> From: Matthew Law <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > My sentiment was that there have also been many accidents caused by ATC > talking in a foreign language (English) to another pilot who also doesn't > speak English as a first language.
It's a lot worse than that, for simultaneous use of languages, actually. Taking the Californias as an example: * American, a derivative of English, used by locals (changes by state) * English, used by visitors from the UK, with different terminology * ICAO, a subset of English with restricted vocabulary and grammar * FAA, a merging of American and ICAO into something for U.S. controllers * Mexican, a derivative of Spanish, used for domestic activities in Mexico * Far east english, the vocabulary of American with a _very_ strong accent Mexican is not used in the U.S. airspace (except for some types of emergency). The only one of those _I_ can reliably speak and understand is the fourth one. I can usually manage the first one, until someone uses a colloquialism etc, but the other three are simply an emergency waiting to happen to someone. It is not funny (except in retrospect) to be sharing airspace with someone whose accented english is so unintelligible that the only way to understand the transmission is to watch what the aircraft does and think it through. Similarly, having someone in a UK accent announce a maneuver, after which there is a long silence on frequency till someone finally asks "what's that?" and gets back the official ICAO description which is equally unhelpful to all. I know for a fact that I cannot speak ICAO; I'd have to take the course first. It's very hard to avoid using grammar and/or vocabulary that is not approved. I'm tempted to say that the international pilot community would benefit most if FGFS were very fluent in ICAO and, when we type or speech recognize pilot responses back to the simulator, the ATC module rejects noncompliant usages. As far as catching mistakes is concerned, most problems will still be detected. Also, in many cases where multiple versions of english are in use at once, there is more than one user of each version on frequency at any given time. That enables someone else to spot the developing situation and announce it. _______________________________________________ Flightgear-devel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.flightgear.org/mailman/listinfo/flightgear-devel
