Interlude – Text Art: Radiotelephony

To continue the A to Z theme, I will render the blog title in various alphabets over the four Sundays in April

International Radiotelephone Spelling Alphabet

Romeo
Oscar
Delta
November
Echo
Yankee
Sierra

Sierra
Alfa
Golf
Alfa

Courtesy of the International Civil Aviation Organization website. I had always thought of this as the NATO phonetic alphabet. According to Wiki, it is neither:

“Spelling alphabets are unassociated with such phonetic transcription systems as the International Phonetic Alphabet; instead, the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) alphabet so assigned code words acrophonically to the letters of the English alphabet that critical combinations of letters and numbers can be pronounced and understood despite language barriers or transmission static.

“A common name for this spelling alphabet, “NATO phonetic alphabet,” exists because it appears in Allied Tactical Publication ATP-1, Volume II: Allied Maritime Signal and Maneuvering Book used by all allied navies of NATO, which adopted a modified form of the International Code of Signals. Because the latter allows messages to be spelled via flags or Morse code, it naturally named the code words used to spell out messages by voice its “phonetic alphabet”.

Wiki: NATO phonetic alphabet

Other Spelling Alphabets
scphillips.com: Phonetic Alphabets
NATO, British (historic & current), NY Police, French, German, Italian, & Spanish

osric.com:Phonetic Alphabet Tables
NATO, Western Union

Blogging from A to Z Challenge April 2014
List of my A to Z posts