Originally Posted by
das Uber Soldat
There is absolutely no reason to change the international language of aviation.
I may be SLF but I am also a professional interpreter and translator.
Whatever the language, when humans are involved it is not merely code that will always be processed exactly the same way. I understand ATC procedures are designed to make communications as code-like as possible but so long as people are involved, other factors will come into play. This limitation needs to be understood.
There is nothing more painful in my trade than hearing two native speakers of the same non-English language talk to each other in English. They will never achieve the same degree of communication as in their own native language and there's a degree of unnaturalness about it that is inherently frustrating.
I appreciate the potential benefit of other pilots being able to listen in and spot errors, but I'm asking myself whether that actually happens and how often it is actually useful.
As others have hinted, I invite those on here for whom English is their native language to imagine landing at an airport in an English-speaking country and being required to conduct communications with the ATC in a learned foreign language. Can you see the problem? Language isn't just code.