More accurately known as the International Radiotelephony Spelling Alphabet (IRSA), or ICAO (International Civil Aviation Organization) alphabet. The NATO phonetic alphabet is an alphabet used specifically for spelling out voice messages. Thus, comes a unified alphabet system that can minimize the chances of miscommunication - the NATO Phonetic Alphabet. For Example, B, C, and D, all of which sound very similar, especially over radio communication. The code word Charlie was used to avoid confusion between different checkpoints. This marked the crossing between East and West Berlin during the Cold War. You may have even visited a historical landmark which uses a spelling alphabet, like Checkpoint Charlie in Berlin. Youve probably heard spelling alphabets being used in movies and on TV. But instead, your unit heads for BA98, having misheard the radio message.Īvoiding a critical situation like this is why we have phonetic spelling alphabets. You receive orders to make your way to the extraction point: go to map grid DH98. Imagine that youre on the ground in a military operation. The most prominent modern-day code is the NATO phonetic alphabet. But, the alphabets have actually been invented to avoid the fatal results that some spelling mistakes can have. Spelling alphabets are used to make radio messages as easily understood as possible especially by the military. The name NATO phonetic alphabet became widespread because it was NATO Allies who had spearheaded the final revision and because the signals used to facilitate the naval communications and tactics of the US and NATO have become global.Īpart from the traditional military usage, the NATO phonetic is often used in the retail industry, where customer or site details are spoken by telephone (to authorize a credit agreement or confirm stock codes), by IT professionals to communicate long codes or by airlines to communicate passenger name records internally.Ī spelling alphabet is also often called a ‘phonetic alphabet’, but this is not related to the usage of the same phrase in phonetics, which is used to indicate the sounds of human speech, such as the International Phonetic Alphabet.You may not think that spelling can be a life or death matter. Telephone spelling alphabets were developed to improve communication since World War I, but the first non-military internationally recognized spelling alphabet was adopted by the CCIR (predecessor of the ITU) in 1927.ĭuring World War II, many nations used their own versions of a spelling alphabet, but the International Air Transport Association (IATA), recognizing the need for a single universal alphabet, presented a draft alphabet to the ICAO during 1947 that had sounds common to English, French, Spanish and Portuguese.ĭuring 1948-1949, Jean-Paul Vinay, a professor of linguistics at the Université de Montréal, collaborated with the ICAO on the development of a new spelling alphabet, with minimum requirements for the words to have a similar spelling in at least English, French, and Spanish, as well as be live words in each of these three languages.Įventually, the NATO alphabet became effective in 1956 and, a few years later, turned into the established universal phonetic alphabet for all military, civilian and amateur radio communications. Actually, as of 2002, the IMO’s GMDSS procedures permit the use of the ICAO numeral pronunciation. In practice, these are used rarely, as they frequently result in confusion between speakers of different languages. The IMO defines different pronunciation of numerals than does the ICAO: However, each agency chooses one of two different sets of numeric code words. Note that “Alpha” is written as “Alfa” and “Juliet” is written as “Juliett”, which are the spellings still in use in the international version of the alphabet, to avoid possible critical mispronunciations by speakers of other languages.Īfter ICAO developed the phonetic, this was adopted by many other international and national organizations, including the IMO. The 26 code words in the spelling alphabet are assigned to the 26 letters of the English alphabet in alphabetical order as follows: Alfa, Bravo, Charlie, Delta, Echo, Foxtrot, Golf, Hotel, India, Juliett, Kilo, Lima, Mike, November, Oscar, Papa, Quebec, Romeo, Sierra, Tango, Uniform, Victor, Whiskey, X-ray, Yankee, Zulu.
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