By Timothy Brunner

This fall the University expanded its foreign language curriculum to include Punjabi as an option for students.

Punjabi is the official language of the Punjab, a region on the border of Northern India and Eastern Pakistan. There many other places where Punjabi is spoken as a minority language, including Afghanistan, Great Britain, Canada and the United States.

Currently, the University offers one Punjabi class that has seven students enrolled. Due to the lack of enrollment, an additional Saturday class had to be dropped.

The University decided to add Punjabi because it is the language of Sikh Scriptures, part of the recently created Sikh Studies program.

“The Indian subcontinent is such an important region of the world, yet it doesn’t receive the attention it deserves,” Dr. Robert Leonard, chair of the comparative literatures and languages department, said. “We would be doing our students a major disservice if we didn’t teach them about that region of the world.”

The Punjabi class is taught by Dr. Sandeep Singh, who came to the United States from India three years ago. Singh taught in India, before teaching Hindi at New York University. Besides the University, he is also currently teaching at Columbia University.

Students presently enrolled in Punjabi 001 are excited about the new language addition.

“There’s a lot of great music that is Punjabi and I want to be able to understand it better,” Priti Malik, a freshman broadcast journalism major, said.

Malik, who is Punjabi herself, hopes to “learn a little more about my culture.” Bonnie Lender, an undecided freshman, hopes to better understand different accents.

“It’s mind-blowing, they have a whole different alphabet and sound system,” Lender said.

With the addition of Punjabi, the prestige of the University continues to grow.

“One of Hofstra’s strengths is that they teach ten different languages, which is a lot for a university this size,” Leonard said.