Assistenza Al Volo - ANNO XLV - NUMERO 3/2020
AVIATION ENGLISH BITE a cura di Michael Ferrario
The ICAO defines pronunciation for level 4 as “Pronunciation, stress, rhythm, and intonation are influenced by the first language or regional variation but only sometimes interfere with ease of understanding “and level 5 as, “Pronunciation, stress, rhythm, and intonation, though influenced by the first language or regional variation, rarely interfere with ease of understanding”. Pronunciation is an integral part of speaking a language. The better you are at it, the less chance of hearing “say again”. Stress is a key to good pronunciation in English as most words carry a stress. Nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs usually always carry a stress. Prepositions on the other hand do not or are not stressed very much. These “grammatical” words help the sentence to “stick” together. They also include articles, conjunctions, and pronouns. English is a “stress-timed” language whereas Italian is a “syllable-timed” language. Rhythm refers to your timing between words, the movement of your words so it is a byproduct of stress. It is how all the words flow together. You want to be as natural as possible
so there are certain aspects of rhythm worth noting, such as losing sounds in contractions, linking sounds between words and assimilation, which refers to the suppression of a final unstressed vowel immediately before another word beginning with a vowel. Intonation is the rise and fall of your voice so the pitch. It is usually confused with tone. The difference is not always simple to hear but a good example of intonation is when you are asking a question especially the negative form of a question like, “Aren’t you happy?”. You must intone my voice to make it clear that it is a question and not a statement. While on the other hand, tone has to do with attitude. That is why your parents would have used the phrase, “Watch your tone” when you coped an attitude with them. I left pronunciation for the last since it is a tricky thing. One should not confuse it with accent. Pronunciation has to do with how clear the sound of a word is, while accent has to do with how you actually say the word. They can frequently go hand in hand. So if you accent is strong, it will affect your
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