ICAO English Mistakes by First Language: Hindi, Telugu, Tamil, Arabic, Tagalog, Vietnamese

How a first-language habit costs a level

The ICAO rating scale does not mark accents. It marks interference. The Level 4 pronunciation descriptor, as reproduced by test providers (ICAO Annex 1 and Doc 9835; icao.int could not be fetched this week), accepts pronunciation influenced by the first language that "only sometimes interfere[s] with ease of understanding"; at Level 3 it "frequently interfere[s]". The difference between the two is not how Indian, Arab or Vietnamese you sound. It is whether the examiner, and the controller or pilot at the other end, can write down the number, the call sign and the instruction first time. This page lists, language by language, the habits that in our judgement most often turn an acceptable accent into an ambiguous transmission, and for each one gives the fix and a drill. Every habit is a tendency, not a rule: first-language transfer makes it likely, not certain, and the only way to know whether it is yours is to record twenty call signs and listen back.

Two further points shape the page. First, the six skills are rated separately and your overall level is the lowest, so a sound habit that costs you pronunciation and a grammar habit from the same language that costs you structure are two separate risks; each section lists both. Second, the test is plain English, not phraseology. The TEA page says the test covers "plain English in an aviation context for licensing purposes" and is "not a test of aviation phraseology", and the ELPAC site rates a live speaking paper with two assessors and "no compensatory marking". Habits that stay hidden inside memorised phrases appear the moment you improvise, which is exactly when the examiner is listening hardest. The rating scale page has the full descriptors; this page is about the sounds and structures that move you across the Level 3 and 4 line.

The numbers and call signs that break first

Before the language sections, the shared ground. The ICAO spoken forms for the digits, as printed in the UK CAA's CAP 413 radiotelephony manual (Edition 24, Table 3), already remove the hardest English sounds: ZERO, WUN, TOO, TREE, FOWER, FIFE, SIX, SEVEN, AIT, NINER, with DAYSEEMAL, HUN DRED and TOUSAND. TREE takes out the th, FIFE takes out the v, and FOWER and NINER add a syllable, which in our reading keeps four apart from "for" and nine apart from five on a noisy frequency. Use those forms in the test when you read back or quote a number; use ordinary English for everything else. The table shows where, in our judgement, the remaining ambiguities sit and which first languages tend to produce each one.

The drill for every row is the same and takes five minutes. Write twenty call signs, ten altitudes and ten frequencies on a card, read them aloud with the ICAO digit forms, and record them on your phone. The next day, play the recording without looking at the card and write down what you hear; better still, play it to someone who has never seen the card. Repeat only the items that came back wrong. That is the test a rater applies, and it is the test the person at the other end of the frequency applies. For scored pronunciation of whole sentences, add one passage a day in read-aloud practice, which scores word by word and highlights misread words. The sections below tell you which rows to expect.

Hindi speakers

First on this page because, in our prediction of who reads it, Hindi speakers are the largest group: CPL students and airline pilots from the Hindi belt and Maharashtra, and controllers. The tendencies below are common in Hindi-influenced English, and the list is our judgement from the sound system of Hindi and the published descriptions of Indian English. Most Hindi speakers have two or three of them, not all.

On the radio

• v and w as one sound. Hindi has a single sound between the two, so "Victor" and "Whiskey" can start the same way and "seven" can come out as "sewen". Fix: v is teeth on the lower lip with voice; w is rounded lips, no teeth. Drill: "Victor, Whiskey, five, seven, wind, very" ten times, hand on the lip to feel the teeth on v. Our v vs w page has the minimal pairs.
• Retroflex t and d. The tongue curls back, so "two", "ten", "eight", "descend", "taxi" carry a hard, dark t and d. It rarely blocks understanding on its own, but combined with speed it makes "eight" and "eighty" hard to separate. Fix: tongue tip on the ridge behind the top teeth, not curled. Drill: "two, ten, twenty, eight, eighteen, eighty".
• Equal syllable stress. Hindi rhythm gives each syllable similar weight, so "fif-teen" and "fif-ty" blur, and the examiner hears the pair as the same number. Fix: teen numbers stress the second syllable, ty numbers the first, and in the ICAO forms you can also say "wun fife" and "fife zero" to remove the risk. Drill: the word stress page, then "13, 30, 14, 40, 15, 50" aloud with a hand tap on the stressed syllable.
• th as t or d. No cost inside numbers, because ICAO already says TREE and TOUSAND, but "the weather", "through", "think" in plain English become "da wedder", "tru", "tink". Fix: tongue tip between the teeth, air through. Our th sound page has the drill.

In plain English (structure and interactions)

Three habits tend to cost structure: the progressive for states ("I am having 300 hours", "we are not understanding"), questions by intonation without inversion ("you are ready for departure?"), and dropped articles that remove the subject in a narrative ("engine failed, we declared"). The fix is one re-tell a day in the past simple with every subject spoken. In interactions, the costly habit is politeness that hides the question: "do one thing, sir" and "kindly confirm" instead of "confirm the holding point". Say the noun you need. For a wider view of Hindi-speaker pronunciation, our Hindi speakers guide covers the sounds outside the radio.

Telugu and Kannada speakers

In our prediction this is the second-largest group of readers: cadets and pilots from Telangana, Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka, where Hyderabad and Bengaluru both have flying schools and airline training centres. Telugu and Kannada are Dravidian languages with phonemic vowel length and retroflex consonants, and the English they shape has tendencies that differ from Hindi-influenced English in two places: the f sound and the end of the word.

On the radio

• f as an aspirated p. Many Telugu speakers, and some Kannada speakers, produce f with both lips, so "FIFE" and "FOWER" and "Foxtrot" start like "p" with a puff. On a noisy frequency "fife" can be heard as "pipe" and "four" as "pour". Fix: top teeth on the lower lip, air through the gap, no lip closure. Drill: "four, five, fifteen, fifty, Foxtrot, fuel, flaps" with a finger on the lower lip to feel the teeth.
• A vowel added after a final consonant. Kannada-influenced English in particular tends to close a word with a short u or a: "six" becomes "sixu", "left" becomes "lefta". Each extra vowel sounds like the start of another word. Fix: stop the voice on the consonant. Drill: "six, left, right, request, contact" with a hand closing on the final sound.
• Vowel length used where English uses stress. A long vowel on the wrong syllable turns "ninety" into something close to "nineteen". Fix: stress by loudness and pitch, not length. Drill: the teen and ty pairs with the ICAO alternative ready ("niner zero" removes the ambiguity entirely).
• Rising intonation on statements. A statement that rises at the end sounds like a question to a native listener, and the controller may answer instead of acting. Fix: let the pitch fall on the last stressed word of every read-back. Our intonation patterns page has the falling-tone drill.

In plain English

A structure habit common in Telugu- and Kannada-influenced English is the tag "no?" with the emphatic "only" ("we have fuel for one hour only, no?"), which reads as uncertainty in an emergency description. Replace with a plain statement and a plain question. In vocabulary, both groups tend to reach for the technical noun and freeze without it; the paraphrase drill on day 3 of week 3 in the roadmap is built for that. Our South Indian speakers page covers the sounds in more detail.

Malayalam and Tamil speakers

Cadets and pilots from Kerala and Tamil Nadu, at Indian schools and in Gulf airlines, are the third group in our prediction. Both languages are Dravidian, but the tendencies they leave in English are different enough to list separately.

Malayalam speakers, on the radio

• Stress pulled to the first syllable. Malayalam-influenced English tends to front the stress, so "DE-scend", "RE-quest", "A-vailable", and inside numbers "FIF-teen", which collides with "fifty". Fix: find the stressed syllable in a dictionary once, mark it, and say the word with a drop in pitch after it. Drill: "descend, request, approach, available, fifteen, seventeen".
• v and w merged, and a soft b for v. "Victor" and "Whiskey", "seven" and "eleven" are the risks. The v drill above applies.
• Flat intonation. Clear, but a flat read-back gives the controller no signal that you have finished. Fix: fall on the call sign at the end.

Tamil speakers, on the radio

• p and b, t and d, k and g merging. Tamil does not contrast voiced and voiceless stops the way English does, so "Bravo" can start like "Pravo" and "Delta" like "Telta". On a read-back, that is a wrong letter. Fix: voiced stops hum before they release; put a hand on the throat and feel the buzz on b, d and g. Drill: "Papa Bravo, Tango Delta, Kilo Golf" slowly, then at radio speed.
• A y glide before a front vowel. "Eight" tends to become "yate" and "any" "yenny". Fix: start "eight" with the lips spread and the tongue still. Drill: "eight, eighteen, eighty, ILS, east".
• h dropped or added. "Hotel" without the h, "ILS" with one. Low risk alone; costly in a call sign.

In plain English

Malayalam speakers tend to carry "itself", "kindly" and "I am having" into narrative; Tamil speakers tend to front-load the object ("the runway, we could not see"). Neither usually changes the meaning, so both sit at the Level 4 line rather than below it, but under pressure in a non-routine re-tell they multiply. One past-simple re-tell a day, recorded, is the fix for both. For the Gulf-based reader, the tests compared page notes which tests your authority accepts.

Punjabi speakers

Fourth in our prediction: cadets from Punjab's flying clubs and from the Punjabi diaspora who train abroad for an Indian licence or a foreign one. Punjabi is tonal and shares the retroflex and v and w features of Hindi, with two tendencies of its own that matter on the radio.

• z as j. Many Punjabi speakers produce z as a j sound, so "ZERO" becomes "jero" and "Zulu" becomes "Julu", which is a different letter. Fix: z is a buzzing s; say "sss" and switch the voice on without moving the tongue. Drill: "zero, Zulu, zone, hazard, frozen" with a hand on the throat.
• sh as s. "Sierra" is safe; "she", "shut down", "short final" can lose the sh. Fix: pull the tongue back from the s position and round the lips slightly.
• Pitch used as tone, not as stress. Punjabi uses pitch to mark words, and that habit can put a rise or fall where English expects stress, so "thirteen" and "thirty" rely on a tone the listener does not hear as stress. Fix: pair stress with loudness and length, and use "wun tree" and "tree zero" where the pair is critical.
• Structure: "I am agree", "he don't", and the present for the past in a narrative. The re-tell drill applies. In interactions, the risk to watch is answering before the instruction or the question has finished. Let the examiner finish, then clarify.

Gujarati speakers share three of these tendencies, in our judgement: z as j ("jero"), v and w as one sound, and the same equal weight on "fifteen" and "fifty". The z, v and w and stress drills above apply without change.

Arabic speakers

Cadets and line pilots from the Gulf and Egypt, many trained in India or the United States, and controllers across the region. Arabic-influenced English has one tendency that is more costly on the radio than any other on this page.

• p and b as one sound. Arabic has no p, so "Papa" tends to become "Baba" and "Bravo" is already b: two phonetic letters collapse into one, and "parking" and "barking", "pull up" and "bull up" follow. On a read-back this is a wrong letter, which the examiner hears as an interactions failure as well as a pronunciation one. Fix: close the lips fully, build air behind them, release with a puff and no voice; hold a sheet of paper in front of the mouth and make it move on p, not on b. Drill: "Papa Bravo, park, pull, push, approach, speed" daily until the paper moves every time. Our minimal pairs page has more p and b pairs.
• v as f. No cost in FIFE, which is already f, but "seven" becomes "sefen", "Victor" "Fictor" and "vectors" "fectors". Fix: the f position with the voice on. Drill: "seven, eleven, Victor, vectors, visibility".
• A vowel inserted before a cluster. "Istation", "isquawk", "istand by". Each extra vowel costs fluency and can hide the word. Fix: start the s with no vowel, lips open, air first. Drill: "squawk, stand by, start, stop, strip, straight in".
• j as g in Egyptian Arabic. "Juliett" can become "Guliett" and "jet" "get". Fix: the j begins with a d and releases into zh. Drill: "Juliett, jet, journey, adjust".
• Structure: the missing copula ("the runway wet", "we ready"), no present perfect ("we fly this route since two years"), and gender pronoun slips for aircraft and people. The missing verb is the one that changes meaning in a narrative, so the re-tell drill is the fix. In interactions, the habit of a long pause with "yaani" while searching for a word reads as a comprehension failure; replace the pause with "stand by" or a paraphrase.

Tagalog speakers

Philippine cadets at Philippine and Indian schools, and Philippine controllers. Philippine English is widely spoken and generally clear, so the tendencies are narrower and sit mostly in three sounds and one habit of intonation.

• f as p and v as b. Tagalog historically lacks f and v, so "FIFE" can become "pipe", "fuel" "pwel", "Victor" "Bictor". The teeth-on-lip drill above applies; add "fuel, flaps, fire, final, Victor, vectors".
• Final consonant clusters simplified. "Left" becomes "lef", "next" "nex", "request" "reques". Fix: release the last consonant with a small puff of air. Drill: "left, next, request, contact, descent, aircraft".
• Five vowels doing the work of twelve. "Ship" and "sheep", "leave" and "live" merge; in aviation, "slip" and "sleep" or "fill" and "feel" are rarely critical, but "sit" and "seat" in a cabin emergency can be. Fix: short i is relaxed and quick; long ee is spread and held.
• Stress on borrowed words. Spanish-pattern stress tends to land on the second-last syllable, so "ca-te-GO-ry" and "e-MER-gency" are fine but "AL-ti-tude" may become "al-TI-tude". Fix: mark the stress once in the words you use every day.
• Structure and interactions: "already" and "yet" used in the Tagalog sense ("we are airborne already"), the verb-focus pattern ("the aircraft was taxied by us"), and a rising, deferential intonation with "sir" and "ma'am" that can make an emergency statement sound like a request. State the problem flatly first, then the request. Taglish fillers ("ano", "kasi") in a plain-English answer cost fluency; replace them with a one-second silence.

Bahasa and Vietnamese speakers

South East Asian cadets at Indian and Philippine schools, and controllers in Indonesia, Malaysia and Vietnam. The two languages are unrelated, but they leave the same costly habit in English: the end of the word disappears.

Bahasa Indonesia and Malay speakers

• Final consonants unreleased or dropped. "Six" becomes "sik" or "si", "eight" "ay", "left" "lef", and the s that marks a plural or a verb goes missing. Fix: release the last consonant audibly. Drill: "six, sixteen, sixty, eight, eighteen, eighty, left, right, flaps, lights".
• v as f. "Victor" and "seven" again. The voice-on drill applies.
• Syllable timing and no reduced vowels. Every syllable gets the same weight, so stress contrasts in the teen and ty numbers vanish. The stress drill above applies.
• Structure: no tense marking ("yesterday we fly to Medan"), "already" for completion, and a dropped subject. In a re-tell, the examiner cannot place events in time. Fix: one past-simple verb in every sentence, recorded.

Vietnamese speakers

• Final consonants dropped. Vietnamese words end in a limited set of sounds and the rest are not released, so "fife" becomes "fai", "six" "si", "eight" "ay" and "request" "reque". In a call sign or a frequency this removes digits. Fix and drill as above, with the hand closing on the last sound. This is the single habit we would fix first.
• Tones replacing stress. A pitch pattern lands on each syllable, so English stress is hard to hear. Fix: lengthen and lower the stressed syllable rather than changing its pitch.
• Clusters broken. "Straight" becomes "sa-trai", "flaps" "fa-lap". Fix: say the two consonants as one movement, no vowel between.
• th as t or z, and the northern r as z. "Three" is already TREE in the ICAO forms; "through" and "weather" need the tongue between the teeth.
• Structure: no tense or plural marking and "already" for the perfect, as for Bahasa. The re-tell drill is the fix.

Turkish speakers

Turkish cadets and controllers mostly sit tests in Turkey, so the traffic to this page is smaller, but the tendencies are distinct and two of them hit aviation words directly.

• w as v. Turkish has v and no w, so "WUN" becomes "vun", "Whiskey" "Viski", "wind" "vind". Fix: round the lips and keep the teeth off the lip. Drill: "one, wind, Whiskey, west, wet, weather".
• Final voiced consonants devoiced. Turkish devoices b, d and g at the end of a word, so "descend" tends to come out as "descent", which is a different aviation word, and "hold" as "holt". Fix: keep the voice on through the final consonant and release it softly. Drill: "descend, descent, hold, bird, cloud, speed".
• A vowel inserted before an initial cluster. "Istop", "istation", "ispeed", because Turkish words do not begin with two consonants. The air-first drill under Arabic speakers applies.
• th as t or d or s. As for the groups above; low cost inside the ICAO digit forms, higher in plain English.
• Structure and fluency: Turkish puts the verb last, and speakers tend to hold a long pause before the English verb while assembling the sentence; dropped articles and he and she slips (Turkish has one pronoun) are common. In a non-routine re-tell the pause reads as a comprehension failure. Fix: say the subject and the verb first, then add detail; the re-tell drill with a stopwatch on the longest pause.

The ten-minute daily drill

Whatever your first language, the drill is the same shape and fits in ten minutes. It is day 3 of week 1 in the 30-day roadmap and returns on every weakest-skill day.