Emergency English at A2: The Sentences to Know Before You Need Them
Under stress, language collapses to whatever is fully automatic, and everything else becomes unavailable. That is true for native speakers too, which is why emergency phrases in any language are short, blunt and repetitive. This list is deliberately simple. It is not the most elegant English you could use, it is the English most likely to still be there when you need it.
This sits at A2 on purpose. In an emergency the goal is not to sound good, it is to be understood on the first attempt by somebody who is also in a hurry. Short present tense sentences do that better than anything more advanced.
The general layer is in the free A2 vocabulary list. Everything below is the part worth having before it is needed rather than after.
The first three things you say
An emergency operator wants the same three pieces of information in the same order every time, and giving them unprompted saves the most valuable seconds of the call.
- I need an ambulance.
- The address is 14 Green Street, flat 3.
- A man has fallen and he is not moving.
- I need the police.
- There is a fire in the building.
- My name is Ana. I am calling from my mobile.
- I do not speak English well. Please speak slowly.
- Can you send somebody now?
Describing what happened
You will be asked what happened, and the answer needs to be one short sentence rather than a story. Each of these is a complete, usable answer on its own.
| What happened | What to say |
|---|---|
| a fall | She fell down the stairs. She is awake but she cannot stand. |
| chest pain | He has bad chest pain. It started ten minutes ago. |
| breathing | She cannot breathe properly. She is going blue. |
| bleeding | He is bleeding a lot from his arm. I cannot stop it. |
| a crash | Two cars have crashed. One person is still inside. |
| unconscious | He is not responding. He is breathing but his eyes are closed. |
| a child | My daughter swallowed something. She is two years old. |
| an allergy | She has an allergy. Her face is swelling. |
Giving your location when you do not know it
This is the part that goes wrong most often for people who are new to a place, and it is worth preparing precisely because your address vocabulary is the least practised thing you own.
If you do not know where you are, describe what you can see. That is a completely normal answer and operators are trained for it.
- I do not know the street name. I am opposite a pharmacy.
- I am near the big supermarket on the main road.
- There is a bus stop here. The number is 47.
- I am at the train station, on the platform side.
- It is the red building next to the church.
- I can share my location from my phone.
- Wait, I will ask somebody the name of the street.
- The gate code is 1120.
Words you may hear back
Understanding the operator matters as much as speaking, and the vocabulary they use is small and predictable. Recognising these means you can follow instructions rather than asking for repetition while somebody needs help.
- Stay on the line.
- Is the person breathing?
- Are they conscious?
- Do not move them.
- Help is on the way.
- Can you unlock the door?
- How old are they, roughly?
- Is anybody else with you?
Not an emergency, but urgent
Most worrying moments are not emergencies, and knowing how to say so is what keeps them from becoming one. These are the sentences for the out of hours line, the pharmacist and the neighbour.
If the situation ends up in an appointment rather than an ambulance, English at the doctor at B1 covers what comes next.
- It is not an emergency, but I am worried.
- Can somebody see him today?
- It has been getting worse since yesterday.
- Should I go to the hospital or wait?
- Is there a doctor open at the weekend?
- Sorry to disturb you. Could you help me for a minute?
Two things to do this week
First, save your own address in English in your phone notes, spelled out exactly as you would read it aloud. Under stress, reading is far easier than recalling.
Second, learn the emergency number where you live and say it out loud once. People who have lived abroad for years are routinely unable to produce it, because they have never once needed it, and that is precisely the problem.
Where MindDory fits
The whole point of this list is that it has to be available without thinking, and no phrase becomes automatic by being read once on a page.
That is what MindDory does with it: these sentences come back on a schedule until they are simply part of what you can say. The page for people who moved to a new country covers why the app is built this way.