BANGALORE: To cater to the growing demand from employees of Korean multinational firms in the city, the Bangalore University Department of Foreign Languages will begin Korean language courses from June this year.

The department conducts eight-month certificate, diploma and higher diploma courses in French, German, Spanish, Italian and Japanese languages.

With the addition of Chinese courses in 2008 and Portuguese, Russian and Arabic by 2010, the Department has big plans to emerge as a "centre for global languages." French is the most popular course followed by Japanese and German. The teachers of all the courses are partly supported by their respective embassies.

Toyota Kirloskar, for instance, created a chair for the Japanese language course and has been sponsoring the salaries of the teachers for the last five years, the Department chairman, K. Eresi told presspersons on the sidelines of an International Language Fair here.

Next year, he said, the French embassy would depute a teacher from France while the university had agreed in-principle to provide free accommodation.

The department had also spoken to the Spanish embassy to provide one more teacher for that language.

All classes are conducted in the evening. The department has now proposed to hold weekend classes for working professionals. "Five-hour inputs will be distributed on Saturdays and Sundays," explained Prof. Eresi.

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