was a brilliant experience for American students, and the feedback we received was amazing."

During the summer vacations, a batch of teachers from schools in Pune will be taken to the US to train teachers in Edison. They will together work on how the language curriculum can be made more real.

Amanda Ussak, one of the team members, said, "We will be taking a lot of knowledge with us after this visit to India. We have not only experienced the Hindi language closely, but also got to know about the culture, the religion, the lifestyle and the society here. We have a lot of Indians there and it is great to see that their culture, traditions and values are still alive in them. I am excited that Hindi is coming to America, and in a big way!"