Please use this and don’t make up your own shit on the fly. It’s very understandable both as a rep and a customer.
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’ "
O as in opossum, p as in pnumonia, c as in Chicago.
K as in knight
When both ends of a conversation are comfortable using the phonetic alphabet, you can easily hit 2+ characters per second, accurately.
Yeah it evolved to where it is now, no more changes.
WE COULD HAVE HAD QUACK FOR Q??? we were robbed
A better choice. If you have Fench Canadians in the forces it is Q as in Kaybec
What were they on with “interrogatory” for a damn vowel.
M as in Mancy
LANA
MAWP
Jesus, the helium!
K as in Knowlege G as in Gnome M as in Mnemonic P as in Pterodactyl W as in Wrist
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this is an alphabet but the whole idea of the phonetic alphabet is to make communication more efficient, and I don’t think this achieves that.
/s
X dd…
Depends on with whom you’re talking with
Beautiful, though they didn’t really describe dd well
“No, I said P! P for pterodactyl!”
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.
Whiskey tango foxtrot.
I was so close to editing my comment to be “whiskey one tango foxtrot” and now I regret not doing it lol
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kilowatt, sugar, Germany, America, London
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.
Kilowatt trips me up still, I’ll copy KW maybe once in ~100 exchanges and not notice. It’s more common during high-volume exchanges. Getting better though!
I shudder at even typing Kardashian lol
“Klingon” is my go-to. Just the word, not the language.
If that fails, there’s always Kilimanjaro.
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Someone made a whole book out of this jokeOmg, I need to waste my money on this.
The clip of Kitboga still cracks me up where the scammer gets angry for him using “J as in Jalapeño” 😂
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.
My personal favorite I overheard was “N as in pneumonic”
I like throwing these in on purpose, p as in pterodactyl often gets a chuckle.
Oh me too but this kid was serious. F as in phantasm
Some people failed vocabulary I guess haha
If you used the p on purpose this is genius comedy. But otherwise mneumonic
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.
I guess i watched a bunch of war movies as a kid; because as an adult mid 20s somebody on the phone spelled out their software code using phonetic alphabet, it took me a split second to process the unexpected, but then knew it was the first letter from osmosis i guess
first letter from osmosis i guess
No it’s Oscar
:)
My problem is that I absolutely blank when coming up with words to use, even if it’s my own damn name. At least this gives me a standard set to work with.
I’ve tried that before but I get back to NATO accidentally. A as in Apple, I as in India, R as in… Uh… Romeo.
I’ll often just say sound-alike letters phonetically but other letters spelled out for brevity. “A-R-N as in Nancy-O-L-D as in Delta”
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.
🎵Foxtrot… Uniform… Charlie… Kilo…! 🎶
(Bloodhound Gang song)
Put the you know what, in the you know where.
“M, as in Mancy!”
I can’t remember this guide but I remember the Android Phonetic Alphabet
- Alpha
- Beta
- Cupcake
- Donut
- Eclair
- Froyo
- Gingerbread
- Honeycomb
- Ice Cream
- Jelly Bean
- KitKat
- Lollipop
- Marshmallow
- Nougat
- Oreo
- Pie
- Quiche
- Red Velvet
- Sugar Cookie
- Tiramisu
- Upside Down Cake
- Vanilla
- Waffle
There are no other letters
Pretty sure it’s Ice Cream Sandwich for I.
Fuck me if someone tells me over the phone:
Cupcake, Upside down cake, Marshmallow
Quiche doesn’t really work, but otherwise it’s not bad.
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.
Guy 1: Alpha!
Guy 2 (me): Bravo!
Guy 3: Catholic!
Group Lead: sighs
shoots Guy 3 in the face
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 had a similar thing happen to me. People saw mine, and pretty soon 5-10% of the office had one.
It is 100% more fun to make them up yourself though
This is all fun and games until someone says “M as in Mancy”
This alphabet was carefully designed to minimize the chance of confusion. I’d rather be accurate than fun.
… I don’t get invited to many parties.
M as in Mama though, I always use that one.
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.
A as in Aye
E as in Ewe
S as in Sea
W as in Why
100% agree. I often have fun with customer service or whatever coming up with fun words.
There is a fun one based on the periodic table.
It includes things like P as in Lead and A as in Gold
Egg
🥚 🏳️⚧️
My favorite is asking a call Rep if I can switch to phonetic, and then rattling off the spellings when given the go ahead.
The only reason I have it drilled into my head is because the warehouse I work at uses voice for confirming locations.
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!
For me it’s Quebec and Kilo, even after more than 15 years in aviation.
Like for spelling my handle here, my first reflex is to say Sierra Quebec uniform…Uuuh no, Sierra Kilo Uniform November Kilo.
Ah, Kebek! Make sure to try the pooteen!
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…”
Average Canadian: “Oh yeah, I got this one easy bud!”
Alright, for your final test: how do you spell Quebec?
AC: “Oh, for sure, that one there is easy! It’s, uh… Q, for… uh…”
…
AC: “Q… for… Kay-beck…”
C’est facile non?
Great fishin’ in Kew-beck
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.
Reinvent the wheel - always a good use of time.
Never claimed it was. It was mostly just a bit of fun in an awfully boring and shitty workplace, and got the job done good enough tbh. We’re talking about a call center here not coordinating nuclear launches.
I worked in armored transportation for awhile and we did this too when checking bags of money in/out of the vault. I liked to choose a theme like “80s action movies” and see if the other person would pick up on it.
