Council staff receive language lessons

CULTURE: Thi Hong Nhung Nguyen, Carole Brungar, Debbie Christian and Lani Bishop learning Vietnamese. PHOTO: SUPPLIED

The Palmerston North City Council has been receiving voluntary language lessons from International Pacific University New Zealand students to help break down language and cultural barriers.

For five weeks student Francesco Taiyo Takasaka was teaching four front of house staff Japanese, and for the past two weeks student Thi Hong Nhung Nguyen has been teaching four front of house and events staff Vietnamese.

Front of house team leader Debbie Christian said the lessons gave the staff some more confidence when it came to dealing with language and culture anxieties.

"We came up with basic phrases that we could use to help improve relationships, and to help understand what one another was saying.

"The lessons will help us to be more tolerant and helpful as it can bequite difficult to understand if we do not know basic knowledge."

IPUNZ community liaison Joe Rush said PNCC was amazing in the uptake of their offer to facilitate the lessons.

"I know from experience learning a language is not an easy undertaking, so I have a lot of respect for all of the council staff who did the lessons. We hope that all the staff who took the lessons took away a deeper understanding of the target language and culture taught from the students."

IPUNZ hope to continue to branch into more languages as they have many more students who are willing to share their culture and language with the city.

"The lessons helped our students to gain a more in-depth understanding of how the PNCC works and helped them connect with the staff," said Mr Rush.

He said the initiative was one of many projects the IPUNZ would like to do with the PNCC to further build on their relationship, while at the same time doing their part for the community.