How Were The NATO Phonetic Alphabet's Words Chosen?
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- Опубліковано 15 тра 2024
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SOURCES
www.nato.int/cps/en/natohq/de...
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Sierra. Uniform. Bravo. Sierra. Charlie. Romeo. India. Bravo. Echo.
This has "Be sure to drink your Ovaltine" vibes
Lima Oscar Lima November Alpha Hotel
I already am
Shield baby! I miss them too 😢.
i thought that was the Shield intro for a hot second
In Southeast Asia we usually replace Lima with London. That is because Lima is the number 5 in several Southeast Asian languages. This could lead to confusion in phone conversations.
In which languages do lima (five) sound exactly like Lima?
@@nunyabiznes33 Malay and Indonesian
@@HarisCountrys ahhh. Lima and lima sound different from each other in Filipino so we didn't changed the phonetic alphabet.
interesting
Austronesian Lima Gang
You forgot to mention that, when looking for the words to represent each letter, LOTS OF PEOPLE (I don't remember how many) were asked to provide a word representing each letter and asked to associate different words to each letter. The current alphabet reflects the results of that study/survey.
And also, before ROMEO, the letter R was ROGER.
As well as the ones mentioned in the video, there were a number of other phonetic alphabets used before the standardised NATO one - the ones used by the British and US armed forces in WW1 and WW2 are shown in this Wikipedia article: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allied_military_phonetic_spelling_alphabets
Roger, the OG "K".
Hopefully, that was before the usage of "roger" as a standard acknowledgment.
@@PongoXBongo "Roger" originated as just an R for "received"
I heard the words were also chosen to have a unique ending. If a transmission was garbled and could only hear “form, et, vo” you could still decipher it as being uniform juliet bravo.
Actually thought this video would analyze the phonetics of the syllables. As an ideal system would never repeat vowels between words, as in tango and bravo, with A then O in a two vowel word. Also ideal to have only 2 vowel words.
@@Malakawaka a, e, i, o, u. 5*5 = 25 and there's 26 letters. But, we actually need sounds - and English have a (also u and o), e, i (also e and ee) o, u (also oo), æ.
Ujb?
@@orbracha25 i just picked a few words to show that they all have unique endings. Ujb doesnt mean anything.
Charley was picked because any word that is spelled with just a "c" at the beginning could be misspelled with a "k" or an "s". Also there was a US army publication on this that had "sharley" as an alternative pronunciation.
Also, in many NATO languages the normal pronounciation of "c" is the sound English depicts with "ch" : "ciao" being an easy example.
@@davydatwood3158 which other languages? Turkish, Italian and maybe Polish don't sound like many
@@tomasbeltran04050 Well, at the time these words were chose it would have been Turkish, Italian, and - I think, I might be wrong on this one - Portuguese. Which is 3 out of 15 members and 3 out of 11 languages, English and French being used by multiple members. That's 20% of the nations and 27% of the languages, which is more than enough to be worth accommodating for if it doesn't impact the majority. Would it be enough on its own, maybe not - but in conjunction with the OP's point about any other English "c" sound being easily confused with "s" or "k" and going with the "ch" sound makes a lot of sense.
@@davydatwood3158 I forgot ðe time factor. But I þink ðat Portuguese doesn't use c for ðe [tʃ] sound. Just as in Spanish, it's a simple [s] sound.
Just to help clarify, you're indeed wrong about Portuguese. C is closer to English in Portuguese pronunciation, sometimes it sounds like K and sometimes like S, but never ch. We even use "ch" in Portuguese in several words.
Another reason why this is important in military context is that what you communicate over radio is very often not just words but also codes of some sort. So you *have* to spell stuff letter by letter. I used this a lot while I was in the Navy for a year. Also, numbers were "spelled" digit by digit. You don't say "20" as "twenty" but as "two zero". With some quirks, such as "fife" and "niner".
Anyone who has worked in a call centre for any significant time has made the mistake of saying "Y for Wankee".
My job is to write insurance policies on the phone. Knowing phonetics is still important. Even with our modern communication it’s amazing how similar “F” and “S” sound over the phone.
When I was in college, I volunteered to be an announcer on our college radio station. Rather than using my real name, I decided to use my initials in the phonetic alphabet. I had just completed Army training for military communications, so it was very much on my mind. Fortunately, I had initials that kind of sounded like a name. Calling myself November Golf (for example) would have been weird. This is Romeo Delta, signing off.
Being an Alfa Papa myself, it is kinda cool
cringe
I work for a breakdown recovery company and during my days on the phone I really wished that everyone knew this alphabet. It makes it so much easier to take down the registration number/plate of the broken down vehicle. I would advise everyone to learn at least the letters for their own car, even if they don't want to learn the whole alphabet.
People who need to use their voice to code have made up an alternative alphabet for voice recognition programs that is optimized for that use case - mainly by minimizing the number of syllables. The words are: air bat cap drum each fine gust harp sit jury crunch look made near odd pit quench red sun trap urge vest whale plex yank zip. Notably the "write and exit" command for the text editor Vim requires the letters "wq", which is "whale quench" in this alphabet. One author used this phrase as the name of her website.
Plex is the worst
Weird plex, but ok.
The NATO codes are mostly multisyllabic on purpose. If you hear over the radio "..fa bra.. ..arli.", you can figure out what that was. Even better, if someone transmits "..fa bra.. ..arl.., repe.. al.. ...av. cha.l.." then you have an even better chance.
The words were chosen to be unambiguous even when you don't hear the whole word. So if you only catch "...ember" and you know what the 26 possibilities are, you will know it must have been November and not December. Fun fact - my local fire department uses the NATO alphabet, except the airport fire station uses "David" instead of "Delta" because "ambulance needed at gate 5 Delta" could be confused with the airline Delta.
My grandpa is a retired pilot and I've heard some of his friends call him Delta Bravo, so of course I got curious from pretty early on and he explained to me how this phonetic alphabet is widely used in aviation. I always thought Foxtrot sticks like a sore thumb among all the rest.
I agree partially Foxtrot does stick out a bit
but it also sounds just cool as hell and it sticking out means less mixing up letters
Humphrey Bogart uses the able baker alphabet at the end of Key Largo when talking to the coast guard. His character is a freshly demobbed soldier.
The phonetic alphabet can also be used as a uphanism for curse words. The one that sticks out is whiskey tango foxtrot.
There is also a certain musical group who has a song using the letters Foxtrot Uniform Charlie Kilo.
Here in Chile, this way of speaking is known as "Charlie Tango", and it's mostly associated with aviators, there was even a soap opera about people in the Air Force that bore this name.
In Brazil it’s called “Zulu alphabet”, also used by aviators.
A small addition to the information given in the video: Som NATO countries whose language is endowed with a few extra letters will have phonetic names for those letters as well. For instance in Denmark Ægir, Ødis and Åse is used. I don't know how well these extras are incorporated into the wider use of the NATO phonetic alphabet, but I do imagine that countries using the same letters have coordinated their use.
Until 2005, Finland used to use its own radio alphabet which happened to represent Å, Ä and Ö as Åke, Äiti and Öljy. With the adoption of the NATO-standard phonetic alphabet we've decided to keep the old Åke, Äiti and Öljy when operating nationally, but also to substitute them for Alpha-Echo, Oscar-Echo and Alpha-Alpha when operating internationally.
I do wonder how somewhere like Czechia represents their varied alphabet however, since while writing out Å, Ä and Ö as AA, AE and OE is somewhat standardised already, I don't know of any standard for writing out letters like Č, Ř or Ů.
Over a hissing radio halfway around the world, you really do not want to make a mistake when the guy you're talking to is carrying an A bomb
I imagine Kilo and Whiskey were chosen since in many languages they're the only words beginning with K and W.
Yeah my native lenguage is portuguese and have to graphies of this words
Uisque and Whiskey
Quilo and Kilo
Fascinating to see the evolution, thanks!
I have really only heard of Alpha, Bravo, Charlie, Echo, Delta, Oscar, and Tango. I often hear Tango from Call of Duty where they say "Tango down"
Love your work mate, cheers from Australia! :)
"No, I was saying 'M', as in 'Mancy'. What did you think I said?"
"NANCY!!!"
"Oh, right, that makes way more sense."
Hands down the best diffusal scene ever.
There was a comedian 30 years ago or more who did a bit where he was explaining how he was trying to spell out letters over the phone but had no idea what the proper ones were so he made it up: "Yes, that's S as in...sauerkraut, P as in pneumonia, K as in Khadafi, and Q as in...Qadafi."
Like the line in Hot Shots; "Alfa Velveeta Knuckle Underwear, you are clear for takeoff.
This I’ve been looking forward to seeing covered for a while. It’s a very cool thing to have around.
(I actually learned this through the Forge mode in Halo Reach.)
This is what I was searching for, thanks
I really like the little pairs or groups of words that exist in the alphabet
Alpha delta
Charlie Mike Victor
Foxtrot tango
Juliette romeo
Lima quebec
There might be others I don't remember but it's helpful to remember them, I guess
Pedantry incoming! Take cover!
Alfa, not Alpha. The words have to be easily pronounced by all members of NATO and "ph" isn't an "f" sound in any language but English.
:D
More interestingly, the pairs often show the politics in NATO, with some words coming from the US Army's PA, some from the US Navy's, some from the British Army, some from the RAF, some from the RN, some from the CCB alphabet that was used when any of those groups were talking to each other (or the Canadian Army, RCAF, RCN, RAAF, RAN, and so on), and some brand new to be inclusive to all the non-Anglosphere countries that just joined up.
I've noticed that when speaking on a cellphone, it is often hard to make out letter names, even when the signal sounds clear. For that reason, I often use the NATO alphabet when spelling out words or email addresses over the phone.
The phonetic alphabet also includes very specific pronunciations for numbers as well, which I thought was kind of weird until I had lots of experience trying to take people's phone numbers over the telephone. It was interesting how often I confused two and three, which I definitely hadn't expected.
@@rmdodsonbills
Was it in German? The words for two and three are very similar "zwei" - "drei". I think that is the reason, why "zwei" had an alternative name: "zwo".
@@HalfEye79 That's the weird part. It was in English. Five and nine sound more alike in English than two and three do. And it's not like the phonetic alphabet versions were so different from the normal pronunciations either (two and tree).
I use this everyday in an American call center setting. For me the most problematic words for other people to understand are Kilo, Lima, and Quebec.Sierra isn't as problematic however the beginning of the word sounds like "C" so I think another word would be appropriate
Quick
The one that gets most people I talk to is Zulu. Partly because I'm Canadian and so the "cee zee dee" confusion just doesn't exist because we say it properly as "zed." But mostly because zed just doesn't come up that often - alas for me, it's part of my postal code.
A funny thing with xray (or extra) is that an x letter generally indicates a ks sound or a gz sound and sometimes an z sound. Picking fword or efficient for letter f would make it start similarly with and e sound.
The NATO Alphabet was based on military alphabets used by all the major Western militaries. The Royal Navy (Apple, Butter, Charlie, Duff ...), RAF, British Army (Ack, Bertie, ...; thus "Ack Ack" for "antiaircraft"), French army (Anatole, Berthe, Cesar ...), Italian (Ancona, Bologna, Catania ...) The US Army in WWI and WWII was Able, Baker, Charlie, Dog, Easy, Fox, George, How, Item, Jig, King, Love, Mike, Nan, Oboe, Peter, Quincy, Roger, Sugar, Tear, Uncle, Victor, William, X-Ray, Yoke, Zebra. This is why it's "Easy Company" in "Band of Brothers."
The U.S. version became the basis for the NATO alphabet, the common alphabet needed to be pronounced the same across languages, and several problems with the old radio alphabet were corrected: Sugar actually starts with an SH sound, George starts with a J sound, Roger might be misinterpreted as "Confirmed, Yes," Zebra is pronounced differently in British English, there are two many "AW" sounds so come up with alternatives to Dog, Fox, How, Love; and no one is sure how to pronounce Tear ("Tare" was correct, not "Teer"). Add more two-syllable words to slow down the pace (thus Fox becomes Foxtrot). Add a few non-English terms it isn't too anglocentric, thus Quebec ("KAY-beck") and Lima ("LEE-muh"), and spell Juliett with a double-T lest the French and Belgians pronounce it "jul-i-AY".
Not just old radios, new ones too. Due to atmospheric conditions, both natural and not, and jamming and crosstalk, a phonetic alphabet is as relevant as it has always been. Modern radios are good enough that Morse Code is drifting towards obsolescence, but not PAs.
As a side note, I don't have the NATO PA memorized, so I find myself substituting some of the words. It's quite embarrassing. 😅
I know some of the codes but when I have to use it over the phone call I get mixed up I'm glad I found this video this will encourage me to learn
I used to work in satellite control with another planner/analyst named Michael Papa. We always laughed when his initials were read out during the pass.
@5:50
yet another VERY BANGIN logo. bravo!
Part of the choice was to avoid words that contained sounds that do not occur in (the more common) languages spoken by users of this alphabet. Thus, for example, the 'th' sound (which doesn't really exist in French) was avoided.
The thing that winds me up most about this alphabet is that it isn't a phonetic alphabet, it's a naming alphabet! Phonetic alphabets would be something like "ah, buh, kuh, duh, eh, f, guh..."
In every day life in Italy we use names of cities for the same purpose of the NATO phonetic alphabet, especially when spelling complicated words over the telephone. One time i was chatting with a policeman, he told me how one time one of his colleagues, a former soldiers, used the NATO phonetic code instead of the city names to communicate via radio with the HQ, it goes without sayng that the former soldier was mocked for that, with the other cops calling him "Rambo"!
I have use the NATO phonetic alphabet for a long time, in and out of the military. I reasoning why, but not the why these words over others.
Quebec can be confusing because in Canada we approximate the french pronunciation by saying kuh-beck or kay-beck rather than making the qwa sound that's indicative of the letter Q in English
Still used in amateur (‘ham’) radio at HF frequencies because it’s mostly long distance point to point communication that can suffer a lot of signal degradation along the signal path (multi thousands of km).
My home state is being erased! Lol. (I happened to be reading the ITU’s off the screen when you said “November” again instead of “New York”)
I use this all the time for phone support calls. It makes reading off things like serial "numbers" (which often contains letters) much easier.
All employees at the company I work for have a user ID for their computers made up of three letters and four numbers. When you call the IT help desk they ask you for that user ID. As mine begins with IAN, I always give it as "India Alpha November"...and nobody yet has asked me to explain that.
I really wish they had stuck with M for Metro.
Thank you for spelling "Alfa" correctly. It drives me nuts when people spell it "Alpha."
I learnt the NATO spelling alphabet from a restaurant napkin of all things. It was somewhere in Seattle, with the alphabet flags and their NATO letters on it, and I took it with us on the ferry back to Vancouver and memorised it. Which turned out to be a major advantage when I was training for 9-1-1.
You did skip over the fact that almost all of them are two or more syllables and most importantly none of the words sound like each other. When people are just making up words they'll pick things like "God" and that sounds like "Dog" and so you *still* don't know if they're trying to say "D" or "G".
Great video. Subscribed. I'd wondered how the words were chosen. I'm familiar with this as I'm an amateur radio operator.
Mike Seven Tango Uniform Delta
as a lookout in the navy we came upon many gulf uniform elevens and a few bravo one romeo deltas
The biggest thing about the alphabet is that it has that extra length for built in buffering. The words are unique and distinct enough that if your radio got something like "Xr- -bec Romeo K- -embe-" chances are you'd know it was supposed to be XQRKN, which would be something of operational significance.
Disney has its own phonetic alphabet that they use in its customer service
You do a video about the name Trix or Trixie.
Pony magician catch your eye?
A Johnny Cash song (Foolish Questions) is where i heard the name Trix.
Imagine using this with people who never used those sounds in their native languages.
This is very like Hamming code or other auto-correting encoding. Using additional bytes/space for clarity through noisy channel.
At 4:01 you say "November" but "New York" is written. Can you confirm which one it would have been? :)
5:03 i always wondered why in bf5 (WW2 game) they said objective able/baker/dog etc instead of the ones we use now
Thanks
Bravo Echo November!
What about the one that was used in WW1? It started with Ack, hence Ack Ack for anti-aircraft guns. T was Toc hence Toc H for Talbot House.
That would make an interesting episode in itself.
I didn't know that i was using that to spell my last name on the phone. :,D
I just said the same words that my mother used when she wasn't understood. Haha
Sad that they selected Mike for M. Mike is verylike Nine, so you must use Niner or (that's the way to do it!) Novenine for digit 9.
On the thumbnail Alpha, Tango, Oscar; ATO; Australian Tax Office.
In the film Source Code, the lead used Yeti instead of Yankee or I thought it was Yeti and he used Yankee.
Another interesting story, the phonetic alphabet of Germany was changed recently because some complained it was too much influenced by the Nazi who canceled jewish names in it and replaced them with more german sounding names. So to circumvent any more controversy it now uses the names of German cities.
Nice way to sneakily 🥷 *teach* geography.
Making German phonetic alphabet sound more German. Oh the horror!
@@nunyabiznes33 It's not that the names didn't sound german, these are normal names with jewish origin, but they were used non jews too.
@@nunyabiznes33 que pendeja
That could cause confusion with the traffic cops.
if you like that WWE westler song, you might like "Metalingus" by Alter Bridge which was also used by WWE
I provide support to technicians who repair HVAC systems. Using the phonetic alphabet allows us to get the right model number over the phone.
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The Bell Keeps You Notified
It Helps The Show Thrive
Mike also made it to the modern NATO alphabet from the US Army alphabet
@3:33 that logo is hard as FUCK!!! great job
Reaaaaally dumb question, at 3:31, what is that open roof bus looking thing in the bottom left corner? That thing is freaky looking. awesome video and content as always :)
Early version of a city bus.
I do tech support. I reset passwords often. I use the NATO phonetic alphabet allll the time. My least favorite is foxtrot.
@@user-qv4np3ur5w My theory about that is that being created in the late 40s/early 50s, foxtrot was an F word that wouldn't be obscene, was familiar to the people of the time, and wasn't likely to be confused for something else. Similarly, I think Zulu is less about familiarity and more about being distinct. That said, I have known people who substituted Fox instead of foxtrot and it worked reasonably well.
@@rmdodsonbills
With Star Trek the name of Zulu wasn't so clear anymore, since there was Hikaru Sulu.
Does anyone know the Chinese version of the radio alphabet? Not kidding, they do use A, B, C, etc. in different contexts, and the People's Liberation Army has its own version.
This alphabet is also being used in civil aviation worldwide as ICAO alphabet. This among other things makes it kind of legal representation of latin letters even in countries that are not too familiar with latin alphabet.
It's still hard sometimes to hear the difference between letters by phone, such as "S" vs "F", or "T" vs "D".
I do a lot of taking information over the phone and it's a great help to not have to wonder if someone said V, B or D only to find out it it was M.
I try to stick to the NATO system excpet for Mary, Nut and Umbrella. I'm not in the military and nor is most of the people I talk to. Uniforms are not a common part of our existence. I used to be a typesetter and Mary for Em and Nut for En was common in that profession and I still use it 'cause I miss doing that.
Oh. I tend to use Lambda instead of Lima 'cause I can't remember Lima. And Indigo instead of India 'cause I like it. And Zebra instead of Zulu 'cause I don't want to listen to people complain about using names for peoples or this sort of thing. Oops.
In the itu one the text said new York but you said november?
Kinda hurts that he said the words wrong at 1:19. Nato has a way to say not only the words but the numbers as well, like quebec Keybec, as well as nine is ninner.
i thought this was called something else, as the phonetic alphabet is what's used in dictionary to show correct (phonetic) pronunciation of words? such as "alaska" => ah-lah-skah
Another awesome video. 👏
It’s funny because English is NOT phonetic and this dumb language needs a maaaaajor reform.
Let’s start by standardizing sounds:
PH -> F
words like “CHaos” should be spelled like KAOS” or pronounced like “CHarm
“Ough”? Get rid of that
Enough -> enuff
Some places like Arkansas
It’s Ar-KANSAS, change the pronunciation or the spelling
Colonel, pronounce it’s written or the very least spell it “coronel” and pronounce it as such
Sorry Patrick but we should spell it like the muricans, without the U, it’s slightly shorter lol
I’ll edit if I think of more, I’m blanking out
IPA
That's what happens when you use Roman letters to write a Germanic language that has heavy French influence and tends to steal vocabulary from every language it encounters. Chaos is Greek. Arkansas is only pronounced as it is because it's taken from the French transliteration of an exonym for the Quapaw tribe. Most of the rest is past failed attempts to make things consistent that fell apart as different groups in England, and later its colonies, kept changing how they spoke while keeping the spelling the same. Americans say and spell "color", but Brits spell "colour" and say something more like "culla". Where'd the r go in their speech? Why is there even a u in the spelling? And what the hell even is the name of the 13th element?
@@doomsdayrabbit4398 EXAAAAAAACTLY!!
@@darcy6698 Yeaaaaa but no.
Not everybody knows how to read those weird squiggly lines. The Roman alphabet however EVERYBODY does.
IPA PROUNUCIATION yes, ipa "alphabet"? No.
@@n1hondude i challenge u to create an english spelling reform, that is:
1. easy to learn (at least easier than IPA)
2. dialectically neutral (very hard)
3. consistent
it doesnt even have to be pure phonetic, id accept arbitrary digraphs at this point
@4:05, "New York" is on screen, but you said "November".
I dislike "Papa," if you had many P's in a row, it would still be confusing.
I see they officially changed M to Mike instead of Mancy.
You said the two letters after the dash were Oscar Kilo!
5:15 misspelled roger
back then it's able baker charlie easy and so
November. India. Golf. Golf. Echo. Romeo
Why cops mostly don't use the NATO alphabet; Is "GMC Sierra Quebec Mike three seven two niner" GMC (model and jurisdiction of registration undefined) SQM3729, GMC Sierra (jurisdiction of registration undefined) QM3729, or GMC Sierra, Quebec registration M3729? They also follow a convention that acronymous vehicle makes are given in plain English or whatever other local language rather than spelled out phonetically.
Sometimes I think the alphabet should be reduced to all be two syllable words for consistency and speed. An example would be to replace NOVEMBER with NIKKI or NAPPY.
People nowadays mishearing "Zulu" for "Cthulhu"
Hello!
How/why did GOLD become GOLF? That wasn’t in the list of requested changes from NATO.
While the phonetic alphabet now in use is purported to be a NATO initiative there was a phonetic alphabet in use during WW2
Western Union made a phonetic alphabet as well. I think American EMTs prefer the Western Union version.
Not once. Not a single time have I said , to an untrained person, the word SIERRA, and not had to explain to them, that I didn't just say "C", that it's a word, that it stands for "S".
It's not a commonly known word for Second Language speakers, and I've had to explain it to 'native' speakers more than once.
The worst choice in the whole thing.
Sandstorm, Solar, Sunrise/Sunset.
There were plenty of better examples.
whiskytangofoxtrot
Tango, Yankee!
In the beginning was the word, the word was with God and the word was with God
In our obsession with words, we found numbers. This should be brought to kids ever since we introduce them to numbers
5:32 “Like, surely, you want something with a _C_ that makes a more traditional _C_ sound, right?”
What the heck is a ”more traditional _C_ sound”? _Camel? Circle? Cucumber? Chianti?_
C like the way K sounds like, I think.
Easy Company, Band of Brothers, would have been Echo Company.
Not during WW2 when Band of Brothers is set it.
Why on esrth "phonetic"? It's a rebus, I know what it phonetic alohabet is. Aleph Beth Gimel ( names if things) Valencia= Balenzia
@5:20 HOW THE FUCK DID HE MISS MIKE!!!!! no excuse for that
Hotel Echo Lima Lima Oscar to everyone
The name of an Italian sports car is the same as the initials of that name spelled in the NATO alphabet: Alfa Romeo.
I am now Sierra Tango Echo Victor Echo November