Is there any real advantage to being Bilingual?

[adam02]

If you could learn another language to that would be advantageous in aviation what would it be?

What would be the most advantageous language to know to work within Europe?

I've got time.:ok:

[Whirlygig]

Spanish.

Cheers

Whirls

[ReverseFlight]

English is of course the pre-requisite.

If you could learn another language to that would be advantageous in aviation what would it be?

The language of the country you're working in. If that happens to be English, then the second most popular (eg USA = Spanish).

What would be the most advantageous language to know to work within Europe?

If all the European languages were evenly split, I'd go for French - comprenez-vous ? At least you'll be able to read an original Airbus/Eurocopter manual ! :ok:

[A320rider]

arab!

the futur is there...

[hollingworthp]

German - in my sector (bizjets) there are prob more jobs right now requiring fluent german than any other language.

[Denti]

If you ask about a second language for europe you have to define which europe you mean. In any case the biggest native speaker language group in the EU-europe is german with 93 million native speakers, second is english with around 61 million native speakers followed by french (59) and italian (58) with spanish being a distant 5th if you include catalan with 39 native speakers.

If you count in the other parts of europe, especially native russian speakers, you would find that the biggest native speaker language group in europe is russian.

Well, that doesn't really help at all since russia is pretty much a closed market for pilots, however french, german or italian should be good choices, if you want to work worldwide including south america spanish is the natural choice, arab could be interesting if you want to work in the middle east.

BTW, sorry for my poor english, it is just a secondary or tertiary language for me...

[redsnail]

French is useful for Africa as well as France (obviously).

[ReverseFlight]

I would add that in certain parts of the world, being bilingual is just not enough - you should ideally be multi-lingual.

This goes for Central/Eastern Europe, SE Asia, Middle East and parts of Africa.

[A320rider]

more important to have the nationality of the country!

[johnnyDB]

most europeans speaks pretty good english anyway, except for the french, spanish, portugees and italians. so if you want to be able to find your way through europe, know english and one of the latin languages.

[Dane-Ger]

more important to have the nationality of the country!
Not strictly true, I have a couple of part time flying jobs in a country where I am a non-national, but you are right, in that, speaking the native language of the country you live in, is a must.

regards D-G