I prefer x as in xylophone myself

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.

Not really, but it makes sense to me.

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.

“Fox” could be confused with “box”, so it goes with “Foxtrot”.

Also, keep in mind that everything is a product of its time.

Beautiful, though they didn’t really describe dd well

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.

K as in Knowlege G as in Gnome M as in Mnemonic P as in Pterodactyl W as in Wrist

LANA

O as in opossum, p as in pnumonia, c as in Chicago.

When both ends of a conversation are comfortable using the phonetic alphabet, you can easily hit 2+ characters per second, accurately.

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’ "

Yeah it evolved to where it is now, no more changes.

Instructions unclear, stuck under the twisted metal of my vehicle. Send paramedics.

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.

Pretty sure it’s Ice Cream Sandwich for I.

Foxtrot Uniform Charlie Kilo.

M as in mancy

The clip of Kitboga still cracks me up where the scammer gets angry for him using “J as in Jalapeño” 😂

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.

Someone made a whole book out of this joke

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.

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.

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…”

Great fishin’ in Kew-beck

C’est facile non?