Mastering the melody of languages: Poolabala on a mission to create a generation of polyglots

Poola Bala Venkata Prasad picks up a piece of chalk and hums a Japanese tune. Within minutes, the children in his class are chanting the names of 40 body parts in Japanese. No flashcards. No grammar charts. Just a song. “Mothers have always used songs to teach their babies,” he says. “I just applied the same idea to foreign languages.”

Prasad, popularly known as “Poolabala”, who runs Easy Foreign Languages in Vijayawada, speaks eight languages. He is fluent in French, German, Spanish, Italian, Japanese, Korean, and Dutch, in addition to his native Telugu and English. He started his career as an English teacher and picked up French on his own while studying at Andhra University in Visakhapatnam, drawn in by French cinema and music.

That early fascination never left him. It grew into what is known as “hyper-polyglotism,” the ability to speak six or more languages. He believes it builds memory and opens doors that most people do not even know exist. His methods are a clear break from how languages are taught in most schools. He is critical of the reliance on rote learning. “Students spend years studying English and still cannot tell you the different uses of a simple word like ‘that,’” he says. “The system is not working.”

His answer is music and rhythm. A Japanese song that his students sing in class helps them memorize 40 body parts in about five minutes. The same task, done through conventional study, would take a week. In one session, he taught the basics of six languages to 50 children in 15 days. The children later demonstrated their skills on Suman TV. One of his students, a sixth-grade boy named Bharani, memorised 100 poems from Prasad’s Saraswati Satakam. Bharani went on to win the Ugadi Puraskaram in Ongole and then came back asking to learn more languages.

Prasad has written 60 books across six languages. One of them, Polyglotism Level 1, lays out conversational basics and grammar for French, German, Spanish, Italian, English, and Japanese in a six-column format so students can compare all six at once. He has distributed the book and taught from it for free in nearly 100 schools for over a decade. His Telugu work is equally ambitious. “Bharatha Varsha”, his 1265-page poetic composition, is recognized as one of the largest books written in the Telugu language. He wrote it to pass on values related to family and love for the country. He has also written “Indian Sonneteer”, a collection of 200 English sonnets that he completed in four months.

Now Poolabala is planning something larger. He is organising what he describes as the first polyglot conference in this region, tentatively set for July 10 in Amaravati. He wants Minister Nara Lokesh to inaugurate the event and release his multi-lingual textbook. The conference is backed by the International Polyglot Society. The competition at the conference will have three rounds. In the first, participants will be tested on grammar and sentence structure. In the second, they will speak on a topic of their choice while the audience scores them live using an app. The third round is a cultural performance in a foreign language, a song, a poem, or a skit. He wants to distribute about Rs 1.00 lakh as cash prizes among the winners, along with the merit certificates to participants.

His institute, Easy Foreign Languages, has been running since 2010. It offers both online and offline courses. Adults can come to learn a specific language. But Prasad says his real focus is children. “A child who learns music learns languages faster,” he says. “The two are not so different.”