Cool Guides

M as in Mancy

I've always enjoyed playing with folks who actually know this by giving them intentionally misleading cues. Instead of "E as in Echo", say "G as in Gecko". That sort of thing. Cuneiform, Frisky, Mango, Oubliette, Zima...

Because it almost never becomes more of a time-save to learn the phonetic alphabet than the 3 seconds it costs every 3 years when someone is saying "did you say a or h?" to me.

This only matters for people that regularly (at least once every few days) need to spell something out loud to someone, or if an error would lead to serious consequences. Almost no one is in those positions.

Pretty cool about the peace symbol

For something so commonly used, it's got some pretty glaring flaws. Most critically, 'golf' and 'mike' - single syllable, which over radio comms often doesn't sound like shit. Compare to something like 'oscar', which even if either half of it gets all staticky you still hear "osc--" or "--car" which is enough to still receive an accurate exchange of info.

My more whiny complaints are that the number of syllables are inconsistent, F and X use compound words instead of one single complete word which feels... icky... x gets a pass cuz x is always janky and x-ray is perfect. Some of the entries rhyme with commonly used words that could confuse someone who's either inexperienced or in a stressful situation like being shot at. For example, "echo" could be misheard as "gecko" and even though "gecko" isn't on the list, our brains do stupid shit when they're saturated with adrenaline, so something like this should be as absolutely idiot-proof as possible.

If I could magic that fucker into something new, I'd shoot for:

• every entry is exactly three syllables.

• no two of the same syllables in any entry can rhyme with those two syllables of another entry. I.E., "Uniform" and "Chloroform" are not compatible because syllables 2 and 3 are too similar.

• Each entry should be as common a word as possible, in as low/unspecialized a reading level as possible. I.E., "November" is recognizable by nearly everyone; vs something like "Ganglia" which is gibberish to anyone without specialty knowledge requiring them to be familiar with ganglia.

• No compound or multiple word entries.

• X gets a pass cuz x is always janky and x-ray is perfect.

• Prototype phonetic alphabet must be first scrutinized by a panel consisting of a linguist, a speech pathologist, an English teacher, a 7 year old, a highschooler, a geriatric with severe hearing loss, and a junior enlisted US Marine. Their job is to find any potential for confusion.

Adam Charlie Adam Boy

There was a very large number of people who seem to want to write C for Sierra and it's really concerning.

Not only does it mean they've never heard of Sierra Leone which shows a distinct lack of geopolitical knowledge, but they've also never heard of Sierra software which shows that they're not worth talking to.

I know about this. I still choose my own rules. Once I said "X for xylophone". It makes things fun.

As a Swedish IT technician, I use two phonetic alphabets.

The Swedish phonetic alphabet was created in the 1890s and first published in 1902, in the 1960s a few entries were changed to reduce the risk of confusion.

A - Adam
B - Bertil
C - Cesar
D - David
E - Erik
F - Filip
G - Gustav
H - Helge
I - Ivar
J - Johan
K - Kalle
L - Ludvig
M - Martin
N - Niklas
O - Olle (air traffic communications), Olof (military use)
P - Petter
Q - Qvintus
R - Rudolf
S - Sigurd
T - Tore
U - Urban
V - Viktor
W - Wilhelm
X - Xerxes
Y - Yngve
Z - Zäta
Å - Åke
Ä - Ärlig
Ö - Östen

I use a modified version with

I -> Indigo
W -> Water

FYI, the semaphore signs are shown from the listener's PoV, so if you are signing to someone, you have to mirror the directions you see in this image. So for example to send a J, you raise your right flag and point the left out level.

Foxtrot

one of my last jobs needed me to use this for reading inventory locations to a crane operator over a phone. he always seemed slightly bemused that I didn't know the phonetic alphabet and had to make up my own phonetics for him

personally, I've always preferred this version:

I remember someone screaming for a code down a phone line once and my mate started with the whole “G for gnome” , “P for pterodactyl” etc.

I laughed.

For years I thought U was unicorn.