A girl wearing a mask due to Coronavirus in Bengaluru

BENGALURU: One spot where the people of Bengaluru can feel the pulse of the world is the Centre for Global Languages (CGL) at Bengaluru Central University . When a massive earthquake and a tsunami hit Japan in 2011 crippling the country’s economy, the CGL saw a massive dip in enrolment for learning Japanese.

Now, history seems to be repeating itself; this time it’s the Chinese language. CGL, whose four-month programmes for foreign languages are beginning this Saturday, hasn’t received a single student for Chinese language. The department thinks the low enrolment is the ripple effect of coronavirus and the resultant travel ban to China.

“The department can spot global trends in the economy in its enrolment. We saw it with Japan nine years ago. Usually, Chinese language is in demand with around 15-20 students joining the programme every time. However, this season saw only a couple of queries and zero enrolment. Coronavirus and the resultant travel ban to China in near future could be the reason. We also feel Italian and French have taken a beating because of the slowdown in the economy,” said Jyothi Venkatesh , coordinator, CGL. There are no takers for Italian and only 25 for French.

The four-month programme for Chinese language is usually attended by people with business background, who want to fix deals in China and also by IT company employees. Japanese too draws a lot of students, thanks to employment opportunities there.

The languages offered under the four-month weekend programmes include French, German, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Japanese, Chinese, Korean, Finnish, Russian and Arabic. We hope things will be back to normal by the time the June batch begins,” said Jyothi.

