Please use this and don’t make up your own shit on the fly. It’s very understandable both as a rep and a customer.
M as in Mancy
K as in Knowlege G as in Gnome M as in Mnemonic P as in Pterodactyl W as in Wrist
this is an alphabet but the whole idea of the phonetic alphabet is to make communication more efficient, and I don’t think this achieves that.
“No, I said P! P for pterodactyl!”
Edit: Though, that said, the point of the phonetic alphabet is they are very distinguishable words that sound nothing like one another. Even making out just “-a-a” you know it was papa, P. So as long as you know how to spell pterodactyl…
The NATO phonetic alphabet is incredibly useful, though it does suffer from some issues in similar sounds. During a recent high frequency (HF) worldwide competition (IARU-HF), weak-signal SSB stations sometimes had to spend a few minutes trying to complete a radio exchange because of similar sounding phonetic endings: “Was that whiskey one bravo alpha?”
“Negative, whiskey one tango alpha—TANGO alpha, over”
This happens so commonly, that many HF operators substitute other words in the same manner to enhance understanding: common ones are kilowatt, sugar, Germany, America, London, etc.
I was so close to editing my comment to be “whiskey one tango foxtrot” and now I regret not doing it lol
kilowatt, sugar, Germany, America, London
They’re great substitutes. I always found Quebec to be the most distinguishable because of geographic reference.
Golf to Germany makes sense as Golf it’s single syllable with yet another hard type O in it. Unlike Mike which could be missed, but the I and K crack/pop are strong sounds.
Kilowatt is interesting since the ‘watt’ is a backup sound if kilo is distorted. Honestly, Kardashian would be a good one as much as it pains me to say it.
Kilowatt trips me up still, I’ll copy KW maybe once in ~100 exchanges and not notice. It’s more common during high-volume exchanges. Getting better though!
I shudder at even typing Kardashian lol
Not sure about why people are surprised by this alphabet. It’s been in use for quite some time in its current form. I work in aviation and we always use this for radio communications. Obviously the military does too.
I personally hate it when I say the nato alphabet equivallent and somebody just gets confused. Like “what do you mean alpha, is that what I need to type?”. Or worse yet, they start using names and end up with the joke from Archer - “M as in Mancy” or other nondescript names for letters.
I like throwing these in on purpose, p as in pterodactyl often gets a chuckle.
For the layperson you have to do the “[letter] as in [phonetic alphabet equivalent]” format. Most people will understandably get confused if they ask how to spell your name and you tell them “Alpha-November-Delta-Yankee”. If they’re not used to it or never heard it it’ll sound like you just started having a stroke.
I guess i watched a bunch of war movies as a kid; because as an adult mid 20s somebody on the phone spelled out their software code using phonetic alphabet, it took me a split second to process the unexpected, but then knew it was the first letter from osmosis i guess
Tbf most people never have reason to use it so they don’t know it. Or they just think the words are random after watching a cop drama or comedy where a word is spelled out over a radio. Also there seems to be an independent police phonetic called then “LAPD” alphabet, but I can’t tell if it’s intended to be serious or just mostly lifted from movies and tv.
