Now imagine trying to get a clear message through that radio with all that noise. This may seem entirely unnecessary - why not just say A instead of Alfa? But think back to that scene: the static of the radio, maybe the sounds of gunfire or air raids, maybe other soldiers barking orders and answering. The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) is a standardized system of phonetic notation that represents the sounds of spoken language. Although known as the phonetic alphabet, the system is actually a spelling alphabet. The actors, who are playing soldiers in this hypothetical movie, are using the phonetic alphabet (also known as the NATO phonetic alphabet or the military alphabet), where each letter is assigned a full word. The accompanying captions included the phrase Romeo India Papa. Over.'Īlfa Bravo and Foxtrot Victor aren't code names. A crackle comes over someone's radio and a voice cuts through the static: 'Alfa Bravo, this is Foxtrot Victor. It happens all the time when we watch movies, especially war movies. 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.Air Force Senior Airman Sara Gutherie adjusts her headset to communicate with maintainers inside a C-17 Globemaster III during an inspection at the Pittsburgh International Airport Air Reserve Station, Sept. 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 NATO phonetic alphabet is used globally, including in Australia and other English-speaking. The IMO defines different pronunciation of numerals than does the ICAO: spelling out words or providing information. 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. For example, to say dog, one would say Delta-Oscar-Golf. Multiple code words often are combined to form words or expressions. For instance, Alpha means A, Bravo means B, and so on. Each represents one letter of the English alphabet. 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. The military alphabet consists of 27 code words.

English spelling alphabet papa