For colloquial comms it is quite usual to use native tongue, in Norwegian in Norway, Dutch in the Netherlands… That has no bearing on situational awareness for others.
Aviathor wrote:
That has no bearing on situational awareness for others.
The trouble is that it becomes a “known unknown.” You know that communication is happening between the aircraft and the ATS unit, but you have no way of knowing whether it is an SA issue or not.
It’s great that the UK is supportive of it’s (minority) languages and that the CAA had to publish a consultation document on airspace changes at (I think) Cardiff in Welsh, just to be sure that those those numerous Welsh – only speaking pilots were included.
Airspace consultations are aimed much more at residents than pilots.
Sorry Timothy it was a weak attempt at humour….
No need to apologise. 
The UK CAA, as an agent of the Union, is obliged by Articles 21 and 22 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights to respect linguistic diversity.
I wonder, though, whether there are more people in the UK who speak Welsh to the exclusion of English than there are, for example, Bengali, Polish, Arabic, Somali, Lithuanian or Romanian?
For over 20 years I have worked with UK residents through interpreters and I have had literally hundreds of each of those languages and never once Welsh.
I wonder what this actually means in practice. Imposing English on airspace users flying IFR (or VFR in airspace where most traffic is IFR) is fine; outside France you can’t really do IFR without speaking English.
Also the Nordic countries speak English generally well and generally willingly – a relative rarity as anyone doing business around Europe will immediately discover
But retaining the capability to use Norwegian for “chit chat” with controllers is an undefined concept, so basically nothing changes.
I thus suspect the portion of the GA community actually affected is insignificant.
As regards Welsh, only the most isolated communities in Wales speak it today. It is used in official communications (and on road signs in Wales) because it is a cost effective way to keep a lid on Welsh nationalism (which in years past has bordered on terrorism). That part of the UK is a huge net consumer of social security funds (I am sure every country has such regions) and there is no simple solution.
I think it is unreasonable to force local VFR pilots in any nation to use English on intra-national flights. Generally, communication in one’s native language will always be better understood, so unless non-native pilots are involved, e.g. at international airports, use of the local language should also have safety benefits.
In Germany use of German R/T is permitted even at most (all?) large airports.
I oppose @MedEwok, in general people using German on the radio are further away from the scripted phraseology than in English and that in my opinion is key for the understanding in this environment. Therefore I see no safety benefit in allowing the native tongue for standard comms on the radio.
But in my opinion we don’t have to forbid the national language, but please officially allow English everywhere! I don’t understand why we have to label so many small airfields de only and I also don’t see why registering an aircraft on the German register requires you to change placards on the instrument panel. You don’t need to be proficient in German to fly this aircraft, so what sense does it make? Same with the placards e.g. on a Cirrus tail where the chute is shot out. Written in German, but this plane can also crash in Spain or Italy.
