See also PAN-PAN, from the French 'panne' meaning breakdown. The story I was told behind the origin of these was that they evolved from British <-> French air

See also PAN-PAN, from the French 'panne' meaning breakdown. The story I was told behind the origin of these was that they evolved from British <-> French air traffic and was a reasonably logical thing that everybody agreed on and could pronounce intelligibly for the other party. Edit to add: English is the official international language for naval/aviation communication. Having really important words in another language makes them stand out and hard to say by mistake.