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There is a such thing as "English, the lingua franca" no matter how much one tries to will it away. Aviation is a curious industry. English is commonly spoke b
by Zancarius 11y ago
There is a such thing as "English, the lingua franca" no matter how much one tries to will it away.
Aviation is a curious industry. English is commonly spoke between flight crews and ground stations world wide (with few but notable exceptions). Circumstances where the English meaning of a word wasn't well understood by the flight crew or the wrong words were spoken have, on occasion, lead to disaster--Avianca Flight 52 [1] comes to mind, among others.
I simply cannot agree that mutual intelligibility is bad simply on the merit that it somehow creates a "sense of cultural inferiority."
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avianca_Flight_52 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avianca_Flight_52
- kragen 11y agoIt sounds like you're saying that using English as the lingua franca of aviation puts at risk the lives of flight crews for whom English is not a native language, as well as their passengers. This seems like a good example of how English-as-lingua-franca gives special worldwide advantages to native English speakers.
- Zancarius 11y agoNot at all. What I'm suggesting is that having a standard for communication is less likely to put lives at risk. I can't help but wonder if you're invoking Poe's Law by advocating from what is arguably an extremely fringe standpoint. Otherwise, the alternative would be to require air traffic controllers to learn a dozen languages, and then you wind up with an even worse problem than having everyone settle on a single language with codified standards. Didn't the Browser Wars teach you anything? :)