Plans to turn Auckland into trilingual city

Half the children starting school in Auckland do not have English as a first language. Photo / Glenn Jeffrey

A language strategy launched today will have an ambitious aim to turn Auckland into a trilingual city.

"We would like everyone to be proficient in Te Reo Maori, English and at least one other language," said AUT's head of the School of Language and Culture Sharon Harvey, who is one of the speakers at the launch.

The Auckland Languages Strategy is an initiative of the Auckland Community Education Trust (Comet) with support from Auckland Council.

Half the children starting school in Auckland do not have English as a first language, and the figure is projected to be two out of three by 2030.

And more than 162 schools in New Zealand have no European Kiwi students.

"Auckland is one of the most linguistically and ethnically diverse cities in the world. We currently have no macro coordination or coherence around the situation," said Dr Harvey.

"We are not explicit about what we value about languages and cultures nor how we view multilingualism."

People from more than 200 different ethnic groups who speak 160 different languages now call Auckland home.

Te Reo Maori is the second most widely spoken language in New Zealand after English, followed by Samoan and Hindi.

Dr Harvey said "new superdiverse times" required new strategies to ensure peace, equity, access and prosperity.

The Auckland strategy, she said, was the next best thing to a national policy.

"We believe New Zealand needs a national languages policy addressing the full language environment across all policy fields," Dr Harvey said.

"But in the absence of that, we would like to work at the city level to do what is possible to recognise, utilise and improve the multilingual repertoire of all our citizens."

She said citizens of many other countries were raised and educated to speak three or more languages.

Councillor George Wood will launch the Auckland Languages Strategy just after 2pm at the University of Auckland.

Other speakers at the launch event include Superdiversity Stocktake report author Mai Chen and Comet chief executive Susan Warren.