<div dir="ltr">
<h1 class="gmail-h1">Do We Need a Single International Language in Space?</h1>
<div class="gmail-byline">
By <span class="gmail-author">Elizabeth Howell, Space.com Contributor</span> |
<time datetime="June 13, 2018 07:29am ET"> June 13, 2018 07:29am ET</time>
</div>
<div class="gmail-pure-g gmail-mod">
<div class="gmail-pure-u-1 gmail-pure-u-md-1 gmail-pure-u-lg-1-8">
<div class="gmail-placeholder" style="visibility: hidden;"></div><div id="gmail-stickyShare" class="gmail-gtmStickyShare gmail-static gmail-fixed" style="width:79px">
<ul>
<li class="gmail-st_facebook_custom gmail-fa gmail-fa-facebook">
<span id="gmail-fbCount" class="gmail-count">0</span>
</li>
<li class="gmail-st_twitter_custom gmail-fa gmail-fa-twitter">
<span id="gmail-twtrCount" class="gmail-count">0</span>
</li>
<li class="gmail-st_flipboard_custom gmail-svg-flipboard gmail-fa">
<span id="gmail-flipboardCount" class="gmail-count"></span>
</li>
<li class="gmail-st_reddit_custom gmail-fa gmail-fa-reddit">
<span id="gmail-redditCount" class="gmail-count"></span>
</li>
<li class="gmail-st_stumbleupon_custom gmail-fa gmail-fa-stumbleupon">
<span id="gmail-stumbleCount" class="gmail-count"></span>
</li>
<li class="gmail-st_sharethis_custom gmail-st-more gmail-more-arrow">MORE</li>
</ul>
</div>
</div>
<div class="gmail-pure-u-1 gmail-pure-u-md-1 gmail-pure-u-lg-7-8 gmail-article gmail-article-body gmail-article">
<div class="gmail-mod gmail-top-mod gmail-partner-banner">
<a href="http://www.space.com/newsletter?utm_source=sp-skywatching-artilce&utm_medium=partner-banner&utm_content=spaceflight&utm_campaign=subscribe"><img src="https://img.purch.com/o/aHR0cDovL3d3dy5zcGFjZS5jb20vaW1hZ2VzL2kvcGFydG5lcnMvMzIvb3JpZ2luYWwvc2RjLXN1YnNjcmliZS1wYXJ0bmVyLWJhbm5lci1zcGFjZWZsaWdodC5qcGc/MTQ4MzA1MTY2MQ==" alt="Partner Series"></a>
</div>
<figure class="gmail-figure gmail-article-hero">
<div class="gmail-magnify-wrapper gmail-iZoom gmail-img-zoom-in">
<img class="gmail-pure-img" src="https://img.purch.com/w/660/aHR0cDovL3d3dy5zcGFjZS5jb20vaW1hZ2VzL2kvMDAwLzA3Ny8wNDkvb3JpZ2luYWwvZGVzdGlueS1sYWItaXNzLmpwZw==" alt="Do We Need a Single International Language in Space?">
</div>
<figcaption class="gmail-fig-cap" id="gmail-nointelliTXT">
<div class="gmail-fig-desc">The Destiny laboratory on the International Space Station.</div>
<cite class="gmail-fig-credit">Credit: NASA</cite>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<div class="gmail-article-content" style="display:block;width:auto;height:auto">
<p>
Nowadays, most humans leaving Earth must do so through Russian
territory. Space fliers ride on a Russian Soyuz spacecraft, which <a href="https://www.space.com/40803-international-space-station-crew-launch-expedition-56.html">lifts off from a special parcel of Russian territory</a>
in Kazakhstan. Their spacecraft mission is commanded by a Russian
citizen and a large chunk of their destination — the International Space
Station — has modules and operations in Russian, too.</p>
<p>
This means that all astronauts going to the ISS, no matter how many
languages they speak, also need to learn Russian. And astronauts and
cosmonauts all over the world need to learn at least some English to
work with NASA. English is a challenging language for foreigners to
learn.</p>
<p>
Do we need an international space language? Experts say it may be time
to consider it, especially since the ISS could run out of funding and <a href="https://www.space.com/36179-congress-international-space-station-beyond-2024.html">wrap up operations in the 2020s</a> and the space world is changing rapidly. China is a strong space power that may in the future <a href="https://www.space.com/40727-china-space-station-united-nations-experiments.html">partner with the Europeans</a>,
at the least. And countries all over the world have talked about
landing humans on Mars, another huge effort that would likely require
international collaboration to succeed. [<a href="https://www.space.com/40835-soyuz-rocket-launch-life-changing-experience.html">Baikonur Reflections: The Life-Changing Experience of Witnessing a Soyuz Rocket Launch</a>]</p><div id="gmail-in-article-1" style="display:block;width:auto;height:auto"><div id="gmail-google_ads_iframe_/10518929/tmn.sdc/article/spaceflight/a0-p1-s9_1__container__" style="border:0pt none;display:block;width:auto;height:auto"><div style="min-width:100%;width:1px;margin:0px;padding:0px;height:0px;clear:both"></div><div id="gmail-div_b5391db2870f4f068c0808f9a94347bc_1" class="gmail-sprkflw_main gmail-sprkflw_default" style="width:1px;height:92.2139px;display:block;vertical-align:top;padding:0px;margin:0px auto;border:0px none;overflow:visible;text-align:start;min-width:553.283px;min-height:92.2139px"><div id="gmail-div_b5391db2870f4f068c0808f9a94347bc_1_0" style="width:1px;height:1px;display:inline-block;vertical-align:top;padding:0px;margin:0px;border:0px none;max-width:none;text-align:start;background-position:263.533px bottom;background-size:600px auto;background-image:url("//sparkflow-a.akamaihd.net/spk/795/45154-1522077898/background.jpg");min-width:100%;min-height:100%"><div id="gmail-moatPxDiv769886" style="width:0px;height:0px"></div><div id="gmail-moatPxDiv597713" style="width:0px;height:0px"></div><div id="gmail-moatPxDiv607774" style="width:0px;height:0px"></div><div id="gmail-moatPxDiv87349" style="width:0px;height:0px"></div></div></div></div></div>
<h2 class="gmail-nolinks">
How hard is Russian, anyway?</h2>
<p>
</p><div class="gmail-jw-loaded" style="height:311px"><div id="gmail-jw-1528900721391-position" class="gmail-jw-player-position"></div></div>
<p></p>
<p>
The U.S. State Department's Foreign Service Institute <a href="https://www.state.gov/m/fsi/sls/c78549.htm">has a scale for English speakers</a>
to understand the difficulty of learning another language. The
department ranks Russian among several "Category II" languages, such as
Greek, Icelandic and Croatian, with "significant linguistic and/or
cultural differences from English. To reach a reasonable level of
fluency in Russian, students can expect to spend 1,100 class hours —
plus many hours of individual study time. That compares to between 575
and 600 hours for languages such as French, Spanish, Dutch and
Afrikaans.</p>
<p>
Even astronauts speak about the Russian language's difficulty. Denmark's first astronaut, Andreas Mogensen, once said that <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aD9v-tS1n3M">learning Russian was his biggest challenge</a>
as he trained for an International Space Station mission. Former NASA
astronaut Bonnie Dunbar also described the difficulties of learning
Russian as she prepared to live on Russia's <a href="https://www.space.com/19650-mir-space-station.html">Mir space station</a>.
For her first six months of training, although "you knew the answer,
you didn't know how to say it in Russian. For about six months, I felt
like a small child," she said in an interview <a href="https://history.nasa.gov/SP-4225/bilingual/bb.htm">published on NASA's website</a>.</p>
<p>
The NASA astronauts participating in Mir in the 1990s had varying
levels of language training, and tended to do better with more exposure
to Russian, said Megan Ansdell, a postdoctoral fellow in planetary
sciences at the University of California, Berkeley. She wrote <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0265964611001329">a 2012 Space Policy paper</a>
exploring the merits of an international language in space. "The
astronauts often complained of insufficient language training, and all
agreed that better Russian proficiency was necessary for safe operations
on the Mir," she told Space.com by email. </p>
<p>
"Another issue was communication with ground crews, which only spoke
English or Russian; this led to operational inefficiencies, such as the
need to repeat multiple communications with ground crew or
miscommunication of information when working through translators."</p>
<p>
The situation is much better for today's NASA astronauts, who receive
years of training in Russian and even participate in home stays with
Russian families to become more familiar with the language. But having
two ISS languages brings operational inefficiencies, Ansdell said. "This
has worked, but led to concerns about safety and efficiency/costs of
station operations due to reliance on translators at mission control
centers. Additionally, the implicit requirement to know both English and
Russian can limit the workforce pool for space station partners whose
first language is neither," she said. [<a href="https://www.space.com/31999-mir-space-station-30th-anniversary.html">30 Years Later: The Legacy of the Mir Space Station</a>]</p>
<h2 class="gmail-nolinks">
Choosing another language</h2>
<p>
</p><div class="gmail-jw-loaded" style="height:311px"><div id="gmail-jw-1528900721462-position" class="gmail-jw-player-position"></div></div>
<p></p>
<p>
But choosing another tongue to speak isn't all that simple. The ISS is
governed in part by memorandums of agreement in which English is usually
the operating language, although there are notable exceptions (such as
when inside the Russian Soyuz spacecraft). Astronauts can operate in
their native tongue in space when speaking with their own ground
personnel, but they need to know at least enough English "to get by,"
said Michael Dodge, an assistant professor at the University of North
Dakota who specializes in space law and policy.</p>
<p>
"Choosing an international space language could easily fall into one of
two pathways. It could, for instance, become a thorny issue mired in
geopolitical matters. Or, it could be much easier than one would think,
as there are precedents in place already for a variety of space
missions," he told Space.com by email.</p>
<p>
"There is already international precedent in the choosing of a single
language for operational necessity, in both aviation and in space. In
aviation, the ICAO [International Civil Aviation Organization] has
already recommended, and since continued to study, the use of English as
the so-called language of aviation. The reason behind this is that
having all operators, from the ATC [air traffic control] personnel to
pilots and onboard crew, all speaking the same language, increases their
ability to do their jobs safely. There have been incidents where a
language barrier has contributed to accidents and fatalities."</p>
<p>
Even if a location such as the ISS has an official language, it is OK to use other ones, he noted; several <a href="https://www.space.com/33440-space-law.html">space law treaties</a> (including the Outer Space Treaty and the Moon Agreement) say there are several equally valid legal languages for spaceflight.</p>
<p>
Dodge added that on the ISS, it's unlikely that if a new major
participant came on board (such as China) that there would be a large
change in language policy, mainly because of these safety reasons. But
Chinese could be the language of choice in other situations, he said. </p>
<p>
On a Chinese-led Mars mission, for example, participation by other
nations may include a requirement to speak in Mandarin or Cantonese.
"Practically, however, with English being used already in cooperative
international arrangements like the ISS, it feels most likely that it
would be chosen for the language of space, in much the same way as it is
for the language of aviation," Dodge said.</p>
<p>
While there is still a lot of debate about which language to use,
Ansdell advocates talking to the astronauts to decide which language is
best for safety as well as the comfort of the crew. As space crews move
farther out in the solar system, they will feel more isolated and
language will be even more important, she said.</p>
<p>
"One thing that struck me while looking back through these issues was
the social aspect of language," Ansdell said. "Language clearly impacted
crew integration: when you can't communicate sufficiently, you're
isolated, and that's not a good thing on a long-term space mission to
Mars. Also, the further you get from Earth, the longer the delay in
communication back to the ground; this is a fact that we simply cannot
get around, making it even more important for communication to be as
efficient as possible."</p>
<p>
<em>Follow us <a href="http://twitter.com/spacedotcom">@Spacedotcom</a>, <a href="http://www.facebook.com/pages/Spacecom/17610706465">Facebook</a> and <a href="https://plus.google.com/b/109556515093730290049/109556515093730290049">Google+</a>. Original article on <a href="https://www.space.com/40864-international-language-of-space.html">Space.com</a></em></p></div></div></div>
<br clear="all"><br>-- <br><div class="gmail_signature" data-smartmail="gmail_signature">=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+<br><br> Harold F. Schiffman<br><br>Professor Emeritus of <br> Dravidian Linguistics and Culture <br>Dept. of South Asia Studies <br>University of Pennsylvania<br>Philadelphia, PA 19104-6305<br><br>Phone: (215) 898-7475<br>Fax: (215) 573-2138 <br><br>Email: <a href="mailto:haroldfs@gmail.com" target="_blank">haroldfs@gmail.com</a><br><a href="http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/~haroldfs/" target="_blank">http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/~haroldfs/</a> <br><br>-------------------------------------------------</div>
</div>