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

pronunciation. Any accent is acceptable but pronunciation must be reasonably clear. The ICAO makes it clear that one’s first language and area they live in will have an influence on pronunciation. This is true for any language. English has pronunciation and accent differences but to a lesser degree than many languages. In any language, proper names can be pronounced differently from one native speaker to another. I recently attended an online course a few weeks ago by Trinity College and they addressed this issue and gave an example of a street in London, Southwark. They commented on a poll done to see how many different pronunciations they could get from native speakers, which included foreign native speakers. They came up with 5 different pronunciations. Londoners could not even agree on the pronunciation. It seems simply made up of two words south and wark but it is pronounced Suth-irk. In these cases, there is a lot of flexibility. The key word to think about is “clear”. Words cannot be muttered, spoken quickly or spoken too slowly as it can render communicating difficult. Any difficulty in communicating will result in a possible misunderstanding. If we exclude other factors such as frequency congestion, static, equipment problems, stress and fatigue that affect ATC communications, we can see it all depends on the speaker. Therefore, what can you do to have a better pronunciation and move from a level 4 to 5? Unfortunately, there is no universal answer for everyone but there are a few things that can help. Listening to films or mini-series in English will tune your ear so that some of stress, rhythm and intonation will

“rub off” on you. It is best to start with subtitles and after a bit of time, remove them and absorb their pronunciation. There is nothing better than authentic speech but films and mini-series are one way, there is no conversation. It is unlikely you will improve your pronunciation while on frequency as you have no time to note the pronunciation in any meaningful way and you are not exactly having a real conversation so join a group with native speakers or seek out private lessons with a native speaker where you can concentrate on pronunciation. As a benefit, you will also improve your fluency so not a bad way to go. Slowing down your rate of speech will also help. Remember, the only difference between level 4 and level 5 is the adverb “sometimes” and “rarely” so with some practice, moving from level 4 to 5 is within your grasp. Challenge yourself and see how far you can go with pronunciation.

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