In a phone conversation with a vendor they interrupted me while spelling to say something like "oh thank God you're using the normal one and not shit like 'frankfurter' "
Edit: Though, that said, the point of the phonetic alphabet is they are very distinguishable words that sound nothing like one another. Even making out just "-a-a" you know it was papa, P. So as long as you know how to spell pterodactyl...
The NATO phonetic alphabet is incredibly useful, though it does suffer from some issues in similar sounds. During a recent high frequency (HF) worldwide competition (IARU-HF), weak-signal SSB stations sometimes had to spend a few minutes trying to complete a radio exchange because of similar sounding phonetic endings: “Was that whiskey one bravo alpha?”
“Negative, whiskey one tango alpha—TANGO alpha, over”
This happens so commonly, that many HF operators substitute other words in the same manner to enhance understanding: common ones are kilowatt, sugar, Germany, America, London, etc.
They're great substitutes. I always found Quebec to be the most distinguishable because of geographic reference.
Golf to Germany makes sense as Golf it's single syllable with yet another hard type O in it. Unlike Mike which could be missed, but the I and K crack/pop are strong sounds.
Kilowatt is interesting since the 'watt' is a backup sound if kilo is distorted. Honestly, Kardashian would be a good one as much as it pains me to say it.
Not sure about why people are surprised by this alphabet. It’s been in use for quite some time in its current form. I work in aviation and we always use this for radio communications. Obviously the military does too.
I personally hate it when I say the nato alphabet equivallent and somebody just gets confused. Like "what do you mean alpha, is that what I need to type?". Or worse yet, they start using names and end up with the joke from Archer - "M as in Mancy" or other nondescript names for letters.
For the layperson you have to do the "[letter] as in [phonetic alphabet equivalent]" format. Most people will understandably get confused if they ask how to spell your name and you tell them "Alpha-November-Delta-Yankee". If they're not used to it or never heard it it'll sound like you just started having a stroke.
Tbf most people never have reason to use it so they don’t know it. Or they just think the words are random after watching a cop drama or comedy where a word is spelled out over a radio. Also there seems to be an independent police phonetic called then “LAPD” alphabet, but I can’t tell if it’s intended to be serious or just mostly lifted from movies and tv.
When I was a kid, I was in a clan for Battlefield Vietnam that took itself waaaaay too seriously, had a good number of JROTC kids that insisted we all needed to know this, the NATO phonetic alphabet.
We were using teamspeak, had a session where the group leader stood us all in a line, and one by one wanted us to sound it off.
In my experience I always have issues with "S as in Sierra" because most people don't know what the hell Sierra is. Because they are uncultured heathens.
When I worked IT helpdesk I created my own one of these. Others photocopied it, they were photocopied. Years later I dropped in and saw one of the new staff with my phonetic alphabet stuck to the side of his screen.
(I think they were also still using my mainframe login ID)
I have no idea what it is with the letter "I" that throws me off. I've been using this alphabet since I joined the military ~15 years ago, and for some reason "I" still turns into "Igloo", "Indigo" or "Israel" most of the time. It's just that one singular letter that I can never remember!
Glad to know it's not just me! Kilo and Quebec makes sense, given that both start with that hard K sound and theyre both words associated with the NATO alphabet. I could easily see struggling with that one too if not for the Bloodhound Gang teaching me "Foxtrot Uniform Charlie Kilo" early on in my youth.
Pretty sure “Indigo” was used in either a previous version or another phonetic alphabet. NATO’s isn’t the only one. I think some police forces still use “Abel, Baker…”
When I first started working at a callcenter, I quickly went "oh I need to learn a phonetic alphabet" and printed and posted the NATO alphabet at my desk
We used to do it with everything but the NATO alphabet. Everyone had their own version, I would mostly use first names, some colleagues would do cities, animals, countries, etc etc.
I memorized it on my commute to work. I taped it to my dash and practiced on the license plates of the cars on the highway. I took it off my dash once I could read street signs out loud before passing them.
E for egg isn't even consistent throughout the English-speaking world. That vowel might be quite different in something like South African or Kiwi English compared to other dialects.
It was designed like that for a reason. There's a lack of one syllable words there, and the ones that are there sound very different.
It's also used for messages that require precision that the average person doesn't need in day to day life.
I learned the phonetic alphabet partly because of the fact that I obtained my amateur radio operator qualification. I'm a "ham" radio person.
Hearing these on the radio, which isn't super clear to begin with in most cases, it's much easier to use this way and almost trivial to understand others when they spell anything over the radio. Given this is the NATO alphabet, it's used by all kinds of people, from ham operators like me, to government/military. Often in conjunction with some kind of communications system, often but not always radio communications, where the signal might be poor.
I think the original intent was to ensure that all letters sounded as unique as possible, so even if you only catch part of the word (maybe the rest is obfuscated by static), you still understand the what was said.
The only one I don't like is Z is for Zulu. I've never heard of that word before and it could easily be mistaken for Hulu. Z should be changed to Zebra.
Zebra is much closer to Sierra and Papa, than Zulu is to any other word in that list - they are specifically chosen to be distinctly understandable in difficult-to-hear situations. And should they change it every time a new brand gets popular that's kinda similar to one of the words?
the 2nd list isn't great.. Chicago and Sugar? N is two words, Mary and Henry are similar.. I think part of the NATO one is you'd be able to tell even if you miss part of the word.
Also that the words are accurately pronounceable with a heavy accent. I think there's an international version that considers more languages here, particularly south-east asian.