The NATO phonetic alphabet, more accurately known as the International Radiotelephony Spelling Alphabet and also called the ICAO phonetic or ICAO spelling alphabet, as well as the ITU phonetic alphabet, is the most widely used spelling alphabet. Though often called "phonetic alphabets", spelling alphabets do not have any association with phonetic transcription systems like the International Phonetic Alphabet. Instead, the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) alphabet assigned code words to digits and acrophonically to the letters of the ISO basic Latin alphabet (Alfa for A, Bravo for B, etc.) so that critical combinations of letters and numbers can be pronounced and understood by those who transmit and receive voice messages by radio or telephone regardless of their native language or the presence of transmission static.
Read more about NATO Phonetic Alphabet: International Adoption, Code Words, History, Usage, Additions in Other Languages
Famous quotes containing the words phonetic and/or alphabet:
“The syntactic component of a grammar must specify, for each sentence, a deep structure that determines its semantic interpretation and a surface structure that determines its phonetic interpretation.”
—Noam Chomsky (b. 1928)
“I believe the alphabet is no longer considered an essential piece of equipment for traveling through life. In my day it was the keystone to knowledge. You learned the alphabet as you learned to count to ten, as you learned “Now I lay me” and the Lord’s Prayer and your father’s and mother’s name and address and telephone number, all in case you were lost.”
—Eudora Welty (b. 1909)