Sinjoro Eng makes the case for Esperanto in the aviation industry.
How do you feel when you are on the road? My late mother used to say: ‘Sailing the boat and riding the horse, you have only 30% of life in your hands’.
Certainly, she was quoting my grandparents and again, we passed the same saying to the young ones, to caution them to be careful on the road.
We see fewer accidents in the air than on the road, and this is no doubt due to the strictly regulated system in place to prevent them from happening. One of the mechanisms in place involve the monitoring of the air traffic by controllers.
English language is not an easy language to learn compared to Esperanto. The accuracy and the use of non-synonyms in Esperanto would give the air traffic controllers and the pilots less stress when decoding the language from one mother tongue to another. Besides, the different nationalities have different accents, these would be a burden to non-native speakers of English. Do you think all Americans understand the accents from different states in the United States?
The lack of accuracy between language translations could have been one issue for air traffic control.
Even though they have admitted it at some point and many people, including the passengers are still unwilling to support the call of the Esperanto movement to use Esperanto in the aviation industry.
These short films demonstrate how the native speakers and non-native speakers of English were facing problems in communication. That split-second decision could lead many to the road of no return.
If you feel like aviation could benefit from a common language, do join the Esperanto movement to petition for the change of aviation language
Here are some of the articles you might like to read. In the time of technology, are we still wanting more tragedies to happen due to the stubbornness of the linguistic ego ?
- Language in aviation: The relevance of linguistics and relevance theory
- Is ICAO Level 4 English Enough to Ensure International Air Safety?
- Lack of English Proficiency Nearly Dooms Polish Airliner
Warning: The following videos may feature death and trauma.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F-hYBgBkHJA
Featured image from Universala Esperanto-Asocio
Actually, this has been a big problem here too in Sweden. Even though everyone supposedly knows English, the fact is that between Finland, Sweden and Russia they certainly don't normally know it well enough – which has lead to not only crashes, but lots of general miscommunication. For example, a Russian boat can't understand the warnings, or planes from all three countries are flying to help fight a fire and there are troubles, or the Finns end up speaking Finnish and no one understands…