[lg policy] New Zealand: Foreign students mastering Nu Zillund tongue-twisters

[Harold Schiffman]

Foreign students mastering Nu Zillund tongue-twisters
4:00AM Saturday Aug 15, 2009
By Lincoln Tan


Auckland language school has introduced a programme to help
international students speak Kiwi English. Methods used by the New
Zealand Radio Training School to train its broadcasters are being used
to teach foreign students at the National Technology Institute to say
"fush and chups", "fried iggs" and "Nu Zillund". Indonesian student
Fahami al Weny, 24, who was among the first to take the course, said
it had helped him understand New Zealanders better, and hoped he would
be able to speak with a Kiwi accent in future.

Institute director Isaac Phua said: "Many of the international
students have come with the intention of gaining residency and
settling in New Zealand, this learning to speak Kiwi English is one
way we can help them integrate more easily. "The biggest barrier faced
by immigrants and international students seeking employment is their
accent, and a lack of Kiwi experience. The speech training is aimed at
helping make them more employable." Kenneth Leong, national
co-ordinator for International Languages Week, said that while it was
good for international students and immigrants to learn to understand
Kiwi, it also showed how unaccommodating New Zealanders were to
foreign accents.


"It just demonstrates how New Zealand is not open to foreign
languages, or even to those who speak English differently to
themselves," Mr Leong said. A Massey University academic said New
Zealand was "failing badly" in getting Kiwis to learn a foreign
language - and this was affecting the country's ability to trade
internationally and integrate immigrants successfully. Professor Paul
Spoonley, the university's regional director at the College of
Humanities and Social Sciences, said International Languages Week -
being launched in Auckland today - was a timely reminder on the
importance of learning languages "that are important to us globally".

Local Government Minister Rodney Hide will launch International
Languages Week this afternoon in Parnell. "Great trading nations, such
as Singapore, promote languages that are important internationally,
and languages that are spoken by large communities that make up their
societies but, leaving the two official languages aside, we really
don't have anything by way of an official language policy in New
Zealand," Professor Spoonley said. "These people will have an added
economic advantage when they want to do business or seek employment in
a global environment."

He said many New Zealanders thought English was enough because it "is
the language of the internet", but in the "real world" languages such
as Mandarin and Spanish were just as important. "If you want a
practical example of multiculturalism, it would be in the promotion of
multilingualism - but as a country, we still don't seem to value
multilingualism." He said the longer immigrants lived here, the more
likely they were to lose their heritage language.

LANGUAGE BARRIERS

Top seven spoken foreign languages
Chinese: 131,466
Samoan: 81,033
French: 53,757
Hindi: 44,589
Tongan: 29,496
Korean: 26,967
Spanish: 21,645
(source: Statistics New Zealand 2006 Census)

Top seven foreign languages at school

French: 28,245
Japanese: 18,157
Spanish: 10,900
German: 6251
Latin: 2339
Samoan: 2311
Chinese: 1891

(source: Ministry of Education)

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10590937
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