6 ms·

How exactly "a like apple, c like cat" is worse than "a like alpha, c like Charlie"?

scrollaway 6y ago
You know that scene in Archer where he spells "M as in Mancy" over the radio because he doesn't know the phonetic alphabet? I've legitimately had that with phone operators. Just a couple of weeks ago I had a CSR spell out "D for Doris" over an atrocious phone line.
- mkl 6y ago
  Or was it "T for torus"? Seems a pretty bad choice, unless there was context that it was always names or something.
  - sneak 6y ago
    The informal civilian convention does indeed use given names. The names themselves are not standardized though so it's not a very good system.
    - scrollaway 6y ago
      I had heard B for Boris, so there's that. :) If only there were some kind of standard of which names to give for which letter, eh?
      - GoblinSlayer 6y ago
        It's a feature that you can use it without learning anything.
- matsemann 6y ago
  I always do M for mnemonic when spelling my name. A for aisle etc..
  - knorker 6y ago
    — "M for menemonic, I for isle", roger. — No, my name is not Roger
  - rauhl 6y ago
    On that note, I rather like this list: https://web.cs.dal.ca/~jamie/Words/alphabet.html https://web.cs.dal.ca/~jamie/Words/alphabet.html AURAL BDELLIUM CUE DJINN And it gets worse!
    - scrollaway 6y ago
      Oh my god, this is brilliant. "S as in Serial" and "Y as in You" are two I'll definitely be using if I want to be annoying.
dragonwriter 6y ago
It's worse because it's really easy to come up with a word that is hard to understand in unclear communications conditions and thus either remains ambiguous or, worse, suggests the wrong resolution of ambiguity to the listener. Standard phonetic alphabets like the NATO one are designed so that the words and pronunciations are very highly unambiguous even if the listener isn't familiar with the phonetic alphabet, and even moreso if the listener is familiar the alphabet. It's also worse because if you have two speakers who are familiar with the use of a phonetic alphabet, you don't have to do “‘a' is in...”, you just spell out “Alpha Romeo Tango India Sierra Tango” (no, I have no idea why I picked that word for an example.)
- thisrod 6y ago
  Ideally, you use the appropriate proword: "I SPELL Alpha Romeo Tango India Sierra Tango".
- JackFr 6y ago
  I believe the use of the pronunciation ‘niner’ instead of ‘nine‘ was because nine could be too easily confused with ‘five’. And ‘port’ replaced ‘larboard’ in the 19th century to avoid confusion. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Port_and_starboard https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Port_and_starboard
  - sk5t 6y ago
    But also, five is pronounced "fife." Tree, fow-er, fife.
    - notadev 6y ago
      In the US Navy, because 5 sounds like fire, it's skipped when doing a countdown over a ship's PA system (called the 1MC). Countdowns are done for switching timezones/synchronizing watches, etc.
- tialaramex 6y ago
  Yup, British postal codes are alphanumeric and I've never had a call center worker not follow when I read mine beginning "Sierra Oscar" rather than trying to just say the letters SO clearly enough. The codes are deliberately unambiguous (e.g. zero and the letter O can't occur in the same position) but it's less likely someone understands that and incorporates it into their parsing than that they're familiar with the NATO alphabet.
macintux 6y ago
“C like cat” is easy to misinterpret as “b like bat”, e.g. Granted, barley could be confused for Charlie over a poor transmission, but that’s why they’re standardized.
LVB 6y ago
When your ear is ready to match against one of 26 known phonetics, it is possible to do so even with very high noise. I might only pick up “...orm” but I’ll know it’s “uniform” (U) because it couldn’t be the other 25.
krackers 6y ago
Also given that Foxtrot and Zulu are relatively uncommon words you might cause more confusion if this was used with a layperson.
mjlee 6y ago
One of the keys to the success of the NATO phonetic alphabet is the disambiguation across various accents. Let's say you're talking with someone who doesn't have a distinct V or W in their native tongue. Victor pronounced Wictor and Whisky pronounced Visky are sufficiently different from each other. If you're making it up on the fly you could easily pick a word that could be confused for another. Vine/wine, while/vial, etc. The same goes for F/S across links that can't support the higher frequencies and L/R in some Asian languages.
MereInterest 6y ago
As a worst case scenario, when somebody asked for clarification between 'm' and 'n', I responded with "m as in mnemonic". Not only did it fail to resolve the question, it was perhaps the worst word I could have chosen.

You know that scene in Archer where he spells "M as in Mancy" over the radio because he doesn't know the phonetic alphabet? I've legitimately had that with phone operators. Just a couple of weeks ago I had a CSR spell out "D for Doris" over an atrocious phone line.

mkl 6y ago
Or was it "T for torus"? Seems a pretty bad choice, unless there was context that it was always names or something.
- sneak 6y ago
  The informal civilian convention does indeed use given names. The names themselves are not standardized though so it's not a very good system.
  - scrollaway 6y ago
    I had heard B for Boris, so there's that. :) If only there were some kind of standard of which names to give for which letter, eh?
    - GoblinSlayer 6y ago
      It's a feature that you can use it without learning anything.
matsemann 6y ago
I always do M for mnemonic when spelling my name. A for aisle etc..
- knorker 6y ago
  — "M for menemonic, I for isle", roger. — No, my name is not Roger
- rauhl 6y ago
  On that note, I rather like this list: https://web.cs.dal.ca/~jamie/Words/alphabet.html https://web.cs.dal.ca/~jamie/Words/alphabet.html AURAL BDELLIUM CUE DJINN And it gets worse!
  - scrollaway 6y ago
    Oh my god, this is brilliant. "S as in Serial" and "Y as in You" are two I'll definitely be using if I want to be annoying.

dragonwriter 6y ago

It's worse because it's really easy to come up with a word that is hard to understand in unclear communications conditions and thus either remains ambiguous or, worse, suggests the wrong resolution of ambiguity to the listener. Standard phonetic alphabets like the NATO one are designed so that the words and pronunciations are very highly unambiguous even if the listener isn't familiar with the phonetic alphabet, and even moreso if the listener is familiar the alphabet. It's also worse because if you have two speakers who are familiar with the use of a phonetic alphabet, you don't have to do “‘a' is in...”, you just spell out “Alpha Romeo Tango India Sierra Tango” (no, I have no idea why I picked that word for an example.)

thisrod 6y ago
Ideally, you use the appropriate proword: "I SPELL Alpha Romeo Tango India Sierra Tango".
JackFr 6y ago
I believe the use of the pronunciation ‘niner’ instead of ‘nine‘ was because nine could be too easily confused with ‘five’. And ‘port’ replaced ‘larboard’ in the 19th century to avoid confusion. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Port_and_starboard https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Port_and_starboard
- sk5t 6y ago
  But also, five is pronounced "fife." Tree, fow-er, fife.
  - notadev 6y ago
    In the US Navy, because 5 sounds like fire, it's skipped when doing a countdown over a ship's PA system (called the 1MC). Countdowns are done for switching timezones/synchronizing watches, etc.
tialaramex 6y ago
Yup, British postal codes are alphanumeric and I've never had a call center worker not follow when I read mine beginning "Sierra Oscar" rather than trying to just say the letters SO clearly enough. The codes are deliberately unambiguous (e.g. zero and the letter O can't occur in the same position) but it's less likely someone understands that and incorporates it into their parsing than that they're familiar with the NATO alphabet.

macintux 6y ago

“C like cat” is easy to misinterpret as “b like bat”, e.g. Granted, barley could be confused for Charlie over a poor transmission, but that’s why they’re standardized.

LVB 6y ago

When your ear is ready to match against one of 26 known phonetics, it is possible to do so even with very high noise. I might only pick up “...orm” but I’ll know it’s “uniform” (U) because it couldn’t be the other 25.

krackers 6y ago

Also given that Foxtrot and Zulu are relatively uncommon words you might cause more confusion if this was used with a layperson.

mjlee 6y ago

One of the keys to the success of the NATO phonetic alphabet is the disambiguation across various accents. Let's say you're talking with someone who doesn't have a distinct V or W in their native tongue. Victor pronounced Wictor and Whisky pronounced Visky are sufficiently different from each other. If you're making it up on the fly you could easily pick a word that could be confused for another. Vine/wine, while/vial, etc. The same goes for F/S across links that can't support the higher frequencies and L/R in some Asian languages.

MereInterest 6y ago

As a worst case scenario, when somebody asked for clarification between 'm' and 'n', I responded with "m as in mnemonic". Not only did it fail to resolve the question, it was perhaps the worst word I could have chosen.