What's in the Military Alphabet, and Why?

In grade school we are all taught our A, B, C's, but rarely were we ever tested on our Alfa, Beta, Charlie's. If you've ever been on a phone call having to spell out your name or the email address you created in 8th grade, odds are you had to spell phonetically. When 'A as in Adam' and 'B as in boy' leave your lips, you've just used your own, personal phonetic alphabet. In an increasingly loud world, where the three-second video clip is king and everyone and everything is vying for attention, slowing down and conveying a message clearly us a necessity. Over 100 years ago, a new alphabet was created to help with this very issue - though referenced in pop culture and every day parlance, its inception was mainly to support military operations and aviation. Saying that life is a battlefield, (not love: sorry Pat Benatar), in this sense, is not far off.

Created to Support Military

"Radio communication is where it started," says Dan Bell, a retired 22-year veteran of the Marine Corps. "I joined the Marines in 1977 and had to memorize it. I had many classes down at Parish Island. It's kind of like verbal Morse Code." And while he's absolutely right in its most well-known form, the need to incorporate universal phonetic spelling started pre-WWI as a way to support two-way radio communications (both in militarily and for the amateur radio aficionado) and low-quality long-distance telephone circuits.

Uniformity Helps Combat Background Noise

The early 20th century saw the creation of the Amsterdam-Baltimore Alphabet insomuch that the letters were represented by different country names: Amsterdam, Baltimore, Canada, Denmark, etc. Then, post WWII and after years of additional studies, some done here locally at The Ohio State University in Columbus, the Able-Baker Alphabet was adopted with some new phonetics, to better ensure that words sounded different enough when spoken to combat potential background noise and confusion. "Many sounds are highly confusable within a language," says Meghan Sumner, a linguistics professor with Stanford University, in a recent interview with Popular Mechanics reporter Kimberly Hickok. For example, the sounds "th" and "f" and very similar (thin, fin) and easy to confuse, as are "m" and "n" sounds, they explain. "Especially in the contexts that are noisy or when you can't see the talker," such as over a radio with background noise or interference. The NATO Phonetic alphabet helps avoid that ambiguity and makes it clear what the letters are, Hickok reported.

Alphabet Was Made Universal

Named after the organization that first approved its broad use, (the North Atlantic Treaty Organization), the alphabet was standardized to ensure its functionality more broadly. "Across languages, speakers might hear a sound, but map it onto a different sound category in their own language, especially in context of background noises," Sumner says. "For example, the Spanish pronunciation of the letter "P" sounds very similar to the English pronunciation of the letter "B." This could cause issues when communicating the names of the people or places to someone who may not be familiar with those names in the other language, Hickok reported. "Working with other countries [we] needed familiar language," further explains Dan Bell. The variety of changes that have been applied over the last almost 100 years to this and other similar phonetic alphabets were done so with the arc of universality to compensate for the differing linguistic tendencies in other countries. Relative to global miliary alliances, its importance in the field cannot be understated as a bridge between countries, though also with a nod to uniformity among American military branches themselves. "When you communicate in the field, you'll have the Navy and the Army in the same area [and] when you have joint operations you have to have the same alphabet," Bell states.

Ironically, in daily use, at least one universally adopted word is officially spelled differently than pop culture conveys: Alpha is actually spelled Alfa.

Similarly, the pronunciations are different that most would have you believe: Lima = LEE MAH; Qubec = KEH BECK; Victor = VIK TAH. Keep in mind, this alphabet differs in usage, but holds a similar mode of messaging conveyance with other types of speech. For example, acronyms, which are abbreviations of a name or multiple words used as a word itself, like NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration), or initialism, which are abbreviations consisting of initial letters pronounced separately, (LOL = Laugh Out Loud, FOMO = Fear Of Missing Out, or CPU = Computer Processing Unit). So next time someone asks to spell a street name or confirm an alphanumeric license plate, remember the NATO Phonetic Alphabet when speaking with the local customer service representative. Papa-Sierra: There is an alphabet for numbers, too.

Commonly Referenced Phonetic Alphabet Phrases:

Well-known Berlin Wall access point between East and West Berlin, Checkpoint Charlie is actually Checkpoint - C Oscar Mike = On the Move Lima Company from Brook park, Ohio is actually Company - L, who are the third battalion of the 25th Marine Regiment (See: Lima Company Memorial at the Ohio Statehouse) Fans of the History Channel Show The Curse of Oak Island might hear brothers Rick and Marty Lagina refer to buried treasure as 'Bravo Tango' Link to websites to grab a table of current NATO Phonetic Alphabet and the one for numbers: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NATO_phonetic_alphabet https://www.popularmechanics.com/culture/a39297126/origin-of-the-nato-phonetic-alphabet/