Talk:NATO phonetic alphabet

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NATO phonetic alphabet has had a peer review by Wikipedia editors which is now archived. It may contain ideas you can use to improve this article.

[edit] Alpha vs. Alfa

I believe the proper spelling of the phonetic for A is Alfa, not Alpha as listed. The DOD dictionary referenced on the page has it that way, as do numerous other official sites.

Also the proper spelling of the phonetic for J is Juliett, not Juliet as listed. Same reasons.

Lou Sander Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania USA LSander153@aol.com

The spelling varies. I've added a note. DJ Clayworth 15:01, 7 Oct 2003 (UTC)

The spelling difference is interesting. As long as it is pronounced the same, I don't see why the variation is important. Maybe somebody could eludicate me?--Mikm 01:14, 15 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Read more of the present article (significantly modified mid 2004). The ph method of spelling the f phoneme does not exist in many languages, the most prominent being Spanish, so a native speaker of those languages would NOT pronounce alpha correctly, unless he was aware of this English-French oddity. Only the English ANSI version uses alpha — all international versions use alfa. — Joe Kress 18:57, Apr 15, 2005 (UTC)

Well, a recent edit appears to say that there are more languages that might treat it differently from Spanish. Spanish would treat it as a p with a silent h (Alpa) but how about some other languages that don't use the ph spelling for f?? Georgia guy 19:28, 12 November 2005 (UTC)

I found several other European languages besides Spanish which spell "alpha" as "alfa", but can't recall which ones offhand. Because I don't understand those languages, nor do I know anyone who does (except Spanish), I don't know how they would pronounce 'ph'. — Joe Kress 08:32, 14 November 2005 (UTC)

Usually I'm in favor of making the English Wikipedia more readable to foreign speakers, but... I strongly disagree with propagating the "alfa" spelling of alpha. It's a long standing spelling in all areas it's used, from math and science to linguistics, humanities, and pop culture. I mean, it’s "alphabet" not "alfabet." The alfa page doesn't even bother putting it in the bulleted list (rather, it puts it in the see also), because it's that uncommon of a spelling. 66.229.160.94 00:06, 4 August 2006 (UTC)

Alpha is not spelled as alfa to make Wikipedia more readible to foreign speakers. It is spelled alfa because the agencies which publish the spelling alphabet spell it that way, including the United States' own FAA and the comparable national agencies of the English-speaking countries of the United Kingdom, Australia, and Canada (and probably South Africa and India). If any Wikipedia editor were to spell alfa as alpha in contradiction to the agency's own spelling, then that editor would be guilty of distorting the sources to match their own point of view. — Joe Kress 03:46, 4 August 2006 (UTC)

In the Canadian AIP (Aeronautical Information Publication) It's spelled Alpha, with a pronunciation key "Alfa". Checking the ICAO publications we have here, it's Alpha as well, though that's not to say that it might not vary country to country, or even publication to publication. 72.138.217.234 17:04, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] English words?

I was a bit troubled by the claim that the alphabet consists of English words. English sounding words perhaps, given that this has become so well-known and that film-makers and others are quite unable to resist ther romance of a bit of Zulu-Victor-whatever. But when you look through the words it's difficult to feel that that many of them meet the claim that they are "English words" - quite a few are Greek (Alpha), some are place names abroad (Lima), some are the same in several languages (November, Papa) and so on. Indeed my understanding is that as we moved away from the more English-specific forms for the ease of non-English speakers (Able Baker --> Alpha Bravo) so we tended to replace explictly Englsih words with ones of non-English or at least international origin. I've changed the wording slightlky to reflect this. I hope no-one minds but I thought the previous wording did rather make the article look a little like it thought Alpha was an "English word" and so on. 138.37.188.109 09:34, 15 Mar 2004 (UTC)

"Alpha" is an english word. English grabs other language's words and has its way with them. All. Night. Long. — Xoder | Talk 14:35, Mar 15, 2004 (UTC)

I don't know if you are being disingenuous for comic effect or if you really do not understand the point I was trying to make. I do understand a tiny bit about ex-foreign words in English but I thought the above essay was quite long enough already. The way the article read previously made it sound like the author thought that the alphabet had lots of words in that are *exclusively* English and would therefore flummox a non-English-first-language-speaker. Like Able and Baker for example. If you do not understand how these differ from Alpha and Bravo, would you like me to try to explain it? All. Night. Long? Sadly I cannot be bothered. 138.37 etc

Not all the words are American, but most of them are Americanized in meaning. They "sound foreign" to American ears, but a foreign language might use its own more common words instead. The foreign sounding words are simply words tha tare so familiar to English speakers due to repetition in vocabulary. "Tango" sounds like a Spanish dance, Zulu sounds like an African population, and "India" is the name of a country, but the speaker doesn't have to have any more knowledge or familiarity than that. The speaker doesn't need to know about indepth culture or history of that location. Meanwhile, words like Yankee, Whiskey, Charlie and Sierra are ingrained in American culture. It's not that the words don't have foreign origins, they all do, but they are so common to American ears that they are effectively borrowed words. You can look up Tango in the dictionary as an English word. No words on the list are exclusively Spanish, German, etc. The words rely on American familiarity and pronunciation, and most of them are borrowed from other countries with forced English pronunciation and spelling.

[edit] Symbols ?

Is there a list of standard names for symbols ?

For example, the names

 . Decimal (decimal point)
 . Stop (full stop)
 ? Query (question mark)

seem pretty common around here, but are they internationally ?

The Punctuation articles has one list of names, but I've seen many other names for some of the symbols. Is there a NATO or ISO standard ?

-- DavidCary 04:12, 21 Jun 2004 (UTC)

The only ICAO and FAA entries not listed are for use in numbers: hundred, thousand, and decimal point. For the latter, the ICAO and FAA disagree: the ICAO requires DECIMAL whereas the FAA requires POINT, but the FAA says that it will accept DECIMAL from any aircraft required to use the ICAO alphabet. On the other hand, the only ITU entries not listed are decimal point (DECIMAL) and full stop (STOP). Query or question mark is not mentioned by any organization, nor is any other symbol.
Joe Kress 02:23, Jun 22, 2004 (UTC)

There's a humorous list of punctuation symbols in the Jargon File (one mirror at http://info.astrian.net/jargon/terms/a/ASCII.html ). -- DavidCary

/ is always read as "stroke" (as opposed to "slash") in amateur radio usage. 128.232.250.254 22:36, 19 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] pronunciation

Could someone clarify the ambiguous pronunciation of some of the numbers?

"4" - Is this like "flower" without the 'l'; "fower"?
"8" - "ate" or "ite"
"9" - shouldn't this be nine-er not nin-er, as the latter is equivalent to "ninner" if each syllable is read separately, as implied by the hyphens?

Thanks.--[[User:HamYoyo|HamYoyo|TALK]] 11:33, Jul 3, 2004 (UTC)

The 'pronunciation' is that given officially by the ICAO, even though it does seem odd. The ICAO recognizes that the words will be pronounced in a wide variety of ways, which explains the specific choice of words. The ICAO includes this note: "The pronunciation of the words in the alphabet as well as numbers may vary according to the language habits of the speakers. In order to eliminate wide variations in pronunciation, posters illustrating the pronunciation desired are available from ICAO." which I've added to the article.
"4" - Yes, FOW in FOW-er presumably rhymes with COW.
"8" - AIT could be prounounced as ATE, but it can also be pronounced as ITE and still be understood.
"9" - NIN-er can be pronounced as either NINE-ER or NINNER.
Just like ATE, denoting a long vowel by a final E is an English rule which would be misunderstood by native Spanish speakers, among others. The pronunciation of Spanish letters is remarkably consistent, and adding a final E would make both ATE and NINE two syllable words (AH-TUH and NEE-NUH, respectively). Likewise, in Spanish, AIT might be AH-EET, which, when spoken fluidly, sounds remarkably close to ATE. But it is not hyphenated, indicating that it is a one syllable word. Adding -er allows a short I in NIN be properly understood, but also prevents NINE from being misunderstood as the German NEIN (English NO).
Joe Kress 19:56, Jul 3, 2004 (UTC)

Right, so the pronunciation guide is the official NATO prescribed one? Smart.--[[User:HamYoyo|HamYoyo|TALK]] 10:45, Jul 4, 2004 (UTC)

Yes and no. NATO does not prescribe any alphabet, let alone a pronunciation guide--at least one that I can find after consulting numerous NATO publications. Rather, the pronunciation guide given is official, but it is from the ICAO, not NATO. Because of this, I have considered moving the article (renaming it) as the "ICAO spelling alphabet" or something similar. But the name "NATO phonetic alphabet" seems to be well entrenched, and thus I hesitate. (I know, I'm not being bold.) Of course, using the 'move' tab would automatically create a redirect.
Joe Kress 20:17, Jul 4, 2004 (UTC)

There doesn't seem to be much that's phonetic about it either.--[[User:HamYoyo|HamYoyo|TALK]] 20:35, Jul 4, 2004 (UTC)

Is there any reason that the number phonetics use a different stress notation to the letter phonetics? ZE RO, FOW ER, SEV EN, NIN ER would look more consistent. Acanon 22:18, 21 Aug 2004 (UTC)

IPA pronunciation shown in the table seems to be very strange. Stress marks (ˈ) are placed after syllables (they should be before: ˈælfə, not ælˈfə). Pronunciation of uniform [ˈju:ni:fɔɹm] is also quite unusual (may be, [ˈju:ni:fɔm]?). I’m not native English speaker, so I’m not sure. Does anybody pronounce “r” in uniform or say “Quebec” [kwiˈbɛk] as [kɛbɛkˈ]? Or, is it usual for aircrew to speak in such way? --14:22, 21 Apr 2005 (UTC)Sdummy 14:22, 21 Apr 2005 (UTC)

KeithTyler added what appears to be his own interpretation of how the words are pronounced—it does not argree with the official ICAO version, which has stress marks before the syllables: [1] page A-6. I have been thinking of replacing it with the official version, but have not found the time yet. — Joe Kress 06:54, Apr 22, 2005 (UTC)

I too noticed that the stress marks are in the wrong place (wrong according to the Unicode standard [PDF, text: look for 20C8] and the New Oxford Dictionary of English, for two examples), so I’ve moved them. I’ve not changed anything in the pronunciation of the syllables themselves, though some of it does seem a little strange to me. Perhaps the pronunciations given are those mandated by the ICAO, but the link you gave, Joe, is broken, and I’ve not found anything detailed enough on the ICAO site. However, the pronunciation of at least “4” isn’t consistent even within the table: judging by the ad-hoc pronunciation column, surely it should be [ˈfaʊwə(ɹ)], or something like that, not [fɔɹ]. Sdummy: as a native British English speaker, I don’t pronounce the “r” in “uniform”, but if you see the article Rhotic and non-rhotic accents, you’ll learn (as I did!) that some dialects do.

—John Mark Williams ❲⌂|☏❳ 17:13, 28 July 2005 (UTC)

Thank you for your help. The link is indeed broken, and a quick search of the site showed no new home for the discussion panel that produced it. However, I note that there is a new secure ICAO site ([2]), which may be its new home. The cited page would not have provided much help anyway because it avoids all IPA symbols except that for 'sh', replacing them with its own version constructed from English letters. For example, it replaces schaw with a, and the 'o' in Foxstrot is 'B'. Nevertheless, that version is the official pronunciation as it appears in the referenced Annex 10. The 'IPA' pronunciation given in this article is not official, and indeed may have inconsistencies that may not appear in the official version (which could be identified if I ever find the time to do it). — Joe Kress 18:59, 28 July 2005 (UTC)

[edit] True or false??

True or false: somebody can explain the reason the pronunciations of the numbers 0-9 vary slightly from the pronunciation in standard English. 66.245.87.154 02:17, 3 Aug 2004 (UTC)

The reason is suprisingly simple: Let's take five and nine. Both of these have very similar sounds, begining with a soft consonant, long "i" stressed, and end with a similar-sounding soft consonant. Therefore, five becomes "fife" and nine becomes "niner", which completely removes this problem. I thought that was in the article at some point? This is also the reason why "oscar" is pronounced "oss KARR", rather than the usual "OSS ker". — Xoder |✆ 16:08, Aug 3, 2004 (UTC)

[edit] "Phonetic"?

Why is it called "phonetic"? Obviously as described here it is not a phonetic alphabet (see International Phonetic Alphabet, for example). Michael Hardy 19:32, 6 Oct 2004 (UTC)

It don't know why, but calling it a "phonetic alphabet" seems to be dominant in the English speaking world. Most government agencies in English speaking nations (including the FAA, DOD, ITU, and ANSI mentioned in the article) as well as the general population do so. The only agencies which don't are the Civil Aviation Authority (of the United Kingdom) which calls it the ICAO word spelling alphabet, and the ICAO itself which calls its own alphabet the Radiotelephony Spelling Alphabet.

However, no agency anywhere says it is from "NATO". I don't know where it acquired that appellation, but it seems to be dominant among the general population. Even the Jeopardy! television game show referred to it as the "NATO phonetic alphabet".

— Joe Kress 06:25, Oct 8, 2004 (UTC)

From the Merriam Webster's Deluxe Dictionary, Tenth Collegiate Edition:

phonetic alphabet noun (1848) 1: a set of symbols (as IPA) used for phonetic transcription 2: any of various systems of identifying letters of the alphabet by means of code words in voice communication

So that would seem to be your answer, Michael: just because "phonetic alphabet" is the right term for an alphabet of symbols representing phonemes, does not mean it is the wrong term for an alphabet of code words representing letters. -- Antaeus Feldspar 20:07, 8 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Hello? Michael? I see you're still inserting lots of ironic quotes around every instance of the phrase "phonetic alphabet" in this alphabet. Would you care to talk to the rest of us and tell us where you're getting your information that is better than Merriam-Webster that says that only phonetic alphabets in the IPA sense are "real" phonetic alphabets? -- Antaeus Feldspar 03:22, 10 Oct 2004 (UTC)

I have heard this alphabet called the "International Radio Alphabet," but this phrase does not appear in the text of the article. Anyone know why? Luckily, when I search for "International Radio Alphabet," I get redirected to this page. r3 03:24, 17 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] 5 and 9 vs. 4

5 and 9 were answered above about why NATO uses those pronunciations, but how about 4?? Can anyone clarify why 4 is FOWER instead of FOUR in this phonetic alphabet?? 66.245.105.195 02:09, 9 Oct 2004 (UTC)

My guess is that the usual English pronunciation of four is the same as that of the preposition for, so it was changed to avoid confusion. Not mentioned yet is tree for three. My guess here is that the English phoneme 'th' does not exist in some other languages, so it was changed to allow pronunciation (and recognition upon hearing it) by non-English speakers. — Joe Kress 00:16, Oct 10, 2004 (UTC)

French doesn't have such a sound (The "H" in "bibliothèque," for example, is silent) and I can't think of a Spanish word that uses it either. —Casey J. Morris 21:42, July 21, 2005 (UTC)

Think Mardid - the 'd' is pronounced that way. But the sound doesn't exist as a phoneme.

If you're refering to "Madrid"--well, Spanish is tricky. Spanish from Spain has the th (as in three) for the pronounciation of the letter "c" before "i" or "e", and generally the letter "z". Latin American Spanish often (not sure if always) has the sound th as in "the" (not as in "three" or "thin"). Generally, there are so many different local pronounciation, and some of them do not have the sound (if they did, BTW, it would be a phoneme). --Ibn Battuta 22:57, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

Just some FYI stuff...

Latin American Spanish does not have the phoneme /ɵ/ (voiceless dental fricative, as in the English "think") in any dialect. It's not an allophone of anything, either. Neither does German (among others), as I believe has been pointed out.
Latin American Spanish does have the phoneme /ð/ (voiced dental fricative, as in the English "this") - it's how the grapheme <d> is pronouned in most cases (though after some sounds, such as /n/, it has [d] as an allophone, and in some dialects it becomes an approximant or is even elided ("eaten" or "omitted") completely between certain vowels, e.g. "-ado").
The graphemes <c>, <z> and < s > are all pronounced as /s/ (voiceless alveolar fricative) in Latin American Spanish(though in many dialects, word-final /s/ is often pronounced as an aspiration ([ʰ])and consonant-final /s/ is often either [ʰ], [z] or a voiceless version of the following consonant. These are all allophones, though, not phonemes, and speakers aren't normally aware they're doing all this assimilation.)

Also regarding /ɵ/...

/ɵ/ is an extremely weak sound in terms of volume -- it and /h/ have far lower dbSPL levels than other sounds at a given "speaker volume level", which makes it a rather poor candidate for an acrophonic alphabet like this one.
Distinguishing /ɵ/ from /s/ relies mostly on high-frequency sibilance -- the more-or-less evenly-distributed energy you can see at the top of a spectrograph. This "noise" occurs approximately in the 5-10kHz range, which is well above the bandwidth of most if not all telephone systems (estimated at 3.3kHz, and 2.7kHz for some long-distance calls, here [3]). And from what my ears tell me, the bandwidth of your average airplane, space shuttle or battlefied radio cuts off even lower than that. This means that you can't distinguish /ɵ/ from /s/ in many if not most of the conditions and systems these alphabets were designed for if you only have the sound to go on -- yet another good reason to not use /ɵ/. (Note: We can still distinguish /ɵ/from /s/ very well on these systems when speaking normally just from the information context provides -- no English speaker would interpret the sentence "The plate broke in the [/s/|/ɵ/]ink" as "The plate broke in the think". But when spelling things out you don't have this context, so you're forced to rely far more on sound -- sound that's filtered out in this case). Steve Fishboy 03:43, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

As for "four", I don't know the facts either, but I would speculate along the same lines as Joe Kress. As a related example: When struck by a hurricane in 1957, the cargo sailing vessel Pamir radioed (distress and) SOS calls. She identified herself as "fourmast bark Pamir". One of the ships receiving the message understood "fore mast broken Pamir", leading some to the belief that one (or even several!) masts had broken. (In fact, the few survivors reported that "nothing had come down", i.e. the entire rigg had remained intact until Pamir capsized.) - As for three, someone on the German Wikipedia has argued that the "th" easily led to misunderstandings in cases of poor reception. I wouldn't be surprised if you're both right as the sound does not occur in many (probably most?) languages, so many speakers will have problems to pronounce it clearly enough to be understood despite poor radio quality. --Ibn Battuta 22:57, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Pronunciation of 2-digit numbers

Is there any way to pronounce 10, 11, 12, etc. using NATO?? 66.245.124.176 15:53, 23 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Both the ICAO and the FAA state that each digit must be pronounced separately. Thus 10 in pronounced WUN ZERO, 11 is WUN WUN, 12 is WUN TOO. However, the FAA states that after the digits have been pronounced, they may be grouped as TEN, ELEVEN, etc. It does not give any specific pronunciation for these groups, probably because the critical safety concerns have already been satisfied by pronouncing the digits in a specificed manner. — Joe Kress 05:53, Oct 24, 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Memory Aids

Has anyone on the Internet, not necessarily at Wikipedia, come up with a memory aid you can use for various letters in the NATO phonetic alphabet?? 66.245.104.156 00:35, 20 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I do not know of any memory aids, but if you trace all the links in Most comprehensive collection of phonetic alphabets you might find something. — Joe Kress 18:56, Dec 1, 2004 (UTC)

I find it helpful to remember some in pairs - i.e. Romeo and Juliet, Alpha and Beta, Whiskey Tango Foxtot. I haven't memorized it completly, but I have found things like that help.

[edit] Was Carlos substituted for Charlie in Vietnam?

In one of the Bourne thrillers, I seem to remember that "Carlos" was used instead of "Charlie" because Charlie had become the easy handle for the enemy (ironically, derived from Victor Charlie for V.C. or Viet Cong). Always wondered if this were true. Nice article, btw. Thanks! Chris vLS 18:01, 1 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I have no idea whether Carlos was substituted for Charlie in Vietnam. — Joe Kress 18:56, Dec 1, 2004 (UTC)

The Bourne Identity actually uses Cain instead of Charlie, according to online reviews (such as [4]). Neither a Charlie->Carlos or Charlie->Cain substitution can be corroborated. - Keith D. Tyler ¶ [AMA] 00:17, Apr 7, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] you should consider........

you should consider putting the madagascar alphabet from a-z on this web site

You should consider adding it yourself... that's kind of the idea. Mga 21:12, 14 Jun 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Alphabet of men's names

The alphabet of men's names in the Variants section should be completed. No reason to continue to S and then stop.

(above posted by User:Drummond

One reason I stopped is because the list is an ad hoc example of a phenomenon in colloquial phonetic alphabetization; the list doesn't reflect any official phonetic alphabet. Perhaps the real problem is that it is too long; but I wanted to show examples of some of the harder letters to illustrate the idea. - Keith D. Tyler ¶ [AMA] 00:10, Apr 7, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Links

It is really logical to have links to the words Alpha, Bravo, Charlie, and so on?? I don't think so. For example, the link to Foxtrot is the dance with a link to Foxtrot (disambiguation) at the top. I think the links should be removed. Any objections?? Georgia guy 19:42, 16 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I have no objections. These are only arbitrary words selected for their pronunciation characteristics, not their meaning. — Joe Kress 03:21, Apr 17, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Variants

According to one Internet site, one variant of the alphabet uses the spellings Oskar and Viktor. Which variant is this?? Georgia guy 19:12, 17 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Oskar and Viktor are the standard spellings of those words in German and neighboring languages, so I suspect that someone thought they should be spelled that way. Similarly, Juliette is the standard French spelling so someone thought that was the way it should be spelled, effectively ignoring any official list. — Joe Kress 06:08, Apr 20, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] IPA descriptions

A major cleanup is called for. Most (if not all) of the stress marks have been put in the wrong places. You're meant to put ˈ (ˈ) before the stressed syllable.

Like I said in the peer review, I was only making an attempt at this, based on what I could glean from International Phonetic Alphabet for English. - Keith D. Tyler ¶ 06:18, July 29, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] "Phonetic"? (again)

No intention of "starting a fight", Keith, but I'm curious as to why you insist that an alphabet whose function has nothing to do with phonetics must be legitimately described as a "phonetic alphabet". Has it become one of those phrases which means something other than the words of which it is composed (rather as a "hot dog" doesn't mean a "dog which is hot")?

The explanation that it's "phonetic" because the names of the letters are made up of phonemes ignores the facts that (1) the ordinary English alphabet likewise has names made up of phonemes, but is never described as "phonetic", and (2) "The pronunciation of the words in the alphabet as well as numbers may vary according to the language habits of the speakers" (ICAO), i.e. there is no single phonetic rendition of the names.

In the circumstances, the appropriate thing seems to me to (a) mention briefly the fact that it is technically a misnomer (without implying any criticism of those who use the term), (b) accept the fact that it is very widely used and (c) allow the use of the term without further qualification in the rest of the article. I will have a go at writing something which meets those criteria... Vilcxjo 01:19, 29 July 2005 (UTC)

As your title of "(again)" alludes to, there has already been a discussion here on this topic. And the consensus appears to have been that "phonetic" is an equally valid term for an alphabet made of phonemes as it is for an alphabet which represents phonemes.

Even if the letters of the Roman alphabet had official names (which they don't, and tend to be different in different languages), those would be the names, and not the letters themselves that were phonetic. The letters themselves here are made of phonemes. It is phonetic because it must be spoken (phonemes being inherently auditory) to be used -- written representations of the alphabet exist for reference on how to use the alphabet. Few will actually use an alphabet like this in print, except to specifically reference or indicate the use of this alphabet.

And while the ICAO admits there may be slight differences in pronounciation of these letters, it also has taken steps to minimize those differences by choosing specific textualized representations of those letters that will have the least ambiguity among major (Indo-European, at least) languages.

Keith D. Tyler ¶ 06:13, July 29, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Stinking pronunciation...again

How many people say OSS-CAH and VIK-TAH, as in air traffic controllers? Which is why alternates have been listed. Phoenix2 00:38, August 3, 2005 (UTC)

The article already states that the pronunciations may vary according to the language habits of the speakers. But because you missed it, I'm moving it to the head of the table. This accounts for VIK TER and OSS KER. Abbreviating Foxtrot as Fox is a more serious matter, which I have indicated as a variant in the variants section. I liked your <small> so I'm including it everywhere. — Joe Kress 19:42, 3 August 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Niner?

Shouldn’t the spelling of 9 be niner? (I’ve never heard the word spelled “nine” pronounced as niner.) —Frungi 22:41, 26 August 2005 (UTC)

Every agency that spells 9 spells it "Nine" and pronounces it NIN-ER, including the FAA 2-4-26, 14-1-5, and ARINC 4.4.3, pdf 208KB. The ITU spells 9 as Novanine but prononuces it NO-VAY-NINER ITU. Other agencies that include 9 do not spell it. Several agencies do not include any numbers. — Joe Kress 22:07, August 28, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Small chart

The FAA radiotelephony phonetic alphabet and Morse code chart. is too small to be read. How about enlargening it? Jimp 28Nov05

All Wikipedia images are only thumbnails on article pages. Simply left click on the image to view a larger verison, which has links to even larger versions, if available. — Joe Kress 20:11, 29 November 2005 (UTC)

imo Images in articles should be large enough to get the main point of there contents accross. this one wasn't readable so i've pushed up its size a bit. Otoh this image is kinda redundant with the table lower down. Plugwash 04:26, 3 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Popular culture

Perhaps we should add the reference found in The Incredibles? I know when Helen flies the jet (I love the fact this gal must have a pilot's licence) the code she speaks through the radio comes out as 'IG-99', but I can't remember whether she says anything else, or whether IG-99 is some inside joke to production or something. Lady BlahDeBlah 13:40, 1 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Portable, Mobile

I don't know if this meets notability requirements. In ham radio usage, a portable station will have a callsign ending in /P, while a mobile one ending /M. These will universally be said as "stroke portable" or "stroke mobile"; thus, for example, M0FFX/M would be read "mike zero foxtrot foxtrot xray stroke mobile".

Again in the ham context, all sorts of unofficial phonetics are heard. One of the most common is radio for r, country names are also very common. I've also heard people give their callsigns in more than one alphabet (e.g. "cq cq cq, alfa mike one golf foxtrot, america mexico one germany france, cq standing by", suggesting that the NATO system is not as widespread as implicitly assumed in the article. Unfortunately my own experiences qualify as original research and thus need corraboration by an established source to merit article inclusion. 128.232.250.254 22:48, 19 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Charlie Dog?

This doesn't seem to be related to the NATO phonetic alphabet. Should it be removed? 69.192.62.63 16:05, 8 July 2006 (UTC)

Strictly speaking, you are correct. Because it is a character created during the 1940s, it uses the old Joint Army/Navy Phonetic Alphabet. But that article does not have a pop culture section, so I think we can leave it here for now. If too many old phonetic alphabet entries are added, we can move them later. — Joe Kress 01:46, 9 July 2006 (UTC)

The section should only contain names that are specifically influenced by the NATO phonetic alphabet. It is unnecessary/inappropriate to add arbitrary references that merely coincidentally employ words from the phonetic alphabet.--Jeffro77 11:36, 30 September 2006 (UTC)

Could you give an example of "arbitrary references that merely coincidentally employ words from the phonetic alphabet"? Do you mean a non-NATO phonetic alphabet? If an entry contains only words from the NATO phonetic alphabet, is that acceptable to you, or do you restrict it further? According to my count, there are 28 entries that contain only NATO code words (including one that uses NATO codes but alludes to a pre-NATO code), four partial (some but not all NATO code words), ten whose code words are not NATO, and three with no code words at all (only refering to the radio alphabet for example). — Joe Kress 03:17, 3 October 2006 (UTC)

Due to the size of the pop culture section and the two complaints above, I'm removing all entries that mention non-NATO code words. — Joe Kress 01:53, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] I believe the correct morse code for V is ...- dotdotdotdash instead

I believe the correct morse code for V is ...- dotdotdotdash instead of "dotdotdot" (which is S). Marcelo.

The source of that graphic 4-2-7. Phonetic Alphabet clearly has V = ...- so the dash was lost when the Wikipedia graphic was created. — Joe Kress 05:29, 26 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] "Phonetic" 3: what is a disambiguation link for?

My edit to the intro was reverted with the comment "dab link is essential according to some editors". I must disagree. A dablink is needed from International Phonetic Alphabet to here, because many people call the NATO alphabet by that name. However, nobody calls the IPA the "NATO phonetic alphabet", so a disambiguation from here to there is inappropriate. Nobody will ever arrive at this page, or create a link to this page, expecting to find the IPA article. Yes, there is confusion as regards the meaning of "phonetic alphabet"; but I think describing this in the second sentence of the first paragraph is adequate to help readers through. I find long banners before the start of an article are quite intimidating, and while some contentious issues require them as a necessary evil, I don't think this article is at that level. If there are any who disagree with this, let's discuss it here in more detail. Thanks. jnestorius^(talk) 19:11, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

Although I agree that your edit is much cleaner, I was trying to avoid rekindling the "edit discussion" we had back in 2004-5, within which a couple editors felt that a prominent dab for "phonetic alphabet" was necessary. — Joe Kress 20:29, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Too Many popular culture references

As interesting as this topic is, there are surely far too many pop culture references which add very little to a general reader's understanding? A couple would probably suffice for the military angle, and especially terms like Charlie Foxtrot or Foxtrot Uniform, and how they have become adopted by wider society, but some of the rest of it brings little to the table in this topic. If I get a chance, I'll have a go... Major Bloodnok 00:38, 25 November 2006 (UTC)

I agree. The problem is deciding which to keep and which to delete, which is why I have been hesitant. As mentioned above, I made a start by deleting all that mentioned non-NATO code words. Unfortunately, I have no knowledge in many of the areas cited, so I don't know what is representative and common, and which are fringe uses. — Joe Kress 05:53, 25 November 2006 (UTC)

I have substantially slimmed down the pop culture section, and beefed up the mention of slang uses. Major Bloodnok 12:35, 26 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Alpha vs. Alfa (2):

"Alfa is spelled with an f as it is in most European languages." Sorry, but did anyone really check whether that statement is true? I don't doubt that Alfa is spelled "alfa", but was it really changed because 1) most and 2) European languages spell it "alfa"? Is it even true that "most" European languages spell it so?

The latter question may be true: If you go to Alpha (letter), you don't need any language expertise, and you can simply move your cursor over all the links to the foreign-language Wikipedias (and if it says only "A", simply open the page). Turns out that 17 (18) European languages use "alfa". [The number in brackets depends on whether you count Norwegian twice, namely Nynorsk and Bokmål.] On the other hand, 6 European languages and 2 (German) dialects use "alfa"; one language (Basque) seems to use both; 4 European languages don't use Latin characters. In other words: 17 (18) European Wikipedia languages use "alfa", 10 (+ 2 dialects) don't; one uses both Given that the list overrepresents Western languages, some more entries for alfa can be assumed esp. from Eastern European languages, but also additional languages written in cyrillic... (Feel free to look up more details for all (!) European languages...)

I'm sure you're getting my point: Unless someone really has a source, the claim that "most" European languages spell it alfa vs. alpha seems a bit rash. And the same and more is true for whether the spelling is really due to the fact that 1) most and 2) European languages spell it this or that way. Fact is that *some* people from *some* countries would mispronounce it. [And yes, for the record, of course they would pronounce it as a p. Whether the h is pronounced, and if so, how it is pronounced, is more complex because pronounciation of that latter is less consistent across languages.]

In sum, I'll give that sentence until the end of the year. If nobody has verified its truth until then, I'll change it. --Ibn Battuta 22:40, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

Would you care to revise your statistics? I think you intended to write that 6 European languages and 2 (German) dialects use "alpha" (not "alfa"), otherwise your conclusion is wrong. I originally wrote "Spanish", then changed it to "many European languages, including Spanish", and then to "most European languages, including Spanish". Someone felt that "including Spanish" was redundant, leaving the present "most European languages". Feel free to reword it to your liking. — Joe Kress 01:09, 17 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Julie

I've moved the following variant added by Dcs315 here:

Some English speakers shorten "Juliett" to "Julie."

I have doubts that this assertion is correct. Even if it is correct, "some English speakers" does not necessarily refer to air traffic controllers or others using radios. Furthermore, these weasel words are unacceptable in Wikipedia. Please provide a citation or specifically state who so shortens it. — Joe Kress 00:17, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] German version

"This phonetic alphabet was largely popularised by the German version of the TV gameshow Wheel of Fortune."

This is, as far as I can tell, not true. In the German version of the mentioned game show ("Glücksrad"), phonetic alphabets were used by most participants to denote the letters they had picked. But I can't recall ever to have heard the Alpha, Bravo, Charlie alphabet in use in this context, not even with just minor modifications or additions. Instead, most players used an older German phonetic alphabet which mostly employed given names (Anton, Berta, etc), or just used any other word with the desired first letter which came into their mind spontaneosly. 132.180.252.57 17:37, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

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