I’m curious why there are so many French words describing aircraft parts? Fuselage, empennage, aileron and pitot to name a few. Yet other words, rudder, elevator, stabilizer, and wing are common English words.
Why did this come about?
At the beginning of the 20th century, and previous decades French was the major language, and as a very rich major nation they not only invented a lot of stuff, but got to determine — centre of civilisation an’ all that — use of stuff invented by their neighbours by their quick adoption of tech.
Same thing happened with automobiles: car ( from carre, although previously adapted by English for massive chariots ), chauffeur, garage, coupe, cabriolet etc. etc… Automobiles contra Obama came from Germany.
Also, France was a *very *important location for early aviation development. Santos Dumont invented HTA powered flight separately in 1904 (the Wrights figured out the theory of flight control better, though), Blériot was the first to cross the English channel by airplane (and on a monoplane!), etc. While in the USA the Wrights were overprotective of their invention and along with the whole rest of the would-be industry got mired in a patent war over every last possible variation on the theme of a flying machine, that only ended when wartime needs led the US Government to say “cut that out, all of you”. When the Americans went to the air during WW1 they used mostly French hardware.
Everything sounds better in French.
At least according to James Thurber, who claimed he was having his entire library translated into French because “they lose something in the original.”
Ailerons at least were invented in France (decades before being used on aircraft). The Wrights used wing-warping for the same effect and thus didn’t have any influence on that aspect of flight control.
Seems like the non-French terms were mostly ones that had obvious previous analogues; rudders from ships, wings from birds, etc.
Stabilize® is of French origin, and elevat(e/or) is of Romance, e.g. Latin origin. They’re just more established as words independent of aviation, although I’d argue that fuselage is somewhat established (I’d have to google to find out what a pitot or empennage is though. And the Firefox dictionary doesn’t recognize them).
If it’s any comfort, I do believe English is generally the International Language of Air Traffic Control. At least once you’re out of the former USSR.
To be fair, the pitot tube is named after its inventor, it’s not an ordinary French word…
empennage is French for fletching (which is also not in the standard Firefox dic :))
The aviation definition of “empennage” is the tail assembly of the airplane.
If I recall correctly, back when nations were trying to settle on an international language for air traffic control French came in second place to English, and it was a fairly close finish.
By the way - the English word “pilot” is also of French origin.
So is the often-misspelled “hangar”.
I suspect that a big bit of it is that the design the Wrights used (called a “canard” by the French) turned out not to be nearly as effective as the designs pioneered by the French.
If I understand it correctly, the Wrights eschewed the French design because it’s unstable and can stall. With the Wright design, this won’t happen. But that advantage comes with a lot of problems that weren’t solved very well until decades later. So, the modern basic design comes from the French plan, and it makes sense we use the same words they did.
My understanding is that even in the USSR, airports used English. At least, that’s according to a friend who’s a pilot and intrepid traveler who crossed Russia on the Trans-Siberian Railroad back in the 80’s.
The Wrights sued everyone they could; only Glenn Curtis stood up to them. That pushed aviation development out of the US, and the French were responsible for the first ten years or so of aviation development. Hence the proliferation of French words.
The US didn’t regain anything resembling a lead in aviation until well into WWII.
Nacelle.
“Pitot” is named for it’s inventor, Henri Pitot, and is a device for measuring fluid velocity. In the context of aviation, it’s used for airspeed measurement. And yes, M. Pitot was French.
Par avion, as it says on envelopes for international mail. Isn’t French still the international language for transport and international relations? My Australian passport carries a French translation in it.
No, English is more used in settings in which people do not all have the same primary language, but French is still one of the most spoken languages in the world.
In every country, both commercial and general aviation pilots are supposed to speak English to air traffic control (ATC) when flying in controlled airspace – even for local flights within that country.
At first it seems illogical – why would the native pilot of a Cessna in Mexico or Germany have to speak English to his local ATC? Because if he’s traveling in controlled airspace he must be able to verbally interact with ATC and all other pilots in that region from all other countries must be able to hear and understand him. What if there were French, Russian, or Italian pilots in the air in that ATC region? Even small planes travel long distances and you can’t “just hope” that the pilots of all aircraft in a region can speak the local language – not when lives are at stake.
Voice communication is critical to air safety, and hundreds if not thousands of lives have been lost in air crashes due to poor verbal communication, often from language issues.
In Quebec, pilots are allowed to speak French to the air traffic controllers. It was a big fight a couple decades ago. On one side, why should a private pilot be required to speak English just to fly? On the other side, it would be safer if other pilots in the air could hear all instructions being given. I don’t actually credit the latter argument. I used to fly with my brother, a private pilot, and I don’t ever recall him listening in on another pilot’s instructions. He would have to retune his radio and then quickly get back to his assigned frequency for his own instructions.
I think World War I was a factor. Nothing advances a technology like a desire to kill people with it. So WWI pushed aviation technology forward and Britain and America followed the lead of France, which was the dominant military power.