A Conversation for The NATO phonetic alphabet

Brilliant!

Post 1

Leo

I man the phones all day, and people should spell their names this way-- it sure beats "Was that V or P?"


Brilliant!

Post 2

Ku'Reshtin (Bring the beat back!)

Same here.. I'm on the phone and the phonetic alphabets are very useful.
Then again, we get calls from a lot of peple who doesn't get the phonetic alphabet at all.

"So, your reference code for this case is Oh-One-Sierra-Romeo-Three-Victor-Lima."
"What? Oh-one zero (O10)?"
"No, it's Zero-One. S for Sierra."
"Zero One S Four Zero?"
"Ehh.. No. It's The number Zero. The number One. The letter S as is Sierra or Singapore, or Stupid!"smiley - grr
"So what happened to the four?"

I don't want to stereotype a fifth of the world population, but those conversations almost always breaks out when there's a Chinese student calling from Sweden. Their English is apalling to begin with, and then you can sit for five or ten minutes trying to get them to write down a seven digit reference number.

One good thing, though is that Swedish customers know the Swedish phonetic alphabet and knows (mostly) what you say when giving them a reference code phonetically.
However, you can hear some interesting usages when they try to read a serial number of a machine.
I can't give any examples, though, as it just wouldn't work in English.


Brilliant!

Post 3

Navigatorblack of the EAN Blackheart

Cool. Yeah, I did the unedited entry, and I use the alphabet in the Sea Cadets. It used to have what each of the letters meant in sea faring terminology, like Bravo is I am taking in or carrying or discharging dangerous goods, but I had to take them off


Key: Complain about this post

Write an Entry

"The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is a wholly remarkable book. It has been compiled and recompiled many times and under many different editorships. It contains contributions from countless numbers of travellers and researchers."

Write an entry
Read more