172driver wrote:
IMHO this is also why English should be the only language used in aviation. You know what to expect, even if your own commandf of it is limited.
That did not do much good in the incident related in the OP, did it?
I been wondering if (good) non-native speakers of English are more tolerant to accented pronunciation than native speakers?
Probably true, because I can’t make out much of it.
However there is a fair bit of noise on the audio, too. It is also heavily distorted. That’s unusual in real life.
I’ve just checked the PC speakers with some music and they are great.
Justine has just listened to it and agrees most of it is illegible. For example the ATCO’s transmission around 3:01 is unreadable.
Aviathor wrote:
That did not do much good in the incident related in the OP, did it?
No, it didn’t, but having RT in several languages concurrently makes it worse. Constantly switching between languages (as controllers in Spain and France do) is simply a recipe for fatigue and thus disaster. In a former life I worked as interpreter and translator and am therefore used to do this, but believe me, after a day of interpreting you are worn out. And I didn’t have to keep airplanes from flying into each other!
The fact is, that you can f*ck up in any language, but as with everything in aviation, you should try to minimize the failure points.
To avoid a possible issue with my YT player, I have just downloaded the video, loaded it into Vegas, extracted the mp3, and it’s the same. Heavily distorted and a lot of noise. She can pronounce well and this shows in places, but much of the time she mumbles. I would not be able to manage at that airport if I got this in my headset. I would have to ask “say again slowly”.
It would be interesting to hear from other native-UK pilots… a few hundred of them read EuroGA daily.
It’s very bad to call me “arrogant”. It’s a fact that (say) English spoken by (say) a German national will probably have a particular accent. Consequently, Germans will have had exposure to that accent. A UK person will generally not, and the accent may sound almost like a foreign language. That’s what we are seeing here. A Swiss national (Tom) can understand her. I can’t, mostly. Who knows what that GA pilot heard? Just about anything is possible.
I have just listened to the video (native English speaker and professional pilot) and had no issue understanding anything except the two to three obviously inaudible or distorted transmissions. She sounded perfectly clear to me.
There is an issue with tuning one’s ear to accented English – not so much I found the pronunciation but the cadence of speech can be very confusing. When I lived in Italy I found it hard to get used to the way some controllers spoke English, as words that would be spoken rapidly natively were pronounced slower and in their constituent syllables.
I agree the Geneva video is fine. Completely understandable from ATC’s perspective.
(UK South-East) English is my mother tongue, and I found the Geneva lady incomprehensible for the first second or so, but then perfectly clear once I had “got” her accent. The first time I met a Geordie the same thing happened but it took a few minutes ;-) A retired RAF controller I used to know (he did my PPL radio test) said in practice on a first transmission he would often stick in a non-standard “Good Morning” or equivalent, just to let people hear his voice before he got on to the important stuff.
At a busy airfield like Geneva, pilots would have heard the controller many, many times before they got close to a runway hold, so I wouldn’t think her accent was the problem. And even if it was, you ask for a repeat, confirm the clearance is for you, etc. It’s not like they were waiting for gaps in a torrent of traffic. I found the shorter bursts from other pilots harder to follow than the controller. Ironically, I often found the Aer Lingus significantly clearer than the Speedbird.
But you make a good point about who heard what. I suppose those are ATC tapes, and reflect what the controller sounded like in the tower and what she heard, but who knows what anybody else heard.
Bear in mind liveatc is not a complete record of exactly what was going on on a particular frequency, as their receivers are not always well sited and they monitor several frequencies and miss transmissions.
It would be interesting to hear from other native-UK pilots… a few hundred of them read EuroGA daily.
Well, not a UK pilot, but an native English speaker ;)
I’d no problem understanding the controller, but I speak a little French, so am a little more used to the accent.
Having said that, on the trips that I’ve gone with you, you’ve always managed to understand the contollers accent far better than I have! So this one is curious.
If I was to take a guess, I’d say that we probably get used to accents in the context that we hear them. In your case, through a headset. It would be an interesting experiment…..I’d suspect that you’d hear it much clearer if you listened though your headset, which is the context that you’re used to hearing French ATC accents.
DavidS wrote:
I suppose those are ATC tapes
This is very unlikely, the best you get is usually a transcript of them in the incident report. It sounds more like a recording off someones receiver on the frequency.
