NATO Phonetic Alphabet

[FordGT90Concept]

When trying to convey important messages over voice communication systems, people tend to fall into a pattern of "D as in dog," "C as in cat," and so on. Yes, that works but it's painfully inefficient on both ends. This is mankind has invented phonetic alphabets and most people that visit this website use NATO's. This program converts ASCII characters into their NATO equivalents on the fly.

Don't let your "Monkey Kong" turn into "Donkey Kong!"

Spoiler: Version History

1.0.3 - All non-alphanumeric characters are now wrapped in parenthesis. UNDEFINED changed to [UNDEFINED].
1.0.2 - Numbers changed to pronunciations and "Space" changed to "(Space)"
1.0.1 - It will say UNDEFINED on an unknown character rather than crashing.

 

[blobster21]

Tango Hotel Xray

 

[Vayra86]

When I used to work on the phone it was hilarious when people wanted to spell things using phonetic alphabet in Dutch. We have our own version of it, and most people only know a fraction of it, so they fill in the blanks with random words... which go from the names of supermarkets to celebrities to the name of their dog. And many of them defeat the purpose of using such an alphabet: to avoid confusion over the phone with a bad reception.

 

[rtwjunkie]

Tango Yankee.

This will be considerably easier than spending several years in the armed forces for those that haven’t already done so!

Seriously, this eliminates so much confusion when trying to spell over the phone or a radio and having someone understand you.

 

[qubit]

Interesting, I'll check this out.

 

[Solaris17]

This is cool. I work in an industry where I sometimes need to relay a license key or serial number over the phone to support. I memorized the NATO method about two years ago. It’s a seriously useful skill if you can call it that. I encourage anyone to do it as well

 

[Bill_Bright]

I spent many years supporting US military radio communications systems including maintaining and occasionally operating several MARS stations. There are indeed several versions of the phonetic alphabet that even formally trained operators use. But for the most part, they do not cause confusion - at least not once the whole word is determined. I note the NATA version adapted the US Military's version - which makes sense since NATA was not founded until 1949.

Common derivatives include:

Apple​

Boy or Baker or Barney or Betty​

Dino​

Fire or Fox or Frank or Fred​

Nancy​

Ostrich​

Quincy​

Viceroy or Victory​

Wilma​

Zebra​

(I like the obvious "Flintstones" references.)​

What I always thought was funny was people trying to express numbers - especially when trying to differentiate between 5 and 9.

Numbers should be enunciated as follows (UPPERCASE is the emphasized syllable). :

0 ZEE-row​

1 WUN​

2 TOO​

3 TREE (note it is not "thr...")​

4 FOW er (not "fore" but two syllables "FOW er"​

5 FIFE​

6 SIX​

7 SEV-en​

8 ATE​

9 NIN-er​

(I note that NATO app does not address numbers.)​

I can't tell you how many times we heard "fiver" for 5. Fortunately, there are not 95 minutes in an hour or the messages for sure would go "foxtrot uniform bravo alpha romeo" or "tango uniform"! whiskey india november kilo, whiskey india november kilo!

TY

 

[Frick]

As a swede we just use names. Agnes, Bertil, Ceasar, Xerxes, Karl with a Kay and so on.

 

[R00kie]

awesome, will give this a go, useful when speaking over a phone.

 

[the54thvoid]

Hmm, doesn't work with Glaswegians, we're too thick.

Operator: What is your name?
Scot: Greig
Operator: Greeg?
Scot: Naw, Greig.
Operator: As in, Golf, Romeo...
Scot: Romeo? You calling me gay?
Operator: It's phonetic.
Scot: Aye, I'm on the phone Einstein. It's Greig.
Operator: Yes, Golf, Romeo, Echo, India, Golf.
Scot: Golf? What's that got to do with anything?
Operator: It's phonetic. Are you a moron?
Scot: A what? A Mormon?
Operator: No, A moron, you know; Mother, Oscar..
Scot: My mum wasn't Oscar. You want a square go?
Operator: A square what?
Scot: Foxtrot Uniform Charlie Kilo Space Yankee Oscar Uniform.

 

[Solaris17]

Hmm, doesn't work with Glaswegians, we're too thick.

Operator: What is your name?
Scot: Greig
Operator: Greeg?
Scot: Naw, Greig.
Operator: As in, Golf, Romeo...
Scot: Romeo? You calling me gay?
Operator: It's phonetic.
Scot: Aye, I'm on the phone Einstein. It's Greig.
Operator: Yes, Golf, Romeo, Echo, India, Golf.
Scot: Golf? What's that got to do with anything?
Operator: It's phonetic. Are you a moron?
Scot: A what? A Mormon?
Operator: No, A moron, you know; Mother, Oscar..
Scot: My mum wasn't Oscar. You want a square go?
Operator: A square what?
Scot: Foxtrot Uniform Charlie Kilo Space Yankee Oscar Uniform.

dead

 

[rtwjunkie]

Hmm, doesn't work with Glaswegians, we're too thick.

Operator: What is your name?
Scot: Greig
Operator: Greeg?
Scot: Naw, Greig.
Operator: As in, Golf, Romeo...
Scot: Romeo? You calling me gay?
Operator: It's phonetic.
Scot: Aye, I'm on the phone Einstein. It's Greig.
Operator: Yes, Golf, Romeo, Echo, India, Golf.
Scot: Golf? What's that got to do with anything?
Operator: It's phonetic. Are you a moron?
Scot: A what? A Mormon?
Operator: No, A moron, you know; Mother, Oscar..
Scot: My mum wasn't Oscar. You want a square go?
Operator: A square what?
Scot: Foxtrot Uniform Charlie Kilo Space Yankee Oscar Uniform.

That is pure GOLD!!!

 

[qubit]

Ok, now I've had a look at this, I can see it's the phonetic alphabet I've been using for years.

And guess how I learned it. From watching too many cop shows! When I realized that I knew most of it, I simply Googled it to fill in the blanks. Very useful when talking to someone over the phone with things like account numbers/names etc.

 

[Vayra86]

Hmm, doesn't work with Glaswegians, we're too thick.

Operator: What is your name?
Scot: Greig
Operator: Greeg?
Scot: Naw, Greig.
Operator: As in, Golf, Romeo...
Scot: Romeo? You calling me gay?
Operator: It's phonetic.
Scot: Aye, I'm on the phone Einstein. It's Greig.
Operator: Yes, Golf, Romeo, Echo, India, Golf.
Scot: Golf? What's that got to do with anything?
Operator: It's phonetic. Are you a moron?
Scot: A what? A Mormon?
Operator: No, A moron, you know; Mother, Oscar..
Scot: My mum wasn't Oscar. You want a square go?
Operator: A square what?
Scot: Foxtrot Uniform Charlie Kilo Space Yankee Oscar Uniform.

Post of the day lol

 

[Aquinus]

A suggested edit might be to have something that identifies the start of a new word or the end of a word in the phonetic portion because it's not clear where words end and start just by looking at it. Bonus points if you could make it round-trip the phonetic version back into the human readable version (sans case unless you're feeling adventurous.) Round-tripping it can also be the basis for unit tests if you're so inclined.

 

[rtwjunkie]

A suggested edit might be to have something that identifies the start of a new word or the end of a word in the phonetic portion because it's not clear where words end and start just by looking at it. Bonus points if you could make it round-trip the phonetic version back into the human readable version (sans case unless you're feeling adventurous.) Round-tripping it can also be the basis for unit tests if you're so inclined.

As an Army guy, I have your answer. It is used by first saying the word, then spelling it phonetically, so it has a context. It is rarely used for entire sentences. It is more on point for specific or key words.

 

[Aquinus]

As an Army guy, I have your answer. It is used by first saying the word, then spelling it phonetically, so it has a context. It is rarely used for entire sentences. It is more on point for specific or key words.

So, being an Army guy, what kind of output would you prefer? I mean, when writing software, requirements are usually gathered from the client and that would get translated into work that a dev or dev team needs to do. So if you put in "I am a turnip" would you expect something like "I am a turnip [tango uniform romeo november india papa]" where only larger words are given a phonetic version but, the original text is actually contained within the output?

I'm curious and I'm using this as a teachable moment because when I write software professionally, it's usually is in the form of business requirements gathered by the business via communication with clients or potential clients.

 

[rtwjunkie]

Well, the key word being turnip, the second version is better, and more the way a telephone or radio conversation would go. Obviously if your training output is written, it would be the former, just using normal speech. Is that what you were looking for?

One of my side duties now is resetting people’s passwords and accounts on high level software. I will always read their temporary password back to them over the phone using phonetic letters and numbers, per the NATO method.

 

[Bill_Bright]

A suggested edit might be to have something that identifies the start of a new word or the end of a word in the phonetic portion because it's not clear where words end and start just by looking at it.

The word "Space" between each phonic word didn't give enough clue?

Oh, and, "Go Air Force!"

Golf Oscar Space Alfa India Romeo Space Foxtrot Oscar Romeo Charlie Echo ExclamationPoint

 

[Aquinus]

Well, the key word being turnip, the second version is better, and more the way a telephone or radio conversation would go. Obviously if your training output is written, it would be the former, just using normal speech. Is that what you were looking for?

Yeah, so you're basically saying that my example is more in line with the way it's used in practice but, raw output is good for the purposes of training (professional development if you will.)

The word "Space" between each phonic word didn't give enough clue?

Oh, and, "Go Air Force!"

I missed the word space. I was expecting it to stand out more and kind of glazed over it. Whoops.

 

[rtwjunkie]

The word "Space" between each phonic word didn't give enough clue?

Oh, and, "Go Air Force!"

We ex-Army guys weren’t smart enough to manage entire phonetic sentences. Our minds get foggy with more than just a key word.

 

[Aquinus]

We ex-Army guys weren’t smart enough to manage entire phonetic sentences. Our minds get foggy with more than just a key word.

A UX guy (not necessarily a dev,) might pick up on that. Front-end design is clearly not my strong suit.

 

[FordGT90Concept]

Numbers should be enunciated as follows (UPPERCASE is the emphasized syllable). :

0 ZEE-row​

1 WUN​

2 TOO​

3 TREE (note it is not "thr...")​

4 FOW er (not "fore" but two syllables "FOW er"​

5 FIFE​

6 SIX​

7 SEV-en​

8 ATE​

9 NIN-er​

(I note that NATO app does not address numbers.)​

I can't tell you how many times we heard "fiver" for 5. Fortunately, there are not 95 minutes in an hour or the messages for sure would go "foxtrot uniform bravo alpha romeo" or "tango uniform"! whiskey india november kilo, whiskey india november kilo!

TY

Actually it does and I can easily change those.

A suggested edit might be to have something that identifies the start of a new word or the end of a word in the phonetic portion because it's not clear where words end and start just by looking at it. Bonus points if you could make it round-trip the phonetic version back into the human readable version (sans case unless you're feeling adventurous.) Round-tripping it can also be the basis for unit tests if you're so inclined.

I can change "Space" to "(Space)" so word breaks stand out more. Round trip is a problem, especially when it comes to punctuation. It's also stored in a dictionary where the key (character) is indexed, not the values.

 

[Easy Rhino]

You must be bored...

Now turn it into a web service LOL

 

[R-T-B]

You must be bored...

A good programmer is never bored, son.