![]() ![]() Thus making letters that were previously difficult to distinguish when named (such as the letters bee, tee, vee) more obvious (by saying beer, toc, and vic in their place ). These alphabets were used to spell out words by saying a full word for each letter of the alphabet. To improve communication over the low-quality connections and possibly long-distance telephone lines of the late 19th century, basic telephone alphabets were developed. As a young technology, telephony audio quality was full of static and plagued by audio intermittency making it difficult to clearly understand the spoken message. By 1891, AT&T had created a network of interconnected telephone lines that required switchboard operators and allowed for long distance calls to various locations. The first commercial telephones that soon followed were based on fixed wires between two places that wished to communicate. ![]() ![]() In 1876 Alexander Bell was awarded the first US patent for the telephone. And the alphabet was adopted by an influential quasi-global organization (NATO), which pushed for its international acceptance. The design was the result of significant systematic testing and statistical analysis. It did so by involving many global stakeholders. In short, it solved a widely-observed problem (garbled radio communications). What made the NATO phonetic alphabet design so enduring that it survived the pre-digital (analog) age, and the onset and proliferation of the digital age? Why was this design so universal that it is used throughout the world with only minor regional adaptations? 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.To be clear, the NATO phonetic alphabet was not the first such alphabet, but once its careful development was complete and put in place in 1956, it was widely and rapidly accepted by numerous international organizations and is still the standard today. 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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