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Bilingual entrepreneur Charles Odlin has a great life - working in bungy jumping ventures in both New Zealand and Japan. Odlin started working in Japan in 1995 after meeting a Kiwi who was setting up that country's first bungy jumping site and needed someone to liaise and interpret for him. This led to roles traveling around Asia and Europe.
"When you do business and live in another country, speaking the local language is going to open up different and better opportunities than if you don't," says Odlin.
New Zealand Trade & Enterprise China market manager, Pat English, who worked in China for seven years for NZTE, agrees. He says his intermediate level of Mandarin made a big difference to his work. Now based in Wellington, he returns regularly to China, where he finds increasing numbers of Chinese-speaking English.
"Kiwis can be on the back foot going into meetings if they're relying wholly on interpreters for information. Knowing some language keeps you in the loop," says English.
He initially worked in China for a private company, returning to New Zealand to enroll in a BA in Chinese and Masters in International Management at Waikato University. "I wanted to not just understand business but the history, culture, people, customs - the whole gambit. But Mandarin is a difficult language to learn because of the pronunciation and tone. It takes about two years full-time to get to a reasonable stage."
Learning a second language is a good investment for future job opportunities, especially if that knowledge is combined with other skills, such as business, science or engineering, he says.
"NZTE liked my commitment to learning Chinese but they also wanted my business experience."
Auckland University of Technology Chinese lecturer, Dr Shanjiang Yu, taught English in China for 10 years before coming to New Zealand for postgraduate study.
"I was surprised Kiwis were so monolinguistic. We see bilingualism as the future, where people speak their mother tongue to express themselves personally and another language for work and business," says Dr Yu. "Currently this is English, but other languages are catching up, such as Chinese, Spanish and some Arabic languages."
Yu points out that the United States has classified Mandarin and Indian as strategic languages.
"With New Zealand located on the Asia/Pacific rim, there is a definite need for an increase in people with languages in this area and I have noticed more recently at AUT that we are seeing an increase in business people studying Mandarin part time."
Tourism Auckland chief executive officer Graeme Osborne, who worked in Beijing between 1999 and 2001, says he was disadvantaged by his lack of language skills.
"Probably 95 per cent of our dealings with Chinese people involved translator and interpreter services. This gave me a different perspective on the need for language capability in business," says Osborne.
He now believes strongly that people seeking business in key offshore markets should be learning that language.
But fluency in a foreign language is important domestically as well, says Osborne. There is a move away from structured tour groups and translator guides to people travelling in a freer, more independent way.
These tourists want to explore more and therefore the tourism industry needs to offer a destination where people have the language capabilities and cultural understanding to connect in meaningful ways with tourists.
"To have people servicing our visitors so they leave highly satisfied, we need people who do more than perform a translation service. We need people who can integrate language skills and an understanding of New Zealand culture with business needs."
As well as Asian languages, there is also a need for European languages, especially Spanish, says Osborne.
Spanish is the most popular language at the School of European Languages and Literature at University of Auckland, followed by German, then French, Italian and Russian, says German associate professor James Bade. "Spanish is a Pacific Rim language and is popular because of South America, particularly Chile."
Bade says enrolments in language are becoming more career-oriented. Typical career destinations for language graduates are roles in foreign affairs, trade, and tourism. "An awful lot of tourists come from Europe, particularly from Switzerland and Germany."
Conjoint degrees are popular, such as a language with commerce, music, sciences or international law.
"French is the language of diplomats so it is a good one for law students."
German is important to commerce students because that country is a leading exporter in Europe and is one of the most widely spoken languages."
But the downfall to the promotion of learning a foreign language may be with teachers.
The Government may be promoting language classes in high schools, but the question of where all the skilled language teachers come from has yet to be answered.
