With a view to promote Hindi as a world language, plans are underway to establish a 'Hindi Centre' near here that will serve as an academic and cultural hub and facilitate exchange programmes between Indian and American universities.

Consul General Ambassador Dnyaneshwar Mulay assured the Indian government's support for the 'International Hindi Center' to academicians, business professionals, public officials and community leaders gathered for the 2nd International Hindi Conference at Rutgers Universitycampus in New Jersey last week.

The center will serve as "vibrant hub" of academic and cultural activities focused on promoting Hindi as a world language, said Ashok Ojha, Managing Trustee of the Hindi Sangam Foundation, which organized the conference.

A resolution to set up the Hindi centre was adopted unanimously by the delegates at the three-day conference, chaired by Mulay.

Assuring his support to raise funds for the center, Mulay said, "Hindi Center will become a reality soon where all educational activities regarding Hindi learning including exchange programs and joint projects with India based institutions and universities will take place under one roof."

Presenting a blueprint of the centre, Hindi Sangam Foundation official Ved Chaudhary estimated that about USD 4 million would be required to set up an independent facility for the center in Central New Jersey, where Rutgers is located.

Hindi proponents from the US, Caribbean Islands and South American nations will be nominated by Hindi Sangam Board of Trustees to form the centre's board of advisors.

Rutgers's Department of African, Middle Eastern and South Asian Languages and Literatures and the South Asia Studies Program co-hosted the conference, which was attended by over 250 delegates.

The theme of the conference was 'The Expanding World of Hindi: Possibilities and Challenges', reflecting the growing urgency for coordinated efforts between private and public language education and government communities to expand the quality of the Hindi language and literature education in and out of India.

The conference focussed on status of Hindi literature in Indian Diaspora and on the web, and Hindi story writing.

During the conference, senior Rutgers officials highlighted the growing relationship between the university and various institutions in India.

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Hindi has emerged as the largest Indian languagespoken in the US, with nearly 6.5 lakh people speaking it, according to the latest Census data.

The US Census Bureau based on American Community Survey data collected from 2009 to 2013, said that more than 60 million people in the US speak a language other than English at home, 25 million of whom speak English.

Top languages other than English spoken in US homes include Spanish (with more than 37.4 million speakers), Chinese (about 2.9 million), French (1.3 million), Korean (1.1 million), German (1.1 million), Vietnamese (1.4 million), Arabic (924,573), Tagalog (1.6 million) and Russian (879,434).

India's national language Hindi tops the list from India with nearly 6.5 lakh speakers.

Nearly 4 lakh US residents speak Urdu and Gujarati is spoken by more than 3.7 lakh people. Other than Hindi, all the major Indian languages are also spoken in the US.

While Bengali and Punjabi are spoken by more than 2.5 lakh people each, the Census bureau says Marathi is spoken by more than 73,000 people, Oriya (more than 5,000), Assamese (about 1300) and Kashmiri by about 1700 people in the US.

It has even listed Bihari as a language spoken by nearly 600 people and Rajasthani by about 700.

Nepali is spoken by more than 94,000 people and Sindhi by nearly 9,000.

Nearly 250,000 people speak Telugu while Tamil is spoken by about 190,000 people, Malayalam (about 146,000 people) and Kannada (about 48,000).

Tribal language Munda is spoken by more than 2,000 people and Tibetan by over 16,000.

The data released by Census Bureau yesterday represents the most comprehensive data on languages spoken in the US.

These are the most comprehensive data ever released from the Census Bureau on languages spoken less widely in the US, such as Pennsylvania Dutch, Ukrainian, Turkish, Romanian, Amharic and many others.

Also included are 150 different Native North American languages, collectively spoken by more than 350,000 people, including Yupik, Dakota, Apache, Keres and Cherokee.

"While most of the US population speaks only English at home or a handful of other languages like Spanish or Vietnamese, the American Community Survey released the wide-ranging language diversity of the US," said Erik Vickstrom, a Census Bureau statistician.

"For example, in the New York metro area alone, more than a third of the population speaks a language other than English at home, and close to 200 different languages are spoken.

Knowing the number of languages and how many speak these languages in a particular area provides valuable information to policymakers, planners and researchers," he said.

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