The pronunciations of the code words are given in the International Phonetic Alphabet. When this flag appears alone on board a ship, it means Man Overboard.īelow are the symbol flags and NATO code words for each letter of the alphabet. There have been many different spelling alphabets over time, but the NATO alphabet is the most commonly used around the world.īetween ships at sea, signal flags are used to stand for letters in order to spell out words.Īlphabet Symbol flag for the letter 'O', spelled out loud by saying " Oscar". For this reason it is also called a "spelling alphabet". ![]() (Each code word begins with the letter that it stands for.)Īlthough it is commonly called a "phonetic alphabet", it is not used for phonetics as the International Phonetic Alphabet is. The NATO code words "papa" and "bravo" are much clearer. For instance, it may be difficult to hear whether a person is saying the letter "pee" (P) or "bee" (B). This is important for accuracy in the military and in air travel and shipping. They are used to spell words when people speak over the radio or telephone, when people from different countries are speaking with different accents, or in other situations where people may not clearly hear the normal names of the letters. The NATO phonetic alphabet is a set of code words for the letters of the Latin alphabet. And W has gone through an evolution of its own: it was originally written as two Us next to each other, which is why its name in English is double u! As easy as ABC!įrom reading your address on the phone to hearing new words spelled aloud, there are lots of ways you'll use the English alphabet.Not to be confused with International Phonetic Alphabet or Phoenician alphabet. English originally used the letters "æ," "þ," and "ð"-but didn't have the letters J, U, and W. You might need extra practice to get the vowel names right!Īnother big change in the English alphabet was the addition of new letters and the removal of others. The reason is because of dramatic sound changes that happened in English hundreds of years ago, a process called the Great Vowel Shift. The names of the English vowels might be especially hard to remember-they're pronounced very differently than in related languages. ![]() it's pronounced "zed." That's because this letter gets its name from the Greek letter zeta! While the alphabet itself is the same in all English-speaking countries, one letter has a different pronunciation in different regions: Z! For example, Z is pronounced "zee" in U.S. There are many systems of example words, including the NATO Phonetic Alphabet, but there are less formal systems as well.įor example, Lily might spell her name on the phone by saying "L as in lion, I as in ice, L as in lion, and Y as in yak." Fun facts about the English alphabet ![]() ![]() To help clarify what letter is meant, for example, while talking on the phone or in a noisy environment, English speakers often use an example word to distinguish between similar-sounding letters. Lowercase letters are sometimes called little, so you might hear people refer to a "big A" or "little A" for the different versions. Uppercase letters are also called capital letters or big letters, and these are the versions you'll use at the start of a sentence and for proper nouns (like the names of people, countries, languages, and companies). Each letter has two versions: uppercase and lowercase.
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