"in phonetics"

[Bill Palmer]

Wilson,

To the best of my knowledge "Alfa" still represents A in military
"phonetics".  Has remained the same since 1956, when it changed, supposedly
to facilitate pronunciation by members of various NATO countries' armed
forces.  In the changeover from the old "Abel, Baker, Charlie..." form,
three survived:  Charlie, Mike, & Victor

Bill Palmer

----- Original Message -----
From: "Wilson Gray" <hwgray at GMAIL.COM>
To: <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
Sent: Thursday, July 09, 2009 10:10 PM
Subject: Re: "in phonetics"


> ---------------------- Information from the mail
> header -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Wilson Gray <hwgray at GMAIL.COM>
> Subject:      Re: "in phonetics"
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> I wonder why _A_ is such a problem? "Abel" in WWII, "alfa" during my
> military service, now "adam." And there's "bravo" vs. "baker." But
> "charlie" appears to be money.
>
> -Wilson
>
> On Wed, Jul 8, 2009 at 2:17 PM, Arnold Zwicky<zwicky at stanford.edu> wrote:
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>> Sender: Â  Â  Â  American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>> Poster: Â  Â  Â  Arnold Zwicky <zwicky at STANFORD.EDU>
>> Subject: Â  Â  Â "in phonetics"
>> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>> a little while ago, on an episode of NCIS, Special Agent Gibbs (played
>> by Mark Harman), annoyed when people failed to understand some proper
>> names, exhorted everyone to say the names "in phonetics" -- by which
>> he meant that they should use what's known in some circles (especially
>> military ones) as a "phonetic alphabet". Â the technical term for these
>> is "spelling alphabet", but you can see why no one would want to say
>> that you should use "spelling".
>>
>> a spelling alphabet is a kind of code for the letters of the alphabet,
>> in which each letter is represented by a word beginning with that
>> letter: Adam, Bravo, Charlie,...; Abel, Baker, Charlie,...
>>
>> the wikipedia entry gives a number of spelling alphabets, for english
>> and a number of other languages:
>> Â  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spelling_alphabet
>>
>> i didn't find "phonetic alphabet" (in this sense) under either
>> "phonetic" or "alphabet" in the OED. Â or "spelling alphabet" under
>> either "spelling" or "alphabet".
>>
>> arnold
>>
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>
>
>
> --
> -Wilson
> â?"â?"â?"
> All say, "How hard it is that we have to die"---a strange complaint to
> come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
> -----
> -Mark Twain
>
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