When we fly foreign carriers, we sometimes question the English ability of their flight attendants. I sometimes wonder about the foreign language ability of UA flight attendants.

A few months ago, I was in an NRT-TPE flight. While there were tons of Taiwanese flight attendants onboard, the person making the announcement spoke terrible mandarin - the person's native language was probably a different dialect. If I did not hear the English version first, I would not understand what the Chinese announcement was. This was an intra-Asia crew based in NRT.

Yesterday, I was on PVG-LAX, SFO based crew. The main FA making the Chinese announcements spoke fluent Mandarin (with Singapore accent). However, two things annoyed me big time. He would always blow into the mic before he started talking and he always used the word Ni-Men (you people) when addressing the passengers on the PA.

Like in some other languages, there are 2 words in Chinese for YOU - NI for the casual form (like the tu in French) or NIN for the respectful form (like the vous in French). It is extremely impolite in a service environment, and on the PA, to use the casual form. To make it worse, he used the plural form - "you people".

Yes, the flight was full of kids going to summer camp, it sounded like he was talking to them

So, I wonder:

1 - what does it take for a US-based UA FA to qualify for a foreign language?
2 - how do they decide who makes the announcement onboard? (You would think the one who speaks the most fluently does but I am sure that is not the way.)
3 - do they make any consideration for dialects/accents of the various languages?
4 - do the have scripts for the standard announcements in the applicable foreign languages/dialects?

Thanks.