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Why does it have to be alpha or bravo or delta? What difference does it make if it were apple, boy, Dennis? As long as it does the job.
Because C as in Caren and K as in Karyn. Because Bill and Will sound the same, especially if you have an accent. Also because if you just say Alpha foxtrot november, it’s shorter than saying A as in Apple, F as in Frank, N as in Nick etc.
But you do you, I just find it extremely convenient to use it to make it clear to a phone. If you want to stay cute and confusing that’s fine with me.
C as in cat. K as in kite. B as in boy. I think it doesn't really matter what you use as long as the other person gets it
Well then you will be oscar kilo with me if I use a little alpha bravo charlie.
Absolutely. The whole thing was just me being curious.
Clarity and uniformity.
Remember, this was designed for old style, tube radios. They might repeat the message three times and still not get it perfectly.
For clarity.
For repetition, and clarity. And repetition.
Apple and boy and Dennis are clear, too. I feel like some of the ones you mentioned are actually hard to grasp. Foxtrot is one of them.
RobWords on youtube or Nebula has a 20 minute video on the NATO phonetic alphabet thats more engaging than most. Worth a watch if you have the time, but the tl;dr is there needed to be a concise, interintelligible code to transmit as much data as possible over unreliable connections and multiple languages.
It is because each word doesn't sound like the other words so if it cuts out part of the word for interference or background noise you know 'lta' was delta and 'vo' was bravo and not some other words.
Experts and multilingual people were involved in choosing the words that could be pronounced clearly by people who spoke different languages, the words were each unique, and they have been consistent across many decades. The current list is the survivor of multiple attempts to do the same thing!
This annoys me unreasonably, because they use Quebec for 'Q', but the correct pronunciation of Quebec is KEH-bek. It's as dumb as pronouncing Lyon as 'LIE-un' instead of 'lee-OHN'.
I pronounce it with the 'Keh' sound when I use the phonetic alphabet, and I've heard others do so as well. The word doesn't need to start with the sound of the letter, it just needs to be somewhat intelligible as that word, and not one of the other words in the phonetic alphabet. For example, if Celine was spelling her name, she would use the phonetic 'Charlie', even though her name doesn't start with the 'Ch' sound.
"Have to be" is a pretty strong verbiage... but like the others have said, it's about both parties already knowing the alphanumeric replacement of choice. That's why any military boy will roll their eyes and probably have some silly comment if you start using random words like apple, boy, or dennis.
Civilian side radio users, like fire, ems, or police, have a different one
spoiler
Adam, Boy, Charles, David, Edward, Frank, George, Henry, Ida, John, King, LIncoln, Mary, Nora, Ocean, Paul, Queen, Robert, Sam, Tom, Union, Victor, William, X-ray, Young, Zebra; if you were curious911 dispatcher here- pretty much everywhere around me uses the NATO phonetics, except one neighboring county that I'm pretty sure doesn't use any sort of standardized phonetics at all, or at least their officers and dispatchers and such can't be bothered to use it.
Things aren't totally standardized across the country though, different 10-codes (or no 10-codes at all,) different terminology, different phonetic alphabets, etc.
There's some old timers around my county who have been around forever who tend to fall back into other systems from time to time, or people occasionally have a brain fart and have to spit out something different on the spot.
I'm pretty sure APCO at least strongly recommends using the NATO alphabet.
I think every service in the eastern half of my state uses the one I listed, and it's probably about a 90/10 split on plain english / 10 codes. Most of the 10 code usage is in the extremely rural areas. And god, don't get me started on 10 codes not being standardized. At least most of the major things seemed to be close. I haven't traveled to the western side for work, so can't speak to there. It is definitely interesting how things shake out in regards to agencies following recommendations.