Your ear has a simple alarm: when a voice gets higher, louder and faster, someone is upset. In many Indian English conversations the voice is high, loud and fast as a matter of course, especially on the phone, in a market, or whenever the speaker is interested in what they are saying. A listener with the simple alarm hears anger where there is only energy, and after a few such false alarms stops trusting the voice altogether and then misses real annoyance when it comes. What you will learn: • What is normal: range, volume, speed, overlap • The real cues of annoyance • The cues of urgency • The phrases that sound harsh but are not • How to respond • Scenes • Practice: decode the scene • Listening strategies • Self-check questions to test your ear Level: B1–B2. Self-study: listen, then take the quizzes. Audio voiced with AI from an original script by Dr. Rashmi R Nair.