A spelling alphabet (also called by various other names) is a set of words used to represent the letters of an alphabet in oral communication, especially over a two-way radio or telephone. The words chosen to represent the letters sound sufficiently different from each other to clearly differentiate them. This avoids any confusion that could easily otherwise result from the names of letters that sound similar, except for some small difference easily missed or easily degraded by the imperfect sound quality of the apparatus. For example, in the Latin alphabet, the letters B, P, and D ("bee", "pee" and "dee") sound similar and could easily be confused, but the words "bravo", "papa" and "delta" sound completely different, making confusion unlikely.
Any suitable words can be used in the moment, making this form of communication easy even for people not trained on any particular standardized spelling alphabet. For example, it is common to hear a nonce form like "A as in 'apple', D as in 'dog', P as in 'paper'" over the telephone in customer support contexts. However, to gain the advantages of standardization in contexts involving trained persons, a standard version can be convened by an organization. Many (loosely or strictly) standardized spelling alphabets exist, mostly owing to historical siloization, where each organization simply created its own. International air travel created a need for a worldwide standard.
Today the most widely known spelling alphabet is the ICAO International Radiotelephony Spelling Alphabet, also known as the NATO phonetic alphabet, which is used for Roman letters. Spelling alphabets also exist for Greek and for Russian.
A spellingalphabet (also called by various other names) is a set of words used to represent the letters of an alphabet in oral communication, especially...
ICAO spellingalphabet voice recording: ICAO spellingalphabet Problems playing this file? See media help. The (International) Radiotelephony Spelling Alphabet...
Allied military phonetic spellingalphabets prescribed the words that are used to represent each letter of the alphabet, when spelling other words out loud...
The Russian spellingalphabet is a spellingalphabet (or "phonetic alphabet") for Russian, i.e. a set of names given to the alphabet letters for the purpose...
APCO phonetic alphabet, a.k.a. LAPD radio alphabet, is the term for an old competing spellingalphabet to the ICAO radiotelephony alphabet, defined by the...
The Greek spellingalphabet is a spellingalphabet (or "phonetic alphabet") for Greek, i.e. an accepted set of easily differentiated names given to the...
The Korean spellingalphabet (Korean: 한국어 표준 음성 기호; RR: hangugeo pyojun eumseong giho; also 한글 통화표; hangeul tonghwapyo) is a spellingalphabet for the Korean...
article contains phonetic transcriptions in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA). For an introductory guide on IPA symbols, see Help:IPA. For the...
Dutch orthography uses the Latin alphabet. The spelling system is issued by government decree and is compulsory for all government documentation and educational...
words, are usually absent from the Polish alphabet. However, prior to the standardization of Polish spelling, ⟨x⟩ was sometimes used in place of ⟨ks⟩....
German alphabet (Listen to a German speaker recite the alphabet in German) Problems playing this file? See media help. The modern German alphabet consists...
over the telephone or a radio communications link. Spellingalphabets such as the ICAO spellingalphabet, used by aircraft pilots, police and others, are...
In China, letters of the English alphabet are pronounced somewhat differently because they have been adapted to the phonetics (i.e. the syllable structure)...
An alphabet is a standard set of letters written to represent particular sounds in a spoken language. Specifically, letters correspond to phonemes, the...
practice known as "full spelling". The Yiddish alphabet, a modified version of the Hebrew alphabet used to write Yiddish, is a true alphabet, with all vowels...
The Hungarian alphabet (Hungarian: magyar ábécé) is an extension of the Latin alphabet used for writing the Hungarian language. The alphabet is based on...
following adaptation of the International Radiotelephony SpellingAlphabet (ICAO and NATO "phonetic" alphabet): alfa, bravo, carli, delta, eko, fokstrot, golf...
Cyrillic alphabet and Russian spelling generally employ fewer diacritics than those used in other European languages written with the Latin alphabet. The...
speech sound and vice versa Spellingalphabet a.k.a. radio alphabet: a set of code words for the names of the letters of an alphabet, used in noisy conditions...
article contains phonetic transcriptions in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA). For an introductory guide on IPA symbols, see Help:IPA. For the...
distinct from the Latin alphabet to avoid the impression that the new spellings were simply misspellings. The Shavian alphabet consists of three types...
above alphabet, official spelling tends to favor their use (München, Angoulême etc., as opposed to the use of Istanbul over İstanbul). Romanian spelling is...
letters of the Latin alphabet. Each digit may be mapped to one or more letters, creating a limited but functional subset of the alphabet, sometimes referred...
Spelling System used in the Dutch East Indies and later Indonesia was based on the Dutch alphabet. It was replaced by the simpler Republican Spelling...
Greek alphabet have fairly stable and consistent symbol-to-sound mappings, making pronunciation of words largely predictable. Ancient Greek spelling was...
The Turkish alphabet (Turkish: Türk alfabesi) is a Latin-script alphabet used for writing the Turkish language, consisting of 29 letters, seven of which...
the ICAO spellingalphabet and can be represented with Morse code. All of the lowercase letters are used in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA). In...
The Danish and Norwegian alphabets is the set of symbols, forming a variant of the Latin alphabet, used for writing the Danish and Norwegian languages...
languages that have adopted the Latin alphabet. For the Latin sounds represented by the various letters see Latin spelling and pronunciation; for the names...
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