posted before, but this is still my go-to:
Alfa
Balfa
Calfa
DalfaAisle Bail Coil Deal Eel Feel Grill Hill Ill Jail Kill Lay Mill Nil Oil Pill Quill Real Seal Till Until Veal Will Xylophone Yell Zeal
would work so much better.
P pneumonia G gnu K knees
I used to do this all the time when I worked at a call center.
I always pronounce the G in gnu
In the software, the official position is that the G in GNU is pronounced. But for the animal known as a gnu, the g isn’t pronounced.
animal? what, is there an animal called gnu? that’s news to me
Ever since Lion King came out the “wildebeest” name has been much more common.
But the most commonly used logo for the GNU software is an anthropomorphized gnu.
Have you seen the GNU logo?
W for why and Y for you is delightful
Don’t forget the Double-U for the letter D. It’s an absolute mess.
C for cue and Q for queue! Evil genius.
Didn’t know Englishers skipped the T in tsunami
It should be a “hard ts” which is something we mostly picked up from the French that is also a sound used in Japanese. So there should be a difference between saying “tsu” and saying “sue.”
Tsu should be pronounced with teeth together and pushing air out through the teeth first, tongue against the lower front teeth for the hissy-t sound, before the vowel. (it’s hard to write how to pronounce a word)
I read it as choonami which is still not very helpful
From the creators of sharknado, now (bwaaam) choonami 🚂🌊
Most of them do, yeah. You may hear a bit of a “tongue click” or something with others first before the “s”. A lot of first-language English speakers seem to really struggle when they see two consonants together that they haven’t previously encountered.
Especially at the start of words, see also e.g. pterodactyl, which from what I’ve gathered native english speakers just pronounce without the p.
I think we need to be more consistent with it, time to drop the ‘p’ sound from helicopter as per its roots.
bloonk brain fell out error
Please insert brain into drive A: and press [Enter] when ready.Pictures painted by written text that you can hear.
Reading this made my left eye twitch. Good job.
At first I was confused, then annoyed and finally relieved when I realised I was being punked
That’s the exact train of thought I went through!
I always thought it was “G for Gnome” - huh, never too late to learn.
- E: Ewe
- H: Hugh
- U: Uyghur
- Y: Yew
Better suggestions for B:
- Breath: Half the people would say “breathe” instead.
- Boatswain: most people would have no idea how that’s pronounced
- Bury: a word with lots of different regional pronunciations
Bidet is puzzling enough. Then there’s modern portmanteaus like bussy (really, any word that has a more well-known P-word, like blot, will work) and NATO PA soundalikes like bike. And words with stress on other syllables that make the B less distinct, especially evil ones are before and benign for sounding like B4 and B9.
Ooh, I like before and benign because at first there doesn’t seem to be anything tricky going on there.
“B as in bdellium.” Or, “B as in subtle”.
“B as in subtle”
A silent B? Dumb.
Too bad all the (common) silent b words are words with b in the middle, not at the beginning. Bdellium would work, but that’s something I think 99.9% of the planet has never heard of. If that were allowed, I bet you could find extremely rare names for every other letter.
X: how bout either “Xenophobia” or even better, the 14th letter of the greek alphabet, as it’s written in English: Xi.
This makes me irrationally angry. Well done!
Lol - “Q as in Queue” hahahaha I bet someone thinks this is official enough to use.
I hope someone uses this, religiously, for life. :)Alpha
Bravo
Charlie
Delta
Echo
Foxtrot
Golf
Hotel
India
Juliet
Kilo
Lima
Mike
November
Oscar
Papa
Quebec
Romeo
Sierra
Tango
Uniform
Victor
Whiskey
Xray
Yankee
ZuluI used to work for phone support. First day when I thought I can use the alphabet like pro, then granny and auntie callers complained they don’t know that military shit.
I have always pronounced Quebec like “kebek.” Many US callers didn’t understand it until it’s like “cuebek”. So I started pronouncing like so. Many US callers didn’t understand it until it’s “kebek”.
Fuck this shit.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NATO_phonetic_alphabet
The spelling is actually also important for non-english speakers.
Alpha is hard to pronounce if you aren’t familiar with English ph, so it should be an F.
Juliet should have two T’s to ensure romance language speakers pronounce the T.
I was on a call earlier with a business and they said S as in Sam. I wanted to correct them, but I thought it wasn’t worth it.
If Q as in Queue bothers you, you better check what C stands for.
Same for D. And Y. And W.
C is especially bad because Cue pronounced the same as Queue (if my English isn’t too bad). The others are at least consisted once you accepted the absurdity. Also you forgot S and E in your list
After having to learn these for work years ago, my life got a lot easier. Bad phone call? Phonetics, precise radio comms.? Phonetics. Just works, should be taught in every school.
I find myself on the phone trying to spell something and come up with words that begin with each letter. Agreed that it’s a solved problem and everyone should just learn it.
The made up shit is so much more fun tho
I taught myself by playing a license plate game, referring to the cars around me by their phonetic license plates “what’re you doing bravo whiskey foxtrot foxtrot? You’re turning right but indicating left!” It makes road rage more fun.
Its cute that romeo and juliet live forever in the phonetic alphabet like this
It sure is!
m as in mancy n as in bike.
Big outs to The Bloodhound Gang
Many of these are two distinct syllables, so even if you get a broken transmission, it’s still intelligible.
I made this phonetic alphabet for the information age
information age
How many of these characters predate it by several decades?
Aladddin and Rapunzel definitely, I think those predate Disney.
reported for having Lilo instead of Luigi and Waldo instead of Waluigi
