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Archive 1Archive 2

Some incorrect information

Nearly at the bottom, there's some information about special letters in some countries. That includes Norway, and this is some information I doubt is correct. "Østen (male first name) for <Ø>"; Østen is not a Norwegian name, I'm a Norwegian so i know that. "Østen" means "The east", something that's east of you. But it's more commonly used to describe a world part.

I believe it was intended to be "Øysten" or "Øystein", or the description of the word is wrong. (Those are both Norwegian names.)

According to no:Øystein, Østen does exist as a name, probably a Danified variant of Øystein, which (I suspect) is rare nowadays (but may have been common when the written language was still essentially Danish), that's why you're not familiar with it anymore. (It's even conceivable that people used to spell their name <Østen> in the quasi-Danish written language formerly used in Norway, but pronounce it like Øystein when speaking Norwegian.) It could also be a Swedified variant, perhaps, used by Swedes (or people of Swedish ancestry) settling in Norway, or Norwegians whose parents prefer the Swedish variant, or used in border areas of Eastern Norway, or communities abroad, or wherever both languages are in (intense?) contact (though as far as I am aware, Swedish is used, or at least heard – for example in TV – a lot in Norway anyway, so Norwegians are exposed to Swedish all the time, and of course well familiar with Swedish names).
I must emphasise that being Norwegian does not make one an instant expert in all things Norway-related down to the tiniest particulars, nor on the language and literature of Norway including all historical stages, dialects and variants of the written and spoken languages (otherwise, why would any citizen of Norway ever need to study Norwegian language or literature?), so you should be careful with claims such as "I'm Norwegian so I can definitely exclude that XY exists or has ever existed in Norway/Norwegian". Historically widespread phenomena can fade from the public awareness/memory surprisingly quickly, or even be actively denied, especially if nationalistic, patriotic or separatistic sentiments play a role (and the influence of such tendencies in Norway, especially to distance oneselves from one's Danish and Swedish neighbours and profile/accentuate one's separate ethnic identity is hard to deny). --Florian Blaschke (talk) 13:56, 10 November 2011 (UTC)

History section needs cleanup

It contains two sentences in a row that begin with "But" (which is never supposed to begin a sentence), and also an instance of apparent OR ("and was adopted before 1959 by the ITU, because it appears in the 1959 Radio Regulations as an established phonetic alphabet").20:03, 22 March 2012 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 192.249.47.177 (talk)

A quick internet survey shows that the only people who object to beginning a sentence with "but" are English teachers. Everyone else thinks it is quite acceptable. Indeed, many writers think sentences should begin with "but" because it is more forceful than its lukewarm substitutes, "however", "nevertheless", and "although". On the other hand, some state it is less formal, while others say formality has nothing to do with it. The American Heritage Dictionary states "But may be used to begin a sentence at all levels of style."
I'll reword ITU usage with "... and the ITU adopted it no later than 1959 when they mandated its usage via their official publication, Radio Regulations." I cannot say they adopted it in 1959 because an earlier edition of Radio Regulations published between 1956 and 1958 inclusive many have mandated its usage. — Joe Kress (talk) 07:59, 23 March 2012 (UTC)
My larger point was that it contains two of them in a row, which just grates on your ears.192.249.47.177 (talk) 19:15, 15 June 2012 (UTC)

In the image: "nine" should be "niner"

Under "Telephony", 9 is listed as "nine". It should be changed to "niner". Spetnik (talk) 16:20, 14 September 2011 (UTC)

Niner is the pronunciation. The spelling is still nine. It's to make it easier to distinguish from "five", which is pronounced "fife" in this alphabet. Georgia guy (talk) 16:24, 14 September 2011 (UTC)
But the article says "and 9 has an extra syllable to keep it distinct from German nein 'no'." I tend to think that the distinction with 5 (fife) makes more sense, however. 108.246.205.134 (talk) 04:52, 19 May 2013 (UTC)

Edit request from 86.134.140.26, 15 May 2010

{{editsemiprotected}}

IN the phonetic alphabet a is Alpha not Alfa 86.134.140.26 (talk) 15:21, 15 May 2010 (UTC)

That is incorrect. See [1]. --Alan (talk) 15:42, 15 May 2010 (UTC)
I concur. Only the prior reference is not entirely authoritative. In regard of the International Signal Code see note #1 in the article, or go directly to official source. - J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 21:18, 9 July 2010 (UTC)

Not done: please establish a consensus for this alteration before using the {{edit semi-protected}} template. Celestra (talk) 17:16, 15 May 2010 (UTC)

A perhaps related point: the article is internally inconsistent. The embedded SVG table at the top gives the FAA version of J as Juliet; but the table under "Alphabet and Pronunciation" gives the FAA version as Juliett (and ANSI as Juliet). The FAA site gives Juliett as the correct version, so the SVG file should be changed. I am not sure whether there is a standard way to modify embedded files of this kind so have not done so. LeighCaldwell (talk) 21:00, 31 January 2011 (UTC)

Good catch. The image is in error compared to its source in the FAA Aeronautical Information Manual, but I don't have the program needed to change it. — Joe Kress (talk) 06:51, 1 February 2011 (UTC)

In twenty-some years of US military service I never saw "Alfa" in print. Always "Alpha". — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.0.80.29 (talk) 18:46, 30 July 2013 (UTC)

Use by police forces.

Does anyone have examples of police forces that use this alphabet. I spoke to someone recently who used it, and she said she was a police officer and they used it as standard. (This is in Australia). But not sure if it statewide or not, or was it just her station or command. I see that many US forces make up their own, but is there any others using NATO. It deserves a mention. --Dmol (talk) 03:37, 24 July 2013 (UTC) 

      In the Uk, they seem to use it for call signs, e.g. Oscar Tango 601.
       81.151.138.189 (talk) 19:47, 26 August 2013 (UTC)

Variants Aviation is incorrect

The entry states ""Delta" is replaced by "Data", "Dixie" or "David" at airports that have a majority of Delta Air Lines flights, such as Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport in order to avoid confusion because "Delta" is also Delta's callsign." This is misleading and incorrect.

- The entry is citing the Civil Aviation Authority, "Aircraft Call Sign Confusion Evaluation Safety Study", April 2000. The CAA is the United Kingdom's aviation regulator. Hartsfield-Jackson is in the U.S. which is not bound to CAA regulations.

- The "Aircraft Call Sign Confusion Evaluation Safety Study" is just a study and only makes recommendations. It is not an authoritative regulatory publication.

- "Data", "Dixie" or "David" is not mentioned anywhere in the cited document.

- The recommendation in the source only applies to the use of "Delta" when assigning callsigns. Not for any other phonetic use of "D"

I recommend this entry be removed completely since the cited source is a recommendation from a study. 23.31.53.20 (talk) 23:26, 3 January 2014 (UTC)

Joke Version

Starts A for Gardner (Ava Gardner). Can someone fill in the rest of it ? 31.52.29.204 (talk) 01:24, 22 January 2014 (UTC)

There's a similar one at Cockney alphabet. Probably lots of these. — kwami (talk) 04:50, 22 January 2014 (UTC)

Alternative phonetic alphabet

Some of the letters have alternative code words.
Letter Code word
A aether
B bdellium
C chthonic
D djellaba
E euphemism
F ffoulkes
G gnome
H honor
I IHVH
J Jarlsberg
K knickers
L llama
M mnemonic
N Nguyen
O oestrogen
P pneumonia
Q qi
R Rwanda
S sjambok
T tsar
U uilleann
V veld
W wrack, wheki
X Xhosa
Y yttrium
Z Zsa Zsa
Gnu, heuristic, ithyphallic, Ngaio, quay, whare, and zloty are also seen. F, N, and R could some work ... — kwami (talk) 03:06, 8 December 2013 (UTC)
I bet we could find a good "ř" word from Czech to improve this list. VanIsaacWS Vexcontribs 06:15, 19 December 2013 (UTC)
Nothing in the OED begins with rz, and no words w a Czech etym. begin w ř. Rzeszów has a pronunciation at Dict.com, but I can't tell if it's supposed to be English or Polish. — kwami (talk) 08:08, 19 December 2013 (UTC)
BTW, asked at the ref desk and got a few replies. I probably shouldn't've posted here. — kwami (talk) 08:39, 19 December 2013 (UTC)
Ref desk discussion: Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2013 December 19#Jocular phonetic alphabet. -- ToE 04:01, 28 August 2014 (UTC)

Q for Queen

I was under the impression that Q had been changed to Queen circa 2003 by the United Nations. Is this correct? I've been saying it like this for years so why does Wikipedia still think it's Quebec?

Ref: DCAC 310-70-1 supplement 1 and ACP 131

0s1r1s (talk) 12:58, 3 September 2014 (UTC)

The latest version of the ICAO Aeronautical Telecommunications Annex 10 Volume II is the sixth edition (2001). See pages 5-4 to 5-5 for the spelling alphabet and numbers. However, three amendments in 2003, 2005, and 2007 are listed in the ICAO Catalogue page 14 which do affect this publication. It would require lots of research in old ICAO meetings to determine if any changes were made to the alphabet, at least until the seventh edition becomes available. — Joe Kress (talk) 22:11, 1 December 2014 (UTC)
"Queen" is the word for Q in the old Joint Army/Navy Phonetic Alphabet used during late WWII that was replaced by the ICAO spelling alphabet and its "Quebec" in 1956 by all NATO military commands. Of course, these new words were also used by all of civil aviation since 1956 because the International Civil Aviation Organization (a United Nations Specialized Agency) is their governing authority.
After reviewing the latest version of the ICAO publication linked in my preceding comment, I see that it includes all subsequent amendments, so it is up-to-date as of 2014. Most pages are identified "1/11/01" at the bottom of the page, but a few indicate that they were modified by later amendments, also identified at the bottom of the applicable pages. Page 5-4 containing the spelling alphabet is identified "1/11/01" indicating no subsequent change. Page 5-5 containing the numbers is identified "22/11/07 — No. 82" but with no discernible change in the numbers or their Latin alphabet pronunciations. So Q is still enunciated via the word "Quebec".
Back in late 2005 I added to this article an old ICAO pronunciation list in pseudo-IPA symbols that I found in the fourth edition of the ICAO Aeronautical Telecommunications Annex 10 Volume II (NATO Phonetic Alphabet revision 02:53, 11 November 2005). It used only one IPA symbol, ʃ, that is, the long s, probably due to limited font availability. It substituted Latin alphabet symbols for other IPA symbols, such as B for ɔː. In mid 2006 I added the complete IPA pronunciations officially recognized by the ICAO in their fifth edition (NATO Phonetic Alphabet revision 01:59, 27 June 2006). — Joe Kress (talk) 19:16, 12 December 2014 (UTC)

3 (three) pronounced "TREE"?

I think that is a typo. Even though this document http://www.faa.gov/air_traffic/publications/atpubs/ATC/atc0204.html#atc0204.html.5 has "TREE" in its pronunciation chart, it uses the word "three" everywhere else. Additionally the audio entry for "3" on http://www.phoneticalphabets.net/Spoken_Phonetic_Alphabet.html is pronounced "three".--Anthonzi (talk) 05:51, 17 October 2010 (UTC)

TREE is the pronunciation, while "three" is the spelling whenever the code word is printed. The ICAO agrees with the FAA, and the second part of the equivalent ITU and IMO code word is also pronounced TREE even though it is spelled three. "Three" in the Spoken Nato Phonetic Alphabet is clearly wrong because all of its numbers are given their normal English pronunciation, even though several other numbers also have quite different pronunciations according to both the FAA and the ICAO, such as FOW ER for four, FIFE for five, and NIN ER for nine. — Joe Kress (talk) 05:27, 19 October 2010 (UTC)

The TH sound does not occur in many languages. T is more widespread. The issue for ICAO is not how would an English speaker pronounce three. The question is how speakers of other languages should approximate the sound, in a way that will be clearly understood. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 184.37.71.49 (talk) 13:49, 12 June 2011 (UTC)

What about the pronunciation of "R"? The English R is another rare sound. Other languages have a trilled or uvular R. --2.245.161.14 (talk) 13:56, 21 January 2015 (UTC)

More info on how the words were chosen would be good.

I'm interested, because the choice of Zulu seems strange to me, when it sounds so similar to Zero (I've just had a conversation where they got mis-heard). Talltim (talk) 11:17, 23 April 2015 (UTC)

Requested move 6 October 2015

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was: Moved back to Nato phonetic alphabet per consensus below Mike Cline (talk) 13:14, 14 October 2015 (UTC)


International Radiotelephony Spelling Alphabet → NATO phonetic alphabet – Article was moved from NATO phonetic alphabet without discussion to International Radiotelephony Spelling Alphabet and the NATO phonetic alphabet redirect was edited, so I cannot move it back. There have been two previous RMs that have failed, to move it away from the NATO title, and NATO phonetic alphabet appears to be the common name for this topic. Per WP:PRECISION: Titles should be precise enough to unambiguously define the topical scope of the article, but no more precise than that. The previous title satisfies both that and WP:COMMONNAME, this new title fails to meet WP:COMMONNAME, while arguing that it is more precise is arguable, but ultimately an unnecessary precision. The article should be moved back to the original title for these reasons. - Aoidh (talk) 23:13, 6 October 2015 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

Copy

How about the law enforcement use of "Copy" in place of "Roger"? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 97.86.252.7 (talk) 14:55, 22 November 2012 (UTC)

"Copy" and "Roger" have different meanings in radiotelephony Santamoly (talk) 07:26, 15 September 2016 (UTC)

Incomplete decimal point inclusion

I don't know what the requirements of inclusion in this encyclopedia are accuracy or politically easement. Since I have no written published to the population account of this. I cannot post this in the wiki, it will be deleted without ceremony. I can only let you know here and let somebody else add it if they deem it necessary for complete accuracy.

The decimal point is also called "Dot" in the communications circles in the air force, ask any tech controller about it, they are the water walkers of the telecommunications lines.

in case you don't know what that means, they are the gods, what they say goes, end of story.

Ref: DCAC 310-70-1 supplement 1 and ACP 131 DCAC = Defense Communications Agency Circular
ACP = Allied Communications Publication
neither are online.
for further information contact the technical training center at Keesler AFB in Biloxi Mississippi.
24.29.193.138 (talk) 21:46, 31 October 2013 (UTC)

The decimal point is never called "dot"; it is always pronounced "decimal" as in "one one eight decimal seven" Santamoly (talk) 07:29, 15 September 2016 (UTC)

ICAO is the correct name, not NATO

The title should be "International Radiotelephony Spelling Alphabet" or "ICAO alphabet" because this is the name that is most commonly used. It's only rarely called the "NATO alphabet" since NATO is only a local self-defense organization, whereas ICAO embraces every member of the United Nations. NATO enthusiasts could use a redirect to summon this article, if they're obsessed with NATO's role in radiotelephony. Santamoly (talk) 07:37, 15 September 2016 (UTC)

Concur; NATO is, so to speak, a highly specific and closed user group, that adopted the ICAO standard, and not the other way around. Also, although we have a weblink, NATO is not exactly known for putting their information in the public domain, and that page may be gone tomorrow, whereas ICAOs standards are well publicized. -- Seelefant (talk) 17:20, 27 October 2017 (UTC)
I concur that the NATO and ICAO spelling alphabets probably need separate articles, but I believe any renaming should be deferred, simply because there is currently so much crossover among the various radiotelephony spelling alphabet articles. At least these exist, and possibly others:

There are slight differences between the ITU and ICAO alphabets. Some of the questions that need to be answered are:

  • Should there be one article that focuses only on non-military worldwide standards?
  • How should the historical alphabets be handled, since the military and non-military ones are so intertwined?
  • There is no page for commercial spelling alphabets; should there be? (At least Western Union had one, and possibly Marconi.) Peter K. Sheerin 19:56, 27 October 2017 (UTC)

Also, it should be noted how many alternate names are redirected to this article: http://69.142.160.183/~dispenser/cgi-bin/rdcheck.py?page=NATO_phonetic_alphabet

Requested move 28 October 2017

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was: not moved. (non-admin closure) Regards, Krishna Chaitanya Velaga (talk • mail) 03:05, 4 November 2017 (UTC)

NATO phonetic alphabet → ICAO phonetic alphabet – NATO is a highly specific (and rather closed) user group that adopted the international ICAO standard, not the other way around. Also, ICAO is a far more accessible and stable source Seelefant (talk) 17:25, 27 October 2017 (UTC)

This is a contested technical request (permalink). Anthony Appleyard (talk) 15:21, 28 October 2017 (UTC)

Oppose NATO phonetic alphabet (current name)

Support International radiotelephony spelling alphabet
I do not support having ICAO in the article name because ICAO applies to only the aviation industry, and the use of the alphabet is much broader than that.
This user has an amateur radio license with callsign K6WEB.
Among all of the organizations listed in the first paragraph under 'International adoption', the ITU is the only organization that is not domain-specific, because it is responsible for writing regulations that cover all use of radio frequencies world-wide. I would support either International Radiotelephony Spelling Alphabet or ITU Radiotelephony Spelling Alphabet. ITU is an arm of the United Nations, so that should have some appeal, and is shorter. However, I lean towards International Radiotelephony Spelling Alphabet because its meaning is clearer and broader. However, I do not support renaming the article at the present time, because I believe that the article should be split instead, to separate the NATO alphabet history. This would solve two problems: it would make the article shorter and less complex, and would avoid future renaming battles. I am actively expanding RAF radio alphabet and Joint Army/Navy Phonetic Alphabet to cover the Britain and U.S. military alphabets, and believe the U.S. article (or both, if merged) could be adapted enough to have the NATO content split from here and moved into it. With some additional work in those two articles, this should be relatively easy and uncontroversial, because a good deal of the NATO alphabet content in the present article is unsourced (and possibly wrong). Peter K. Sheerin 01:15, 29 October 2017 (UTC)
Update: I have merged RAF radio alphabet into Joint Army/Navy Phonetic Alphabet and renamed it Allied Military Phonetic Spelling Alphabet. My intent is to update this new article sufficiently so that it can be renamed NATO phonetic alphabet and the content from the #Prior alphabets section of this article be deleted or merged into the new article. Biggest help I can ask for in the new article is for people to find better primary sources for the UK spelling alphabets, because most of what I've cited in those tables are secondary web sources that were built from privately held paper copies of the documents. Peter K. Sheerin 02:37, 29 October 2017 (UTC)
Update 2: In looking into the history of the alphabet further, it appears to me that the origin of the IACO alphabet may reside in an earlier version of the International Code of Signals (unsourced statement in the present article), and while this seems likely, I can't locate a version of the ICS prior to 1969 that has a spelling alphabet. Is anyone here able to locate a copy of the 1931 version of ICS (published in 1931 to become effective in 1934) and upload it to Wikimedia commons or archive.org? Peter K. Sheerin 00:36, 30 October 2017 (UTC)
Update 3: After making a lot of edits to this article, and reading a lot of material in order to make those edits, I Support @SMcCandlish:'s suggested move to International radiotelephony spelling alphabet. In support of that, I offer this link to the current version of the IACO regulations, https://www.icao.int/Meetings/anconf12/Document%20Archive/AN10_V2_cons%5B1%5D.pdf, which label it "The Radiotelephony Spelling Alphabet" (page 5-4). Because of the large number of other radiotelephony spelling alphabets, it does need the word "international" at the beginning. I would also like to note that as an Amateur radio operator, I can state that at least in the San Francisco Bay Area, "NATO phonetic alphabet" is not the common name. Those that refer to it as something more than just "phonetics" or "phonetic spelling alphabet" generally use some form of "ITU spelling alphabet", even though the actual usage is the ICAO alphabet (huge difference in number pronunciation). Peter K. Sheerin 21:08, 1 November 2017 (UTC)
Update 4: Not to muddy the waters (as I stand by my new support of International radiotelephony spelling alphabet), but I found a comprehensive history of the development of spelling alphabets, which in this report were called "word-spelling alphabets". The Evolution and Rationale of the ICAO (International Civil Aviation Organization) Word-Spelling Alphabet. There is a wealth of fascinating information in the document, marred by some badly faded words in the most interesting parts of the 203 spelling alphabets listed in the appendix. Peter K. Sheerin 00:08, 2 November 2017 (UTC)
  • Oppose per previous move request on this page. "NATO phonetic alphabet" is the WP:COMMONNAME. StAnselm (talk) 23:04, 29 October 2017 (UTC)
  • Use International Radiotelephony Spelling Alphabet, as the least objectionable name, and the least obtuse. WP:COMMONNAME is not actually one of the WP:CRITERIA at all, but just the default selection to first run through the criteria. The acronym-laden versions have WP:RECOGNIZABLE problems (they're only familiar to those in particular fields, and which one they're more familiar with varies by field, and by geography). They also fail WP:PRECISE, because they are names for organization-specific implementations, and not for the concept/system as a whole. The name for that is, obviously, International Radiotelephony Spelling Alphabet. The COMMONNAME argument being made here, if it were taken seriously, would also move International Phonetic Alphabet to IPA. This mistake being made is a variant of the WP:Specialized-style fallacy. It doesn't matter that in specialist circles the full name tends to be abbreviated, and that the most common abbreviated version is "NATO phonetic alphabet", with "ICAO phonetic alphabet" coming in second. It simply does a disservice to our readers to use an acronymic title here at all.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ<  01:33, 30 October 2017 (UTC)
@SMcCandlish:, I presume you would support the Wikipedia title case convention of International radiotelephony spelling alphabet ? Peter K. Sheerin 00:08, 2 November 2017 (UTC)
The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

Looking for scan of 1947 IATA proposal

According to the text in this article, "... 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."--L.J. Rose, "Aviation's ABC: The development of the ICAO spelling alphabet", ICAO Bulletin 11/2 (1956) 12–14.

Does anyone have a PDF or other scanned image of that text? There are discrepancies among several of the versions of the 1947-1951 IATA/ICAO alphabets I've noticed in editing this article, and I'd like to be able to read the 1947 document to resolve them. PetesGuide (talk) (K6WEB) 21:44, 5 November 2017 (UTC)

IPA and respelling

Moved from User talk:Nardog § IPA and respelling changes to NATO phonetic alphabet

I noticed your edits to NATO phonetic alphabet, and am hoping you can decipher a few things in the history of ICAO's IPA notation and respelling.

I have read in two different sources that the ICAO transcription is incorrect, but can not find any detail on why or where (all letters, or just some), and I'm looking for experts to decipher this and explain corrected transcriptions.

Source 1: This Wikipedia article says "the ICAO has conflicting Latin-alphabet and IPA transcriptions". Source 2: http://www.governmentattic.org/4docs/ICAO-WordSpellingAlphabet_1959.pdf states, "As it stands there are errors and inconsistencies, and it is based neither on research nor on subjective speaker preference. It is hoped that the ICAO Speech Panel, established subsequent to the issuance of this Annex, will consider this problem of alphabet word pronunciation at its meeting".

With respect to Source 1, can you tell me with what reference you're basing your recent corrections on? Was it the ICAO's IPA transcription, or the respelling? Since they are stated to be in conflict, I'm not sure which to trust more, and which your corrections should be based on.

With respect to Source 2 (pages 27-28), can you determine what the errors are? Should the ICAO record be viewed as authoritative, or the ICAO IPA transcription, or the ICAO Latin alphabet respelling?

ICAO record:

PetesGuide (talk) (K6WEB) 03:41, 17 December 2017 (UTC)

@PetesGuide: Sorry for the late reply. To answer your first question, I was only looking at the Wikipedia IPAs and respellings, and I made them agree with each other, since our respelling is merely an aid for those unfamiliar with IPA and it must agree with the IPA notation it follows, per WP:PRON. Particularly, I made the respellings for "6", "8" and "9" agree with the IPA, and made the IPA for "1000" agree with the respelling, assuming those were whatever the original editor intended (but admittedly I should have given more thought, for the reasons I'm about to explain). So I was never basing the corrections on ICAO's IPA or respelling; and should the two disagree, both an IPA notation and a respelling (now I'm talking about Wikipedia's) should be given for each variant because our respelling is merely a reiteration of IPA.
I've only begun looking into it, but I gotta say, that section is poorly sourced and rife with original research (if not the article by and large). First of all, what are the Wikipedia IPAs and respellings supposed to be about? For most words only one Wikipedia pronunciation is given, even though, as it says at the top of the table, there are conflicting prescriptions.
Second of all and more important, I think the IPA transcription of the recording given in the table is OR. Perhaps the transcription in and of itself not so much, but to juxtapose it with ICAO's IPA gives readers the false impression that they somehow "disagree", when in reality, since everybody has their own accent, e.g. pronouncing what is prescribed as [ɑ] as [ʌ] doesn't make it "wrong" in any way. In other words, ICAO's IPA is a prescription and the recording is merely the announcer's interpretation, so it's apples and oranges. Especially to say the recording "does not follow the details of the ICAO transcription" is definitely WP:SYNTH. I think the whole transcription should be removed. Nardog (talk) 03:55, 20 December 2017 (UTC)
Thanks! I've removed one more sentence from that section as OR, and marked up another paragraph I know is accurate with {{cn}}. I also decided to remove the two columns you mention in your response above, because I agree with your analysis. Is there any way to mark up specific content with an OR tag, as one can with {{Citation needed span}}? If so, can you tag anything else in that section you think is OR, and I'll look at it through my SME glasses? PetesGuide (talk) (K6WEB) 19:42, 20 December 2017 (UTC)
Thanks. For the record, I don't consider Wikipedia IPAs and respellings to be categorically OR, but I ultimately agree with your decision because some of the oddities in ICAO's IPA make it simply impossible to transcribe some of the words in proper IPA, namely two primary stresses in one word, etc. Nardog (talk) 09:12, 21 December 2017 (UTC)

Whiskey not Whisky

Could add a mention that the scottish spelling for whisky was not adopted. Instead the american/irish version with an 'e' is used. Not sure how to reference it.

Requested move 2 February 2018

The following discussion is an archived discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

Not moved. Consensus is clearly against the proposed move. As noted in the discussion, it would probably be worthwhile to change the lede. bd2412 T 02:59, 10 February 2018 (UTC)

NATO phonetic alphabet → International Radiotelephony Spelling Alphabet – Most neutral and precise term which already appears first in the article opening. The previous move discussion from October 2017 had only one person opposing a move; I believe this should be revisited. Pinging previous discussion participants Seelefant, PetesGuide, SMcCandlish and StAnselm. Paul_012 (talk) 22:20, 2 February 2018 (UTC)

  • Comment: The lead should be changed to match the title, not vice versa - so you haven't presented a convincing argument. Any response to the WP:COMMONNAME argument in favour of the current title? StAnselm (talk) 23:11, 2 February 2018 (UTC)
    • I'm not exactly familiar with the subject, so I can't tell how widespread the reference to NATO is made in reliable sources, but I'm tending to agree with SMcCandlish's arguments from the previous discussion, quoted below. --Paul_012 (talk) 23:19, 2 February 2018 (UTC)

      WP:COMMONNAME is not actually one of the WP:CRITERIA at all, but just the default selection to first run through the criteria. The acronym-laden versions have WP:RECOGNIZABLE problems (they're only familiar to those in particular fields, and which one they're more familiar with varies by field, and by geography). They also fail WP:PRECISE, because they are names for organization-specific implementations, and not for the concept/system as a whole. The name for that is, obviously, International Radiotelephony Spelling Alphabet. The COMMONNAME argument being made here, if it were taken seriously, would also move International Phonetic Alphabet to IPA. This mistake being made is a variant of the WP:Specialized-style fallacy. It doesn't matter that in specialist circles the full name tends to be abbreviated, and that the most common abbreviated version is "NATO phonetic alphabet", with "ICAO phonetic alphabet" coming in second. It simply does a disservice to our readers to use an acronymic title here at all.

Yes, I saw that post and it seems silly to me. In the first place, it sets aside WP:COMMONNAME for no good reason; in the second place it suggests that "NATO" is not recognisable. StAnselm (talk) 02:43, 3 February 2018 (UTC)
  • Further comment: There is no doubt that there is a plethora of names for this alphabet, including "the phonetic alphabet". This book calls it the "International Communications Alphabet". StAnselm (talk) 02:54, 3 February 2018 (UTC)
  • Support per WP:PRECISE. Without rehashing the quote immediately above: There are multiple terms for this, the most obvious and least obtuse of which is the first given in the lead, International Radiotelephony Spelling Alphabet, which is also the proper name ("NATO phonetic alphabet", "ICAO alphabet", "IRSA code", etc., are just abbreviated descriptive appellations that conflict with MOS:ABBR, and none of which are clearly the most common name except in a particular context).  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  05:10, 3 February 2018 (UTC)
  • Oppose by far the most common name is the NATO phoentic alphabet (which is where it was first used), none of the sources like ICAO and the FAA use the term "spelling alphabet" when referring to the alphabet so the suggested name is a description rather than a name that anybody would use, it will need to rely on redirects for the reader to find the made up name. MilborneOne (talk) 10:21, 3 February 2018 (UTC)
  • Oppose. The name "NATO phonetic alphabet" is supported by a source. There is no citation for the description "International Radiotelephony Spelling Alphabet". In the absence of a citation, this must be regarded as a description made up by a Wikipedia editor. In the absence of a citation showing that some organization with the authority to bestow this name did so, if it is mentioned at all in the article, it should not be capitalized because we have no proof it is a proper name. Jc3s5h (talk) 15:41, 3 February 2018 (UTC)
  • Oppose per Jc3s5h. StAnselm (talk) 19:39, 3 February 2018 (UTC)
  • Weak Support NATO phonetic alphabet is the the more common name. It's also clearly a misnomer; it was developed by ICAO and is a spelling alphabet. [2] (published on the ICAO website, but probably not an official document) uses the term "International Radiotelephony Spelling Alphabet"; the primary source [3] simply calls it "The Radiotelephony Spelling Alphabet". NATO refers to it as the "NATO phonetic alphabet" [4]. power~enwiki (π, ν) 20:27, 3 February 2018 (UTC)
  • Support for International Radiotelephony Spelling Alphabet (with initial caps), because that is the name used by its creator, because it is most descriptive, and because it's the most neutral. I'd like to point out that back then actual NATO phonetic alphabet content was strongly interleaved with the current article. Since that time, I have combined several separate military spelling alphabet articles into one, namely Allied Military phonetic spelling alphabets, and since that covers the current NATO alphabet and all of its predecessors, I would further argue that after the present article is renamed, that NATO Phonetic Alphabet be turned into a redirect to Allied Military phonetic spelling alphabets.

I've found these sources that use the proposed title:

I would oppose removing "International" from the title because there are so very many other radiotelephony spelling alphabets that the title would be ambiguous enough to no longer apply to just the ICAO/ITU alphabet. As an example of the number of other spelling alphabets, I would point out the following articles:

The first article references a document that details 203 different spelling alphabets as of 1959. The present article is about one specific alphabet from that study. One of the main reasons I support this current move proposal is because I believe some percentage of readers will refuse to use an alphabet they believe to be military in origin, and that the present title reinforces their incorrect beliefs. Summary of problems with present title:

    • The alphabet described is not a phonetic alphabet
    • The alphabet was not created by, or only used, by NATO
    • Having a military organization's name in the title is off-putting to many readers, and needlessly tarnishes the reputation of the content (I am not one of those with that view). For that view, I offer this source:
    • https://www.eham.net/ehamforum/smf/index.php?action=printpage;topic=104991.0, where one commenter writes "Definitely a must if you don't like the ICAO one and want to de-militarize amateur radio."

PetesGuide (talk) (K6WEB) 03:47, 6 February 2018 (UTC)

  • Comment I'm not sure what the title should be, but it should not be "NATO anything" because NATO is merely one of a large number of international/global/regional/sectoral/national/local users of the system. The ultimate highest authority on the subject of telecommunications in the entire known universe is the ITU, and only the ITU, every user is subject to their rules, without exception. Thus if any acronym ends up in the article title it can only be ITU. Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 07:56, 6 February 2018 (UTC)
    • I disagree that only ITU should be allowed as an acronym in the title, or that all radio users are subject to its rules. First, the ICAO sets the procedures for radio usage in aviation worldwide (although member nations are free to modify them, as the UK does to a noticeable amount, listing the differences in their phraseology in detail), the IMO generally sets the procedures for radio usage at sea. And I find little if any coverage in the ITU-R Radio Regulations that dictate operating procedures for Land Mobile services (and I've looked because I want them to be there, but can't find them).
    • The ICAO created the international radiotelephony spelling alphabet, and then both the ITU-R and IMO adopted it, with significant changes (the pronunciation of the digits is completely different, and I understand that these pronunciations are wholly ignored by maritime users), so no, it's not primarily or originally an ITU thing. PetesGuide (talk) (K6WEB) 17:28, 6 February 2018 (UTC)
  • Comment I'd like to point out that while I'm not sure we have a clear consensus of a new title, I do feel there is reasonably strong consensus that the current name is inappropriate. Given that, I'd like to direct you to WP:THREEOUTCOMES which says:

"There are rare circumstances where multiple names have been proposed and no consensus arises out of any, except that it is determined that the current title should not host the article. In these difficult circumstances, the closer should pick the best title of the options available, and then be clear that while consensus has rejected the former title (and no request to bring it back should be made lightly), there is no consensus for the title actually chosen. If anyone objects to the closer's choice, they may make another move request immediately, hopefully to its final resting place."

PetesGuide (talk) (K6WEB) 04:29, 7 February 2018 (UTC)
    • Comment Also, note that the article itself states that the ITU alphabet is for maritime mobile use only, so using ITU in the title causes the problem of making the article too specific:

"The ITU adopted the International Maritime Organization's phonetic spelling alphabet in 1959, and in 1969 specified that it be "for application in the maritime mobile service only"."

The proposed title does not suffer from this problem, by its very nature. We should leave ICAO and ITU acronyms out of the title, IMHO.PetesGuide (talk) (K6WEB) 21:31, 9 February 2018 (UTC)

  • Oppose per common name. Who on earth calls it the International Radiotelephony Spelling Alphabet? -- Necrothesp (talk) 14:37, 7 February 2018 (UTC)
  • Oppose and update lede to use "NATO phonetic alphabet" if the inconsistency is bothering people. That's what it's actually called. As a second choice, some title referencing ICAO rather than NATO if the origin is considered an issue. SnowFire (talk) 16:56, 7 February 2018 (UTC)
  • Comment The inconsistency between title and lede is not what is bothering us; it is the use of the name of a military organization for an important radio voice procedure tool that was not created by the military and is used widely in many other fields, and this tarnishes the reputation of the procedure in the minds of some readers and potential users, and the title should be changed for that reason. In particular, WP:RECOGNIZABLE states:

"Editors should also consider the criteria outlined above. Ambiguous or inaccurate names for the article subject, as determined in reliable sources, are often avoided even though they may be more frequently used by reliable sources. Neutrality is also considered; our policy on neutral titles, and what neutrality in titles is, follows in the next section. Article titles should be neither vulgar (unless unavoidable) nor pedantic. When there are multiple names for a subject, all of them fairly common, and the most common has problems, it is perfectly reasonable to choose one of the others."

    • Even if NATO phonetic alphabet is the most common name, it should not be used as the title for this article because of the problems it has. It is not neutral (NATO is purposely biased in the nations it includes and supports), while the name used by ICAO is neutral, and ICAO itself is a body of the United Nations, which does represent (nearly) all nations, and thus has reasonably neutral connotation. And as per WP:POVTITLE, the title itself should be neutral.
    • As further argument that the "Radiotelephony Spelling Alphabet" portion of the proposed title should be capitalized, I direct you to a working group report of the ICAO, which capitalizes the phrase as the title of the table in which it is given; whereas the document does not capitalize any other figure title in the document: AERONAUTICAL MOBILE COMMUNICATIONS PANEL (AMCP) WORKING GROUP C, THIRD MEETING, 15 – 19 October 2001', Anchorage, Alaska
    • Also, I oppose using ICAO in the title because 1) the alphabet is used in all radio services, not just in aviation, and 2) the acronym is little-known outside of aviation circles, and I suspect that most pilots don't even know what it is. ICAO is not widely enough known to be an article title outside of aviation-only topics, period.PetesGuide (talk) (K6WEB) 18:25, 7 February 2018 (UTC)
  • #1, pilots certainly know what ICAO is. #2, if the complaint is "inaccuracy", then I think ICAO phonetic alphabet is superior, as ICAO did formulate the standard and it is perhaps most famous in aviation, so that would be a fair descriptive title (even if NATO is the common name). #3, if the complaint is "neutrality", hypothetically causing offense to people who dislike NATO seems like a smaller concern than definitely causing offense to people whose religious beliefs are challenged / rules are violated, and yet Wikipedia does that anyway. SnowFire (talk) 19:50, 7 February 2018 (UTC)
The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

"David" vs. "Delta" at airports

This edit removed my assertion that "David" is used as an alternative to "Delta" at Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport (DFW) because of the presence of Delta Airlines terminals there. While I don't know if "David" is used by air traffic control there, I know from personal experience that the DFW shuttle bus operations staff use it, specifically when referring to Terminal D. I cannot find any references for this, though (I'm not sure where to even start looking). — Loadmaster (talk) 14:46, 12 March 2018 (UTC)

Merge?

Is there any reason why Allied Military phonetic spelling alphabets and NATO phonetic alphabet are separate pages? Regards, Ben Aveling 05:03, 2 May 2018 (UTC)

Captions

I don't know how to fix / edit this myself, but I noticed the first few captions are actually vulgarities rather than the words that are being said aloud. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.52.124.254 (talk) 14:21, 24 October 2018 (UTC)

Fixed. Nardog (talk) 14:38, 24 October 2018 (UTC)

Alfa?

Alfa or Alpha? I am pretty sure it is alpha. [5], [6], [7] and [8]. Qwerty number1 (talk) 22:21, 21 February 2019 (UTC)

Noooo! The only definitive spelling is ALFA, as defined in the original IACO document, which is the primary source and is currently reference [1] in the article (or https://www.icao.int/Pages/AlphabetRadiotelephony.aspx) if it gets renumbered. The reason is is ALFA is that most people who speak English as a second language do not understand that PH is pronounced as an F. Everytime it gets represented as ALPHA, non-native English speakers get confused. Please stop confusing them.PetesGuide, K6WEB (talk) 22:41, 21 February 2019 (UTC)

The NATO site lists Alpha/Alfa. Geofru (talk) 01:25, 9 March 2019 (UTC)

You did not state what NATO site you consulted, but the NATO phonetic alphabet, codes & signal chart only uses Alfa. Note the official www.nato.int URL. — Joe Kress (talk) 02:49, 9 March 2019 (UTC)
Same "Alfa" spelling, plus some interesting history, is at https://www.nato.int/cps/en/natohq/declassified_136216.htm/
Fun fact #1: Alfa is used instead of Alpha to avoid some non-English speakers pronouncing it "alp-hah", and Juliett is used instead of Juliet to avoid some non-English speakers pronouncing it "joo-lee-ay". Fun fact #2: Lists of the NATO phonetic alphabet words started getting Alfa and Juliett wrong right around the time that spellcheckers became widely used, and many non-NATO sources either contain these errors or incorrectly claim that either Alfa or Alpha is acceptable. --Guy Macon (talk) 08:15, 9 March 2019 (UTC)
Was it historically common for non-English speakers to pronounce these words wrong?? If I were to guess, the language is Spanish for alpha and French for Juliet, right?? Georgia guy (talk) 18:14, 9 March 2019 (UTC)
I don't know how these words were, or are pronounced by people who's first language is not English. But it's important to realize there are two different environments. One is ordinary speech amongst a group of people speaking the same non-English language. In this environment they would say whatever they usually say when meaning the first letter of the Greek alphabet, and whatever they usually say in saying the woman's name.
The other environment is a group of people using radio, or another voice medium with limited fidelity, who speak different native languages, and who are spelling out letters of the Roman alphabet. In this environment the goal is for everyone to pronounce the words the same way, even though that way might differ from the usual pronunciation in whatever language the conversation is being conducted in. Jc3s5h (talk) 18:22, 9 March 2019 (UTC)
Yes. Per the sources, the stated purpose (by NATO etc.) of the unified coding is to solve the problem of speakers of different native languages communicating with each other in a non-ambiguous way via radio, sometimes with limited "readability". —[AlanM1(talk)]— 21:27, 10 March 2019 (UTC)
Exactly right. We should keep in mind that the scientists did extensive tests with real people who spoke many different languages and with various kinds and intensities of radio interference, carefully choosing words that are unlikely to be confused with each other. These tests were done with Alfa and Juliett, not Alpha and Juliet. I have looked and looked and could not find any examples of anyone saying that the NATO alphabet contains Alpha or Juliet prior to the introduction of spell checkers. Of course my WP:OR can't be used in the article, but it is pretty clear what happened and why so many non-official sources get this wrong. --Guy Macon (talk) 22:00, 11 March 2019 (UTC)
The article itself says "Alfa" is a non-English spelling. But Wiktionary:alfa says that it is English. Which is right?? Georgia guy (talk) 00:30, 12 March 2019 (UTC)
Wiktionary also says that "cheezburger" is English. See Wiktionary:cheezburger. it also says the "l33t" is English. See Wiktionary:l33t. Wiktionary defines many words that are purposely misspelled, including cheezburger l33t, and alfa. --Guy Macon (talk) 01:11, 12 March 2019 (UTC)
I don't know what to make of the wiktionary page – that's its own issue. Whether "alfa" is English or not may be a matter for linguists to ponder (somewhere). In the context of this page, it is spelled this way by the defining standard authority for the reasons stated. —[AlanM1(talk)]— 11:29, 12 March 2019 (UTC)
While "alfa" is perhaps a "non-English spelling" for the first letter of the Greek alphabet, I'm not sure that's relevant, as this page is about codewords that are used to encode letters of the English alphabet for voice communications. —[AlanM1(talk)]— 11:37, 12 March 2019 (UTC)
I'm not sure what the original purpose was, but I have heard it used in non-English radio conversations to communicate Roman letters. I have not heard any effort to describe the various accent marks often used in non-English languages that use variations of the Roman alphabet, like Spanish or French. Jc3s5h (talk) 12:41, 12 March 2019 (UTC)
Jc3s5h, there is no effort to describe accented letters in this article because it is specifically about just one of the many spelling alphabets, namely the one defined by the ICAO for the purpose of standardizing international aviation radio communications, which are required to take place in English when requested and thus use English spellings. There are other spelling alphabets that do include accented characters, and you can read about and improve their descriptions in the Spelling alphabet#Additions in other languages article, including the German DIN 5009 standard. PetesGuide, K6WEB (talk) 13:09, 12 March 2019 (UTC)

Zero, Sierra and ACP 125

Used as a citation in NATO phonetic alphabet, http://archives.nato.int/uploads/r/null/1/2/127039/SGM-0675-55_ENG_PDP.pdf mentions "ACP 125 paragraph 105 a".

I found this in ACP 125: [ https://navybmr.com/study%20material/ACP%20121.pdf ].

Alas, that version is from 2007 and doesn't appear to contain any mention of the figures proword,

I also found ACP125 (G) (" CCEB Letter of Promulgation for ACP 121(I) ") at [ http://www.k1chr.org/ACP%20125%20%28G%29%20Radio%20Telephone%20Procedures%20NOV%202016.pdf ].

(Which, BTW, appears to mention a never version of ACP 125 than ACP 125's "latest version.)

That document does mention the figures proword (paragraphs 105 and 305):

"During difficult conditions, or when extra care is necessary to avoid misunderstanding, numbers are sent figure by figure preceded by the proword FIGURES. This proword warns that figures follow immediately, to help distinguish them from other similarly pronounced words."

But what If I am trying to convey "change 00-0S to 0S-00"? "Change figures zero zero dash figures zero sierra to figures zero sierra dash figures zero zero" How does that convey that zero is a figure and sierra is a letter?

I would really like to see a copy of that 1955 "ACP 125 paragraph 1O5 a". Can anybody find one? --Guy Macon (talk) 13:04, 1 June 2019 (UTC)

Not addressing the sourcing issue, but the question: The table in the History section is followed by For the 1938 and 1947 phonetics, each transmission of figures is preceded and followed by the words "as a number" spoken twice. and the 1947 ACIRC and the 1959 GARC entries for numbers refer to similar content in "Note 1". To me, this says that proper procedure for "change 00-0S to 0S-00" would be "change As_A_Number, Zero Zero As_A_Number dash As_A_Number, Zero As_A_Number Sierra to As_A_Number, Zero As_A_Number Sierra dash As_A_Number, Zero Zero As_A_Number" (which seems incredibly complex and more likely to cause problems than solve them ; punctuation/caps added for readability). THat is, the codeword is inserted after figures as well as before them. I don't recall hearing either proword in modern use in the U.S. in amateur, commercial, or public safety radio (I worked in two-way radio in the 80s). I haven't listened to much aero radio, but don't recall hearing it there either. —[AlanM1(talk)]— 19:42, 1 June 2019 (UTC)
On reflection, I am going to WP:BOLDLY remove the paragraph. I don't think that documenting one of the inclusions/exclusions/changes someone suggested and which was rejected is anywhere near as important as documenting the inclusions/exclusions/changes that they decided on. --Guy Macon (talk) 04:51, 2 June 2019 (UTC)

The big pronunciation chart

The collumn for "FAA respelling" says "ALFAH or AL-FAH" but I really don't see that in the sources provided. It looks to me like the FAA is saying (direct quote) "Use the ICAO pronunciation of numbers and individual letters", then showing respellings that somebody made without knowing about the ICAO respellings or the respelling choices made in the other FAA reference. I really don't think the FAA was trying to set two new and different respelling standards. So what to do? I am inclined to remove the FAA respelling column. --Guy Macon (talk) 05:53, 2 June 2019 (UTC)

@Guy Macon: They're all approximations. The ICAO says as much. But all of them seem to have errors. The ICAO IPA and respellings don't match very well, for example. So having the slightly different FAA respellings may help the reader figure out what was intended. We're prevented from doing that ourselves because it would violate OR. I just found the IMO French respellings, which helps as well (and mostly matches the SIA). For example, although we all know from the movies that "niner" is pronounced like "nine" plus -er, the English respellings all seem to claim it's pronounced "ninner", but the French respellings make it clear it really is nine-er. With enough sources, the multiple errors partly cancel each other out. — kwami (talk) 06:32, 24 October 2019 (UTC)

00 and 000

The tables show "HUNDRED" and "TOUSAND" as codewords for "100" and "1000", but I think these should more accurately be called the codewords for "00" and "000". E.g., "100" is spoken "ONE HUNDRED", not just "HUNDRED". Also, "900" can be spoken "NINER HUNDRED", which wouldn't be possible with a literal reading of the existing chart. If this is the case in the sources, perhaps we need a footnote explaining that "100"/"1000" really means "hundreds"/"thousands". —[AlanM1(talk)]— 21:38, 3 June 2019 (UTC)

Yeah, you're right, at least for some conventions. But for some, wouldn't you say 'hundred' for 950 too? — kwami (talk) 06:35, 24 October 2019 (UTC)
I don't think so. I think (see WP:OR for what my "thinking" is worth) that for a phonetic alphabet that uses the hundred code, "900" would be spoken as "Nine", "Hundred" but "950" would be spoken as "Nine", "Five", "Zero".
That being said, I looked at some of the citations near the top of the article and saw a bunch that defined A-Z without defining 0-9, a-z, or any punctuation. I think we need to have a section of this article that clearly documents which standards, if any, tell us how to clearly say numbers, punctuation, and mixed case letters over a radio despite interference. --Guy Macon (talk) 01:08, 25 October 2019 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 24 July 2019

Change Alfa to Alpha. 12.130.9.139 (talk) 19:44, 24 July 2019 (UTC)

 Not done: This is discussed in the History section of the article. "In the official version of the alphabet, the non-English spellings Alfa and Juliett are used." For further explanation, check out the article! ‑‑ElHef (Meep?) 20:19, 24 July 2019 (UTC)
This comes up often enough that I created an essay on it. See the top section on this page. Of course I may have made errors or been unclear when I wrote the essay, so everyone reading this is encouraged to improve it and/or ask questions on the essay's talk page. --Guy Macon (talk) 01:08, 25 October 2019 (UTC)

Voice actor

Sorry if this is a bit tangential/irrelevant, but does anyone know/think the voice over example done by Elizabeth Moss? Sounds a lot like her! 

Andykusama (talk) 11:09, 25 December 2019 (UTC)

Edit war

Brakkar (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log), who I am pretty sure is a sockpuppet of a blocked user[9] -- I am not 100% sure which of several possible blocked users he is a sock of -- has been edit warring while making dubious changes to this page, claiming in his edit summaries that WP:MOS supports his changes. He has never specified what part of MOS he is talking about and ducks the question when asked. I am posting this in case anyone else knows of a portion of the manual of style might apply; I don't have the whole thing memorized so it could very well be that I am missing something.

In addition, if anyone can identify the former username that Brakkar was using, please use the email link on my user page to discuss it with me in private. --Guy Macon (talk) 11:04, 8 February 2020 (UTC)

In the edit summary, Brakkar referred to MOS:ACRO, which does indeed say that boldfacing should not be applied to the letters in the expansion of an acronym that correspond to the letters in the acronym. --David Biddulph (talk) 11:25, 8 February 2020 (UTC)
The usage on this page has nothing to do with acronyms
"An initialism is usually formed from some or all of the initial letters of words in a phrase. An acronym is sometimes considered to be an initialism which is pronounced as a word (e.g. NATO), as distinct from the case where the initialism is said as a string of individual letters (e.g. "UN" for the United Nations);"

Indigo?

I was taught at secondary school that the name for I had changed from India to Indigo. Is there any basis for this, or did my teacher make it up? — Smjg (talk) 08:27, 1 June 2020 (UTC)

No, it was never changed. The problem is that there are a boatload of sources that tell you things about the NATO phonetic alphabet that aren't true. Examples:[10][11] --Guy Macon (talk) 16:50, 1 June 2020 (UTC)

Alpha vs. Alfa (again)

Over the years, this article has been going more and more towards saying that "Alfa" is the proper spelling. Who did most of the edits related to this?? Georgia guy (talk) 00:18, 4 July 2020 (UTC)

See User:Guy Macon/Alfa or Alpha? Juliett or Juliet?#So why do people keep trying to "correct" the spelling? (Shortcuts WP:ALFA and WP:JULIETT) which says:
"Published lists of the NATO phonetic alphabet words started getting Alfa and Juliett wrong right around the time that spellcheckers became widely used, and many non-NATO sources either contain these errors or incorrectly claim that either Alfa or Alpha is acceptable. I have looked and looked and could not find a single example of anyone saying that the NATO alphabet contains Alpha or Juliet prior to the introduction of spell checkers."
--Guy Macon (talk) 01:58, 4 July 2020 (UTC)

I don't know it this is definitive, but NATO's website uses Alfa and Juliett https://www.nato.int/cps/en/natohq/news_150391.htm --Farside268 (talk) 15:44, 30 September 2020 (UTC)

Page protected

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Requests_for_page_protection&oldid=892502762#NATO_phonetic_alphabet

I would encourage editors who are watching this page to get pending changes reviewer permissions. See Wikipedia:Pending changes and Wikipedia:Requests for permissions --Guy Macon (talk) 06:23, 15 April 2019 (UTC)

all chariters

what are the phonetic alphabet for other characters @ & * — Preceding unsigned comment added by 104.145.204.20 (talk) 15:28, 22 January 2021 (UTC)

None are specified in our sources, not even the comma. — kwami (talk) 07:15, 24 March 2021 (UTC)

Dash or Tack?

I've heard some people (ex american military, I think) use "Tack" for hyphen, instead of "Dash". Does anyone have a source for either of these? 2001:8B0:DF91:A1DE:F86E:1385:C0C0:962B (talk) 21:46, 18 June 2021 (UTC)

The NATO phonetic alphabet doesn't define punctuation marks, and neither"dash" or "tack" were tested to be not easily confused with other characters that are in the alphabet. If it is important to have a dash in the result, you should say Delta Alfa Sierra Hotel. Or just send an email (smile). --Guy Macon (talk) 02:19, 27 June 2021 (UTC)

Proposed deletion of respellings

Here is how it works in the real word:

  1. A bunch of experts design a phonetic alphabet, carefully testing it in a bunch of languages and with a bunch of different kinds of distortion/noise making the words hard to understand. They tweak and retest, and finally they publish the alphabet. They do zero testing of any respellings -- they think they have the best spelling already.
  2. Some technical writer, wanting to be helpful (what could possibly go wrong?), adds respelling to a document. These respellings only reflect how the words are pronounced in the technical writer's language and dialect. No research is done on how other speakers pronounce the respelling. The respelling gets published.
  3. Some other technical writer, wanting to be helpful (what could possibly go wrong?) does the same in their language and dialect, coming up with slightly different guesses. This respelling also gets published.
  4. Wanting to be helpful (what could possibly go wrong?), a third technical writer, decides to... you can fill in the rest and add entries for the fourth and fifth technical writer.
  5. Unlike the phonetic alphabet, which was tested on many speakers of many languages, none of the technical writers do any actual research on how the respellings are pronounced by different people or whether they are easily confused in a noisy environment.
  6. A Wikipedia editor, wanting to be helpful (what could possibly go wrong?), adds the respelling to the table.
  7. Wanting to be helpful (what could possibly go wrong?), another Wikipedia editor does some original research and adds an "Average" column to the table.
  8. A native speaker of some other language goes to Wikipedia, and instead of pronouncing the actual entry in the phonetic alphabet the way they normally would, picks one of the incompatible respellings and guesses how to pronounce it. Now we have one person pronouncing it differently from everyone else.
  9. Airplanes fly into mountains, ships collide, and ham radio operators send emails to the wrong email address. Hilarity ensues.

I propose that the only pronunciation guides that we give the reader be based upon the International Phonetic Alphabet. The respellings are simply not helpful to the reader. --Guy Macon (talk) 02:13, 27 June 2021 (UTC)

The respellings are indeed bad, but the IPA they give is also an abomination. To quote myself from User talk:PetesGuide:
  • [a] only appears in [ˈælfa] and [ˈbraːˈvo]. In most conventions, "a" in IPA for English usually represents the TRAP vowel (BrE) or the LOT/PALM vowel (AmE), which are more commonly represented by "æ" and "ɑ", respectively, but "æ" and "ɑ" are also used in the table, so this makes no sense.
  • In "Bravo" and "X-ray", only the first syllable is stressed in respelling while both are stressed in IPA.
  • In "Charlie", "ar" in respelling corresponds to IPA [ɑː], indicating a non-rhotic pronunciation – then why not use "ah" as you did in "Oscar"?
  • In "Golf", the respelling and IPA clearly don't match. The IPA should be [ɡɔlf] (BrE) or [ɡɔːlf] (AmE) if the respelling is taken to be correct.
  • Only in "Hotel", a long [oː] is used in an unstressed position, even though "oh" or "o" at the end of a syllable in respellings elsewhere corresponds to IPA [o].
  • The syllable divider [.] is used in "India", "Juliett", and "Romeo", where two syllabic vowels are found consecutively with no consonant in-between – then why not in "Sierra"? (Rather, the divider in "Juliett" is redundant because the stress mark serves as a divider anyway.)
  • [ə] is found only in "November" and "Papa", even though the schwa in native English words seems to be replaced by [ɑ]/"ah" elsewhere. Also, it is represented in respelling by "er" and "ah", respectively. Again, if you're indicating non-rhotic, why write "r" in the first place? And don't use the same digraph for different phonetic values, especially within the same word!
  • In "Tango" and "Yankee", we see [n] where [ŋ] would have been more appropriate.
  • In "Uniform", although the respellings seem to be giving the choice of either pronouncing it with a consonant at the beginning or without it, the IPA transcriptions differ in the third syllable too. Taken verbatim, [ˈjuːnifɔːm] and [ˈuːnifɔrm] are acceptable, but [ˈjuːnifɔrm] or [ˈuːnifɔːm] are not. ([ˈuːnifɔrm] is the only transcription where a syllable-final [r], i.e. a rhotic pronunciation, is indicated in IPA, which is yet another inconsistency in itself.)
So I oppose elimination of respellings simply because their IPA is so bad it's useless without being complemented by the respellings (which are also bad). The "Average" column indeed seems to be OR, so I just removed it. Nardog (talk) 02:40, 27 June 2021 (UTC)
Good call. But the respellings are still bad and should still be removed. They don't help the reader. IPAs are less bad because at least everyone pronounces them in roughly the same way (unlike repelling where you have to guess), but any IPAs we add need to be cited to a reliable source specifically about the NATO phonetic alphabet. Not the FAA radiotelephony alphabet or the ICAO 2008 alphabet, And definitely not on some random Wikipedia editor's original research. --Guy Macon (talk) 03:13, 27 June 2021 (UTC)
I don't quite know what you mean by "at least everyone pronounces them in roughly the same way". [pet] in the IPA, for instance, can be a transcription of pet or pate or even bed or bade depending on what kind of transcription it is and what conventions it's using (even if you know the accent being transcribed). Even in the IPA you have to guess anyway, and the respellings provide a great amount of clarification needed for the guessing. Nardog (talk) 17:37, 27 June 2021 (UTC)
Thanks. I wasn't aware of this. Let me change my proposal; no IPA or respelling.
The "guessing how it should be pronounced" is the basic problem. The scientists who deigned the NATO phonetic alphabet did actual scientific research on how different people in different languages and with different amounts/types of interference pronounced the actual spelling they choose. None of the respellings or IPAs have that kind of research to back them up, and thus should not be in this article. Also not a one of them is an IPA or respelling of the NATO phonetic alphabet. They are all IPAs and respellings of other alphabets, all of which became obsolete when this happened:
"[In 1956] The ICAO approved the [NATO] alphabet... On 21 February 1956, Member States were advised 'that the new Phonetic Alphabet is to be made effective in NATO 1 March 1956'. The ITU formally adopted it a few years later making it the established universal phonetic alphabet governing all military, civilian and amateur radio communications. As it was NATO Allies who had spearheaded the final revision, it became known from that point on as the NATO Alphabet."[12]
Thus, any IPA or respelling of any similar alphabet that isn't the official NATO phonetic alphabet is obsolete by at least 60 years. --Guy Macon (talk) 20:20, 27 June 2021 (UTC)

Is this statement encyclopedic??

Some published versions incorrectly list "alpha" and "juliet" – presumably because of the use of spell checker software – but those spellings are never correct and should be changed back to "alfa" and "juliett" wherever such mistakes are found.

This statement (starting with the word but) appears to be telling people what to do. Encyclopedias are supposed to be about facts, not about "this should be avoided" statements. Any discussions here?? Georgia guy (talk) 21:01, 27 June 2021 (UTC)

Rename article!

Can we please rename this article (i.e. to ICAO spelling alphabet)?! There are people in Asia who are in need of a spelling alphabet, and they would not all appreciate NATO. ;-) Ax0pp (talk) 14:21, 13 December 2021 (UTC)

If you read the archives of this talk page you can see numerous previous discussions of possible renaming. There are, of course, redirects from many of the possible alternative names. --David Biddulph (talk) 14:53, 13 December 2021 (UTC)

Maritime flags

Probably should be included. 7&6=thirteen (☎) 19:20, 3 April 2022 (UTC)

Uh can we talk about that example on the Usage part please thank you

In the (Usage) section is the example that is given correct? Correct me if i'm wrong but i stirctly think that the given example has flaws. The page has written DH98 as "Delta-Hotel-Niner-Ait". Which uses the telephonic form for the first half and the phonic form for the second half (i'm not exactly too sure but there might be a possibility of just numbers being usend in the phonic form) So the correct form is either "Delta-Hotel-Nine-Eight or it is (DELL-TAH)-(HOH-TEL)-(Niner)-(Ait) I myself firmly support the telephonic form since this is not in any form of audio but also think that both examples should be given so that it is to be considered not xenophobic and it can actually help people that are in the learning stages of English. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 176.236.97.2 (talk) 21:54, 22 May 2022 (UTC)

The aviation alphabet

Why has it been suddenly changed and all media call it NATO alphabet? It has been the aviation alphabet always created in order to let pilots understand commands clearly. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 122.104.93.228 (talk) 06:17, 12 June 2022 (UTC)

Title of the article

"Phonetic alphabet" is a misnomer. Even if many people and organizations (including, apparently, NATO) use this term for the NATO spelling alphabet, it should not be used in this article title, because of the naming collision that this misnomer creates. See the article on Spelling alphabet, under the subhead "Terminology," where this issue is discussed. The problem is that this is NOT a "phonetic alphabet," as this term is generally understood. A phonetic alphabet is one that sets up an unambiguous, one-to-one relationship between letter-symbols and the actual speech sounds they represent; the best-known of these is the International Phonetic Alphabet. It's worth noting that the disambiguation page for Phonetic Alphabet (like the corresponding Wiktionary entry) does list as a third usage "Spelling alphabet, a.k.a. radio alphabet," in the sense of "a set of code words for the names of the letters of an alphabet, used in noisy conditions such as radio communication…." It is entirely appropriate that the disambiguation page should list this, together with the technically *correct* usages of the term, since this misnomer has in fact become common usage. It did originate, however, in a misapprehension of the actual meaning of the term "phonetic," which is a technical term in linguistics, and its inappropriate use in this other domain creates confusion. To be consistent both with proper usage and with Wikipedia usage elsewhere, I would suggest titling the article "NATO Spelling Alphabet," and redirecting "NATO Phonetic Alphabet" to that location. (Other terms more appropriate than "phonetic alphabet" are listed in the "Terminology" subsection of the Spelling alphabet article; none is ideal, but "spelling alphabet" appears to be the most widespread, including on Wikipedia.) Kurt Queller (talk) 17:02, 7 July 2022 (UTC)

We don't have any basis for saying it's a misnomer if that is how people use it. There's no issue with "phonetic alphabet" referring to two distinct concepts, really - it just means we need to be careful how we handle them. What we can't do is start saying that one of them is incorrect. Theknightwho (talk) 17:06, 7 July 2022 (UTC)
NATO calls it the same as the current article title. See: The NATO phonetic alphabet, so I think it should be kept the same. --Funandtrvl (talk) 18:44, 7 July 2022 (UTC)
  • @Kurt Queller: two things. First, did you and your wife teach at UI? Second, article titles are governed by the Wikipedia policy WP:Article titles. And while "precision" is one of the guidelines for article titles, it is within the context of having enough information to unambiguously identify the subject rather than any "correctness". The guiding part of the policy for this article would be "Use Commonly Recognizable Names", and unfortunately we are stuck in a situation where experts in a field would actively avoid the common name because common usage is misleading. It is the unfortunate reality that Wikipedia is not here to correct the record, but rather to compile and set the record down. VanIsaac, MPLL contWpWS 19:15, 7 July 2022 (UTC)

Spelling variants

There's been some confusion over spelling variants. This is a spoken code; the spelling of the code words is no more important than whether the English letter 'C' is spelled "cee" or "see". "Alfa" and "Juliett" are designed to avoid confusion by learners, who are trying to memorize a key, but once you learn the code you don't spell it out. The US Federal Govt uses "Alpha" and "Juliet", presumably because they expect an anglophone audience. Similarly, whether "X-ray" has a hyphen is irrelevant to the use of the code because it's never pronounced: "X-ray" and "Xray" are the same (spoken) code word the same way "Alfa" and "Alpha" are. And in Russia keys for the code words are spelled out in Cyrillic, but no-one would claim that makes it a different alphabet.

In 1956, there were several internal instructions in NATO to change the spelling in the key from "X-RAY" to "XRAY" -- "a single, unhyphenated word" -- so that people don't mistakenly pronounce it as two words. See here.

Need to verify variants

Of more importance is whether I, L, W are actually replaced with indigo/italy, london and washington/white -- the ref fails confirmation. No title is given; it's evidently one of several medical dictionaries (or editions of the same dictionary) written by Segen. But a medical dictionary is not a RS for aviation, so we'd want to verify Segen's sources, and we can't do that without a valid reference. I checked three and couldn't find anything. — kwami (talk) 21:15, 19 July 2022 (UTC)

Capitalization

What is the justification for capitalizing the words that are used in place of letters ("Alfa", "Bravo", etc) in the "Pronunciation Conflicts" table? Most of them are not proper nouns. Jc3s5h (talk) 19:15, 27 July 2022 (UTC)

@Jc3s5h: Convention. Capitalization is not distinctive. They may be lower case, capitalized, or all caps. A lot of military communication (e.g. telegrams, anything in Morse code) are in all caps, so it's common to see the code words in all caps as well, esp. in older documents. For the more recent tables, you might argue that it's just the first word in a line that's capitalized, and not inherent to the code, but when cited it's usual for people to capitalize them as a way of making them distinct from the surrounding text. You could probably italicize them instead, but in manual-typewriter days, capitalization or all caps was easier. — kwami (talk) 23:37, 27 July 2022 (UTC)

Juliett

Do you really think someone who wants to see this page will type Juliett?? I'm sure the answer is no. So why does Juliett re-direct here?? Georgia guy (talk) 16:31, 4 November 2022 (UTC)

Because "Juliett" most commonly means 'J'. Though evidently it's also a variant of the name. — kwami (talk) 17:17, 4 November 2022 (UTC)
The purpose of a re-direct is to indicate a title that someone might expect an article to be titled but that mismatches the actual title. In this case, everyone will expect this article to be titled by one of the alphabet's names and not by a special spelling for one of its letters. Georgia guy (talk) 17:47, 4 November 2022 (UTC)
That's not true. Plenty of RD's are not variants of the article title, when we don't have a separate article on the topic. We should probably add an anchor, though.
We could rd it to Juliet (disambiguation) instead, but that would make it difficult for people to find what they're looking for. Or perhaps we could make it a separate dab page. Juliett Time and Juliett-class submarines are both named after the letter, but now that I think of it, that would probably be the cleanest approach. — kwami (talk) 18:17, 4 November 2022 (UTC)
@Georgia guy: Is that better? — kwami (talk) 18:54, 4 November 2022 (UTC)

Xray

"Early on, the NATO alliance changed X-ray to Xray in its version of the alphabet to ensure that it would be pronounced as one word rather than as two, while the global organization ICAO keeps the spelling X-ray." I can't figure out what difference in pronunciation this might be referring to. Heck, if I were to imagine a "one-word" pronunciation for "xray", it would probably sound more like "shray" or "zray". I am certain that these are not the pronunciation meant, so what is this saying? --User:Khajidha (talk) (contributions) 13:19, 10 November 2022 (UTC)

Imagine a team leader making this speech. "The project assignments are L, Peter; Q, Cynthia and X, Ray." Jc3s5h (talk) 14:00, 10 November 2022 (UTC)
I can't hear a difference between how I say "X, Ray" in that example and how I say "x-ray". --User:Khajidha (talk) (contributions) 14:17, 10 November 2022 (UTC)
Same as the difference between a bluebird and a blue bird, or the White House and a white house. According to the dicts I've checked, 'x-ray' is pronounced as a single word, but non-English-speakers might not realize that. — kwami (talk) 20:59, 10 November 2022 (UTC)
Unless I'm being super duper hyper specific, those pairs all sound the same to me.--User:Khajidha (talk) (contributions) 21:24, 10 November 2022 (UTC)
This is for communication in battlefield conditions. So yeah, specificity is precisely the point. The differences in prosody and emphasis - the suprasegmental features of how words really sound coming out of the mouth - are exactly what they are trying to standardize here. VanIsaac, GHTV contWpWS 00:26, 11 November 2022 (UTC)

Article heading

Why is the heading of this article "NATO phonetic alphabet" when it's actually about the ICAO Radiotelephony Spelling Alphabet? The article actually talks about how the ICAO alphabet was developed and even describes how NATO adopted the ICAO alphabet, so shouldn't the article heading reflect that? "ICAO Radiotelephony Alphabet" would be a better heading. 222.153.95.113 (talk) 02:23, 16 January 2023 (UTC)

There have been several unsuccessful move requests in the past: see Talk:NATO phonetic alphabet/Archive 2. StAnselm (talk) 05:30, 16 January 2023 (UTC)

Why "niner"?

The usual explanation is that this is to kept it distinct from German nein, and we have a ref for that. However, Mongtom said that's a myth and that instead it's to keep it distinct from 'five'. Is there a reference for that? — kwami (talk) 01:03, 1 February 2023 (UTC)

9 is pronounced niner in this alphabet to distinguish it from...

How much disagreement have Wikipedians had on whether this sentence is correctly completed with five or the German word for no?? Georgia guy (talk) 02:13, 1 February 2023 (UTC)

Not much. We only have a source for the latter. — kwami (talk) 02:53, 1 February 2023 (UTC)

"L"

I have read previously here that there's a variant we use that has London for <L> instead of 5. It has now disappeared, and unfortunately i didn't save the citation for that. Is that still true? Terrabalt (talk) 02:19, 6 February 2023 (UTC)

London was used by the Royal Navy in WW1, and the RAF till the 1950s.--Dmol (talk) 07:11, 6 February 2023 (UTC)
For clarification, this variant is used in Indonesia. Georgia guy (talk) 11:43, 6 February 2023 (UTC)
@Georgia guy: Do you have a reference for that? I'm the one who deleted those claims because, try as I might, I couldn't verify any of them apart from "runway Dixie" in Atlanta. It would be nice to restore the section on alt forms, but each should be RS'd because we're describing an international standard here.
The codes that are supposedly substituted are Lima (confused with '5' in Malay), India (politics in Pakistan) and Whiskey (alcohol taboo). — kwami (talk) 23:06, 6 February 2023 (UTC)
You must have read that somewhere. Why not tell us where you read it? If you are going by youir own memory or experience just tell us that ("As a pilot with City Airlines, I found that the tower at South Park International Airport uses "Iceland" instead of "India"). Original Research is allowed on talk pages and often leads to somone finding a reliable source that agrees with the OR. "Kwamikagami says so" or "Georgia Guy says so" leaves us with no way to proceed. --Guy Macon (talk) 18:27, 14 February 2023 (UTC)
Yes, I read that here, same as you. As I said, I searched for sources and didn't find any. — kwami (talk) 06:44, 15 February 2023 (UTC)

X-ray or Xray?

X-ray or Xray? It’s inconsistent here. The reasons for alfa and juliett lie in unambiguous pronunciation. For the same reason, “Xray” should be treated as incorrect. Please update the alleged “FAA” list. 162.228.145.174 (talk) 01:36, 17 July 2022 (UTC)

You're right, when you look at the file on Wikimedia Commons, there isn't enough bibliographic information to determine where it came from. I deleted it. Jc3s5h (talk) 02:31, 17 July 2022 (UTC)
It's easy enough to look up, and it is "Xray". I'll check out the 2020 edition to see if there've been any changes. — kwami (talk) 14:20, 17 July 2022 (UTC)
Nope. In Table 4–2–2 Phonetic Alphabet/Morse Code of FAR/AIM 2020 (the Federal Aviation Regulations and Aeronautical Information Manual), the table is identical to ours with the trivial exceptions of not setting the column headers in italic all caps and not centering the lefthand column. — kwami (talk) 14:30, 17 July 2022 (UTC)
That may be, but the FAA no doubt has published many tables of this type over the decades, and our article fails to direct the reader to the exact table that is the source of our figure. You put it back, you are now responsible, and you must cite what you read. Jc3s5h (talk) 14:39, 17 July 2022 (UTC)
I checked multiple editions. They all have "Xray". — kwami (talk) 14:40, 17 July 2022 (UTC)
Please obey the English Wikipedia Verifiability policy. Jc3s5h (talk) 16:29, 17 July 2022 (UTC)
[13] and [14] both say "X-ray" so I am changing our article to agree with those citations. If anyone thinks "xray" is correct, please list citation to reliable sources that support that spelling. --Guy Macon (talk) 17:28, 14 February 2023 (UTC)
While fixing the above, I found several errors. For example, in the table "Timeline in development of the ICAO/ITU-R radiotelephony spelling alphabet" the collumn for "1947 ICAO (from 1943 US–UK)" said "XRay" while citing [15], which (on page 48) clearly says "X-Ray". I am going to have to go through every citation and see if any of the obsolete versions used "xray" along with able, baker, and other now-unused phonetics. --Guy Macon (talk) 18:13, 14 February 2023 (UTC)
Website summaries are not necessarily reliable. When they contradict the print publication, we follow the published source. — kwami (talk) 06:48, 15 February 2023 (UTC)
1944 and 1947 editions may differ. We need to use the source that matches the claim. — kwami (talk) 06:50, 15 February 2023 (UTC)
"Website summaries are not necessarily reliable"?? "contradict the print publication"??? Did you even bother reading the source ( http://www.n7cfo.com/tgph/Dwnlds/sigcorps/FM24-12.pdf )? It is a PDF of a print publication, not a "website summary".
Please stop making claims like "we follow the published source" without any link to a published source that supports your version. Following WP:V when editing Wikipedia isn't an option. It is a requirement that you must follow. --Guy Macon (talk) 15:55, 15 February 2023 (UTC)
That source is great for the US War Dept. as of 1944. It's not a source for other agencies or other years. My comment about website summaries was regarding your sources that were website summaries.
I don't know what you're talking about with sources. I verified that sources in this article corresponded to what we claimed. If you want to make changes, you need to provide sources for what you change.
It would help if you specified what you were talking about, e.g. which claim fails verification with which source. It's a long article with multiple sources. You need to be specific or I'm not going to be able to follow your argument. For example, if this is just about "x-ray" vs "xray", then you need to say where the errors are. If you make a blanket conversion from one to the other, in contradiction of WP:V, then I'm going to continue to revert you. Also, I don't understand why you'd delete our explanation of "xray", when we have similar explanations of "alfa" and "juliett" (and you've even written an essay about them). — kwami (talk) 21:33, 15 February 2023 (UTC)
These sources:
  • [16] (first page)
  • [17] (page 414, PDF page 421)
Support "X-Ray".
Despite being asked repeatedly, you have once again failed to specify which sources you think support "XRay". Please do so now. --Guy Macon (talk) 22:21, 15 February 2023 (UTC)
You're off-topic. Yes, those two sources have "X-ray". So what? That's not your claim. (Best I can tell, anyway, since you still haven't make a clear statement of your POV.) If you find that the claims of "xray" in the article fail verification, then state which they are. That's really quite simple, and I'm puzzled by why you refuse to make a coherent statement of what's wrong with the article. BTW, "XRay" doesn't even appear in the article. — kwami (talk) 00:00, 16 February 2023 (UTC)
Let me try again. I don't have any additional sources. I simply verified the sources in the article. As I said before. Now, if you go to verify sources and they fail, say so! Which sources fail for which claims? The fact that you can find some additional source that contradicts some of the sources in this article is beside the point. I can find sources that A is "alpha" and J is "juliette", but that doesn't change the fact that we also have RS's that A is "alfa" and J is "juliett". Say what you mean, and be precise, or I'll give up trying to understand you. — kwami (talk) 00:12, 16 February 2023 (UTC)
Evasion noted. All uses of "XRay" fail verification, because you have failed to tell me what source to verify. I spot checked several and they all supported "X-Ray". LINK TO A SOURCE OR STOP WASTING MY TIME. Was that clear enough? Free clue: a link starts with "https://" or "http://", sometimes has a "www" somewhere in the middle, and often ends with ".html", ".htm" or ",pdf". A link does not consist of you asserting "I simply verified the sources in the article" or "I can find sources" with no way for anyone to check your claim. TELL ME WHICH SOURCE YOU THINK YOU VERIFIED. For more details on linking to sources see WP:LINK and WP:V. --Guy Macon (talk) 01:04, 16 February 2023 (UTC)
It's not up to me to do your work for you. You cited WP:V, so why don't you follow it. Really, this is getting ridiculous. YOU claim there's a problem, so YOU need to say what the problem is. If a claim fails verification, tag it as failing verification and mention it here.
When you say 'all uses of "XRay" fail verification, because [I] have failed to tell [you] what sources to verify', you sound like a troll: that's not what "failed verification" means. If you don't understand that, then read WP:V again. — kwami (talk) 02:54, 16 February 2023 (UTC)
Also, the idea that I can link to an arbitrary published document is silly.
As for which sources I checked, I believe I checked all of them, but I can't be sure. I didn't write them down: I merely checked some sources for claims I was suspicious of, and maybe changed our wording here or there accordingly. That's what you do to verify a source. — kwami (talk) 03:07, 16 February 2023 (UTC)
Kwami, you have about half a million edits to the project. Guy's question is not difficult, and yet you consistently fail to answer, and I am beginning to believe you fail to understand. You display shawshank levels of obtuseness! There is little difference between your editing here and disruptive editing. Disruptive editing, as you should know, is sanctionable.
I'll try. Which refs support your use of "Xray"? - Roxy the dog 05:18, 16 February 2023 (UTC)
The ones used for the claim that it's "xray", obviously. Come on, the idea that all refs fail verification unless I personally vouch for them is just stupid. I don't remember which refs I checked -- it was months ago when someone claimed that our PDF table should be removed because it was wrong, without bothering to check -- and it doesn't matter which I checked: if you doubt a claim that has a ref, you check the ref. That's it. It's not rocket science. And no, I'm not going to go back and redo my work: it's not anyone else's job to do Guy's work for him. If Guy checked a ref and it failed verification, then he should say so. Otherwise he's just wasting our time. If you want to join in and check refs because he refuses to do so, go ahead: the refs stand by themselves. Anyone can check them. — kwami (talk) 07:57, 16 February 2023 (UTC)
Gosh. I've seen some experienced editors be extremely rude and ignorant, but you take the doggy biscuit. - Roxy the dog 08:24, 16 February 2023 (UTC)

Why Xray not X-ray

Alfa is spelled to prevent Spanish speakers from saying "Alpa" with a silent h.

Juliett is spelled to prevent French speakers from saying "Julie A".

But why is Xray spelled as such and not as X-ray?? Georgia guy (talk) 01:30, 16 February 2023 (UTC)

So that people won't mistakenly pronounce it as two words, "ex ray", as in the ICAO IPA transcription. (The ICAO respelling is evidently the intended pronunciation.) — kwami (talk) 02:47, 16 February 2023 (UTC)
Do you really think that this distinction has a statement that parallels this statement from Guy Macon's WP:ALFA essay:
Likewise, in English the first letter of the Greek alphabet is Alpha and the Shakespeare character is Juliet while the letter "A" in the NATO phonetic alphabet is Alfa and the letter "J" is Juliett.
Georgia guy (talk) 11:34, 16 February 2023 (UTC)
I don't understand the question. All three differ from the usual English spelling, and all three vary between agencies, though AFAICT only xray varies among international agencies. It's almost trivia, really: the code words are not spelled in practice, only in keys and instruction manuals. — kwami (talk) 19:47, 16 February 2023 (UTC)
Kwami: Evasion noted. Again. You assert that "all three vary between agencies" but refuse to provide a link to any agencies so we can check your claim. You assert that "only xray varies among international agencies" but refuse to provide a link to any agencies so we can check your claim.
Georgia guy: I spent half an hour spot checking and could not find any source that says "X-Ray" "Xray" is part of any phonetic alphabet. There may be a historical version somewhere that used it, but Kwami won't post a link to a source to verify their claim, so I have to assume that they just made it up. --Guy Macon (talk) 14:38, 20 February 2023 (UTC) (edited to fix silly mistake)
Having watched this go back and forth, I figure it's worth an external bystander reminding everyone of the policy from WP:V: Even if you are sure something is true, it must be verifiable before you can add it. It doesn't matter how true something is, or how much sense it makes, nothing belongs in an article if it can't be sourced. Background uncited comments about the 'why' are acceptable in a talk page or in an essay, but cannot make it into an article. The spelling of an entry is justified by "this is what standard XYZ publishes", regardless of why it might make sense to spell it otherwise. Regards, Tarl N. (discuss) 18:42, 20 February 2023 (UTC)
On 16 February 2023 I added the following source, which uses the spelling "Xray".
"NATO phonetic alphabet, codes & signals" (PDF). North Atlantic Treaty Organization. 15 January 2018. Jc3s5h (talk) 19:11, 20 February 2023 (UTC)
Thanks! I found another: https://www.faa.gov/air_traffic/publications/atpubs/aim_html/chap4_section_2.html (Section 4.2.7 Phonetic Alphabet)
I have an appointment and must sign off, but if nobody does it in the meantime i will verify that the page reflects those two sources when I get back. Not sure what to do if NATO gives two different versions unless one of them is obsolete. BTW, I made a stupid error earlier, switching Xray and X-Ray partway through and "correcting" some things the wrong way. :) Sorry about that. I think I fixed it, but feel free to check. --Guy Macon (talk) 19:31, 20 February 2023 (UTC)
I completed the revert, as you didn't give coherent reasons for any of your changes (e.g. claiming that the sources don't say what they say, and that someone has to prove they say what they say or we must conclude that they don't, which makes no sense.)
Sources sometimes use standard English spellings, and some of those instances may be mistakes. I think we should follow the more official documents unless we have a source that the spelling has been officially changed.
Again, if a source fails verification, say what the source is and how it fails. If you continue to claim that it's the other way around, that you can make any random change you like despite the sources and that others have to prove you wrong, I will continue to revert you. Really, it's very very simple: "We say X, sourced to Y. But if we check Y, e.g. on page Z, we see that it says the opposite." — kwami (talk) 05:30, 21 February 2023 (UTC)

Generation Alpha etc.

On 15 May 2024 92.184.119.64 (talk · contribs) added a paragraph about Generation Alpha, Generation Beta, etc. These are names for generations born beginning in the early 21st century, similar to phrases that have been used, such as ""Millenials" or "Generation Z". There is no citation provided for this. Also, the paragraph suggests this series will continue all the way through Generation Zulu. But I'm inclined to think these names are just a fad and it's very unlikely they will last for centuries. Jc3s5h (talk) 13:44, 15 May 2024 (UTC)

The usage is also clearly from the Greek alphabet (Alpha Beta Gamma Delta Epsilon Zeta Eta Theta) and not the NATO phonetic alphabet (Alfa Bravo Charlie Delta Echo Foxtrot Golf Hotel) and thus is irrelevant to this article. --Guy Macon Alternate Account (talk) 19:41, 15 May 2024 (UTC)

Mystery formatting

The page uses a wide gamut of formatting, the intention of which is largely unclear (to me, at least). The most confusing usages are in the Timeline table, so take a look at that one, if you would, please.

Some words are in bold, some are not. Some are italicized, some are not. Some are all-caps, others aren't. Some exhibit a combination of formatting. I see no explanation anywhere what this is supposed to mean; the only thing that comes close is the explanatory note that says In print, these code words are commonly capitalized for emphasis, or written in all caps (CCEB 2016).

Can somebody reveal what's intended with this mish-mash of formatting? When the table gives me Kilogramme, what should I glean from it? If nobody can provide an explanation (after "a while"), I might just aim for some consistent format (prob. no bold, no italics) in the tables and change it myself.

As a somewhat separate question: do we have some consensus on how to write the code words in prose? We currently seem to use every conceivable variant:

  • ...Whiskey, X-ray, Yankee,...
  • ...the same with "Xray"...
  • ...the NATO change of spelling of x-ray to xray so that...
  • ...and the IMO define compound numeric words (nadazero, unaone, bissotwo...
  • ...the compound Latinate prefix-number words (Nadazero, Unaone, etc.), later adopted...
  • ...the group itself as VC, or Victor Charlie; the name "Charlie" became...
  • For similar reasons, Charlie and Uniform have alternative pronunciations...
  • ...it was reported that "Delta" was often replaced by "David" or "Dixie" at...

And that's all just outside the tables.

Could we/should we pick one of these styles (quotation marks [double or single], italics, capitalized, lowercase, all-caps, something else)?

Thanks and regards to any watchers who reply. — JohnFromPinckney (talk / edits) 21:32, 16 May 2024 (UTC)

Part of the problem is that this article has too much inline information about things that are not the NATO phonetic alphabet. The first image the viewer sees is a Morse code chart. I say move everything that isn't the NATO phonetic alphabet (including other aphabets, precurors, and rarely used variants) into a seperate section.
I also propose that we remove all the weird respelling formatting and different respellings from the main section and only present the respellings found in This NATO document --Guy Macon Alternate Account (talk) 05:15, 17 May 2024 (UTC)
I don't know what "weird respelling formatting" refers to.
Should mentions be italicized or set off with quote marks? — kwami (talk) 06:31, 17 May 2024 (UTC)
Moved the table; replaced it w html. — kwami (talk) 06:42, 17 May 2024 (UTC)
My "weird respelling formatting" was a failed attempt to shorten JohnFromPinckney's "do we have some consensus on how to write the code words in prose? We currently seem to use every conceivable variant... Could we/should we pick one of these styles (quotation marks [double or single], italics, capitalized, lowercase, all-caps, something else)?"
I prefer "quotation marks" (", not ') over italics, which read like emphasis to me, but either way is fine as long as we are consistant. --Guy Macon Alternate Account (talk) 00:23, 18 May 2024 (UTC)

The respellings in our table "Letter code words with pronunciation" do not match the citation at p. §5.2.1.3, Figure 5–1 of reference 13 ( Annex 10 to the Convention on International Civil Aviation: Aeronautical Telecommunications; Volume II Communication Procedures including those with PANS status).

Again I say, we should delete the respellings from ICAO and replace them with these respellings from NATO: [ https://www.nato.int/nato_static_fl2014/assets/pdf/pdf_2018_01/20180111_nato-alphabet-sign-signal.pdf ] --Guy Macon Alternate Account (talk) 00:42, 18 May 2024 (UTC)

The NATO respellings are defective. Most critically, they do not indicate where the stress lies, but they also fail to list the alternative pronunciations for C and U. Unless those have been retired, we shouldn't remove them. Apart from that, there are only trivial discrepancies: "hoh-tel", "vic-tah" and "zee-ro", so I don't see the point. Anyway, the ICAO lists respellings together with IPA, so we can assume that they were intended to be equivalent, which we can't do with the NATO list. — kwami (talk) 01:09, 18 May 2024 (UTC)
The french-language NATO site doesn't have those alt pronunciations, so we can note that. Other organizations might retain them, though. — kwami (talk) 01:25, 18 May 2024 (UTC)
All respellings are defective in one way or another. That's why the world has largely abandoned respellings and instead uses IPA transcriptions. They were widely used in 1956, which is why the NATO standards contain them. --Guy Macon Alternate Account (talk) 15:23, 18 May 2024 (UTC)
From International Phonetic Alphabet:
"...pronunciation respelling systems [are] intended to be more comfortable for readers of English and to be more acceptable across dialects, without the implication of a preferred pronunciation that the IPA might convey."
In the context of the NATO phonetic alphabet a preferred pronunciation is exactly what the standard is trying to convey. The NATO phonetic alphabet is prescriptive, not descriptive. Suppressing variants and resisting changes is a Good Thing. --Guy Macon Alternate Account (talk) 16:05, 18 May 2024 (UTC)
  • The assertion that respellings are defective and therefore should not be included doesn't seem consistent with WP:NPOV. It is not our job to make that kind of judgement, it is our job to encyclopedically reflect the reality. If the NATO standards include the phonetic respelling, then it belongs here. If the NATO standards include IPA transcriptions, then they belong here as well. Including the context - that respellings are an historical artifact that is rarely used in favor of modern IPA transcriptions - whatever the reality on the ground is, that's how we deal with these kinds of issues, not by suppressing the parts we don't like. VanIsaac, GHTV contWpWS 16:08, 18 May 2024 (UTC)
    We're not suppressing anything. The NATO respellings are only trivially different from the ICAO respellings (e.g. vic-tah rather than VIK tah), but convey less information (no indication of stress). There's no point in cluttering the main table with both, but for completeness the NATO respellings are listed in the longer table in the history section, along with several others. IMO we need as much as we can get, because the IPA transcriptions are also defective, and the respellings can help the reader interpret them.
    Anyway, Guy wasn't proposing to add information, but to suppress the ICAO respellings that they don't like. — kwami (talk) 16:41, 18 May 2024 (UTC)
That last sentence (EDIT: The sentence "Guy wasn't proposing to add information, but to suppress the ICAO respellings that they don't like") sounds a lot like casting aspersions. Please assume good faith and stop implying that anyone here has a motive other than improving the article.
Whether you personally think that the The NATO respellings are inferior to the ICAO respellings is irrelevant. The name of the page is NATO phonetic alphabet, not ICAO phonetic alphabet. Despite my personal dislike of all respellings, I have not advocated removing them. Instead I have proposed using this respelling from a NATO source[18] that has been printed out and put on the wall in many places. For many people it is their only exposure to the NATO phonetic alphabet. --Guy Macon Alternate Account (talk) 21:35, 18 May 2024 (UTC)
Regarding "they do not indicate where the stress lies", the NATO phonetic alphabet is designed to be used by speakers of all languages, including Japanese where each syllable has the same length and strength,[19][20] as opposed to English where some syllables are stressed and lenghtened. Also, in Japan all caps is not commonly used to express emphasis or shouting. Instead they use bold text and exclamation points. You will find this in the Japanese translations of the Harry Potter books,[21] which convey shouting in this way. --Guy Macon Alternate Account (talk) 21:56, 18 May 2024 (UTC)
Please clarify your referents. You're accusing yourself of assuming bad faith, which I doubt was your intention. (It's rather difficult to follow who's addressing who in this thread.)
Japanese is irrelevant. This is English WP, so we use English conventions. The code words have stressed syllables. A transcription that doesn't show this is defective.
"NATO Phonetic Alphabet" is just the most common name for this system. It doesn't mean that we privilege NATO sources over others. We use the best sources available. If you can find something better than what we have, great, but replacing it with an inferior source just because you saw it on a poster is not a good approach to building an encyclopedia. — kwami (talk) 06:02, 19 May 2024 (UTC)
I believe that you may have made a factual error. The NATO Phonetic Alphabet is an international standard, not a common name. Citations to NATO documents trump citations to other standards.
It's as if you claimed that IEEE 754 is "just the most common name" for Floating-point arithmetic and then tried to use citations to bfloat16 as reliable sources for use in the IEEE 754 article.
The fact that many later standards decided to be in agreement with the NATO Phonetic Alphabet may have confused you regarding reliable sourcing for the NATO Phonetic Alphabet.
Also, the NATO Phonetic Alphabet is an international standard, not an English standard. "This is English WP, so we use English conventions" is incorrect. We use English conventions in the language we use to write the article, but not in the definition of what the NATO Phonetic Alphabet is. For example, if you were to expand DIN 5009, all descriptive tables would use German conventions, with explanations for english readers in the article if needed.
Finally, the claim "The code words have stressed syllables" is factually incorrect. Some supplimental explanations for English speakers add stressed syllables, but the NATO Phonetic Alphabet has no stress anywhere in the actual international standard, which was designed for use by users of all languages, including languages the don't use stress or use it differently from English. --Guy Macon Alternate Account (talk) 12:58, 21 May 2024 (UTC)
Please provide references for any of those claims.
As for English vs Japanese, we use English approximations on WP, not Japanese ones. The English approximations are just that, as noted on the poster. — kwami (talk) 16:34, 21 May 2024 (UTC)
BTW, reg. Japanese, the French pronunciations show stress despite the fact that French has no stress (which Japanese actually does). — kwami (talk) 02:37, 23 May 2024 (UTC)

W - Whisk(e)y - in Muslim countries

In Saudi Arabia at least, and 40 years ago, 'Washington' was substituted for 'Whisky' in order to avoid possible offence. I have no independent citation for this so I cannot make an edit. Does anyone have a good reference? Cross Reference (talk) 17:28, 25 July 2024 (UTC)

Apparently not. This claim was in the article for years with a 'citation needed' tag, but no-one ever found a RS for it. If it were still true, I'd expect we could find something, so it might just be historical trivia. It could be that some individuals continued to use the 1947 and 1958 International Telecommunications Convention code word (also from the 1938 International Radiocommunication Conference that met in Cairo) for that letter without that ever being official. — kwami (talk) 23:46, 25 July 2024 (UTC)
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