English in aviation

[Heliport]

Some imput from ATCOs would be welcome (and useful) on this thread - When declaring an 'Emergency' is not enough (http://www.pprune.org/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=187407)

Thanks

Heliport

[niknak]

It would be interesting to know how many non European ATCOs whose first language is not English speak anything other than technical English, i.e. standard phaseology to get the job done.

I know that most people (except the Brit's :rolleyes: ) make an effort to learn a little more than the essentials if they have to use a second language for work, but even if they did, I wouldn't expect them to be fluent and understand everything when used in a technical environment.

Under the circumstances to which this thread pertains, the ATCOs concerned could not be blamed.
It was the failure of the B757 crew to use standard phraseology and their airline's training/standards departments failure to adhere to proper procedures, led to them not recieving the priority that they would otherwise have got.

[Scott Voigt]

Mayday and Pan have always been in our phraseology, however so has Emergency. Being that we are more or less english speaking (what my British friends tell me <G>.) our flight crews speak much to much in everyday chatter. It is getting worse and not better either. But when you fly mainly in a place where everyone more or less understands each other and speaks the same language it makes it much easier to fall into that trap.

regards

Scott

[Lon More]

Luckily this problem never arose during my professional career. I was in a multi-lingual environment, and although English was our working language,there always seemed to be someone around with a knowledge of almost every European language plus a few outside the region.

There have been cases where even a knowledge of "technical" English is not enough, viz. the Mexican (?) who crashed in New York after running out of fuel, but not making it clear to ATC; and the case where the last words on the CVR, after a terrain warning, were, "Shut up, gringo."

[longarm]

Think the New York one was Avianca (Colombia).

[Crashed&Burned]

Don't worry, the EU has the answer:

The European Commission has just announced an agreement whereby English will be the official language of the European Union rather than German, which was the other possibility.

As part of the negotiations, the British Government conceded that English spelling had some room for improvement and has accepted a 5- year phase-in plan that would become known as "Euro-English".

In the first year, "s" will replace the soft "c". Sertainly, this will make the sivil servants jump with joy.

The hard "c" will be dropped in favour of "k". This should klear up konfusion, and keyboards kan have one less letter.

There will be growing publik enthusiasm in the sekond year when the troublesome "ph" will be replaced with "f". This will make words like fotograf 20% shorter.

In the 3rd year, publik akseptanse of the new spelling kan be expekted to reach the stage where more komplikated changes are possible.

Governments will enkourage the removal of double letters which have always ben a deterent to akurate speling.

Also, al wil agre that the horibl mes of the silent "e" in the languag is disgrasful and it should go away.

By the 4th yer people wil be reseptiv to steps such as replasing "th" with "z" and "w" with "v".

During ze fifz yer, ze unesesary "o" kan be dropd from vords kontaining "ou" and after ziz fifz yer, ve vil hav a reil sensibl riten styl.

Zer vil be no mor trubl or difikultis and evrivun vil find it ezi tu understand ech oza. Ze drem of a united urop vil finali kum tru.

Und efter ze fifz yer, ve vil al be speking German like zey vunted in ze forst plas.

[NeoDude]

LMAO! Sweet. :ok:

[Gisajob]

Hey Crashed and Burnt

I have not laughed so much in weeks. Well done ...but is it original ??

Gisajob