A FOREIGN tourist approached me in Times Square.

“Please, where is ahhty-ahm?” he asked. At least, that’s what I heard, even when he slowly repeated the question. I was flummoxed until he took a bank card out of his wallet and made the motion of inserting it into an imaginary slot.

“Oh, A.T.M.!” I said, and pointed the way to the nearest one.

As he thanked me, the man seemed to speak English well enough. But his question had been incomprehensible to me because of his pronunciation — a short rather than long A, an accent on the first rather than last syllable of “A.T.M.”

The exchange was inconsequential. But consider similar misunderstandings involving greater complexity in exchanges that are crucial indeed, like those, say, between airline pilots and air traffic controllers who do not share the same native language.

Confusion often occurs. Sometimes it’s just amusing, like a 2006 recording of exchanges between an Air China pilot and an air traffic controller at Kennedy Airport in New York. The controller becomes increasingly exasperated by the pilot’s hapless English, to the point where you can almost hear the steam coming out of his ears. That recording, on YouTube as Air China 981, is a favorite among air traffic controllers and pilots who have their own stories of language misunderstanding in global aviation.