Originally Posted by
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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.
I discussed these issues with language certified FA on UA flight SFO-NRT-TPE 3 years ago. She happened to serve in C class the whole trip where I sat, and she was making the announcements in Chinese and Japanese, so we struck up conversation.
1. She mentioned must be "native qualified" -- take test to validate. She is from Taiwan but has many years of Japanese language, so was able to qualify to serve on the whole route in 2 languages.
2. Seniority determines who speak, if more than one language qualified FA
3. Generally mandarin for TPE and China flights, but for HKG they try to get Cantonese speaker.
4. Yes, they read from script.