42
votes
NATO alphabet
Something more lighthearted:
My wife has been doing a project that requires her to get people's information over the phone much more than usual. This leads to her and them using unofficial phonetic alphabet terms ("A as in aardvark" instead of "A as in alpha"). This is usually fine except when they choose a word that is ambiguous or just a word not known to the other party. Someone said "V as in Veya" to her, and we still don't know what a Veya is.
This got me thinking about what inappropriate words you could use. I suggested "V as in Vasectomy".
So how about it, Tilderists? What are your "wrong answers only" suggestions for a NOGO phonetic alphabet?
As Sterling Archer once stated, M as in Mancy.
That whole scene...
"Roger, Steven, whoever."
https://youtu.be/_4jxLxZrMfs?si=W4n81c5DV8urWYI7
I used to work for an armored transportation company and one of our responsibilities was balancing ATMs. Checking anything in or out of the vault was an affair that required 2 people and you had to say everything out loud. ATMs were often named with number-letter combinations like "5787F". We all knew the NATO alphabet but after doing this every single day for a hundred different packages we'd invariably end up thinking up the silliest words to try and get the other person cracking up.
I don't have any specific examples, just wanted to tell my story and say that I see you OP and I support this thread.
I feel seen!
as a general rule, i believe NOGO words should generally be short so you can still rattle them off as quickly as NATO phonetic. some ideas to get the party started:
There's the classic "P as in psychology", found frequently in Tintin when Thompson is introducing himself.
But I like "G as in ghoti".
I just now got the joke that the P in psychology in silent.
My other favorite is Thomson's "without a P, as in Venezuela."
Wow!
"Ghoti" was the only word written on the board when we walked in to our first English class with the new teacher in 8th grade.
I liked her. She kind of got me, and showed no sign if knowing any of my history that constantly got in the way with everyone else in school.
Great flashback! Thanks <3
"m as in mnemonic" is my favorite to remember.
Hmm... Can we do silent starts only? :D Off the top of my head...
A as in aesthetic
B as in bdellium
D as in Djibouti
E as in ewe
G as in
gnocchighoti is way better :DH as in hour
I as in eye (ok, technically breaks the pattern, but c'mon)
J as in jalapeño
K as in knight
M as in mnemonic
N as in Nguyen (I'm proud of this one)
X as in Xhosa
With how common the letter E is, I think it'd be funnier to alternate between 'ewe' and 'eye' randomly.
E as in Ewe and Y as in You are nice together
Oh, I like "E as in EWE" - I made a full bad alphabet below and I used "S as in SEE" to the same effect.
We had some other overlaps, like Djibouti and Mnemonic.
It's time to share my personal favorite, the MANGO alphabet!
Ay-ango
Bango
Chango
Dango
Eango
And so on...
It has many faults and no official adoption outside of my circle but it's our go to anytime we're having to spell something out.
Ooh, I like this. Going with my own Wumbo alphabet.
Bumbo
Chumbo
Dumbo
Fumbo
Gumbo
Jumbo
Mumbo
Rumbo
Tumbo
and my personal favorite
Wumbo
This one made me Lango Oango Lango
My personal favorite take on this is silent letters:
A as in Aisle
G as in Gnocchi
K as in Knight
M as in Mnemonic
P as in Pterodactyl
But to stick to your original theme:
C as in Chlamydia
E as in Enema
H as in Hemorrhoid
L as in Laxative
P as in Priapism
Fell asleep before I could add mine, which mostly turn on making someone uncomfortable on the phone.
Arrested
Bonehead
Crackpot
Dumbass
Excoriate
Fallout
Gunge
Hellfire
Icepick
Judas
Kamikaze
Limp
Maggot
Nausea
Osteosarcoma
Parole
Queasy
Rectum
Slovenly
Twisted
Unapologetic
Vasectomy
Waxy
eXsanguinate
Yellow
Zit
Oh man, I want to be on a call with a random person where they say “…and R as in Rectum”. I would totally lose it and laugh uncontrollably.
I always use random answers to security questions (because it's more secure), but I usually expect to type them in. One time I had to call a client's IT department to get my password reset, so I had to tell an actual human being that my favorite hobby was "stop sign polishing". There was five solid seconds of silence, then the person asked me, "Is that real?" I had to sheepishly tell them that it wasn't.
I'm screwed if I ever have to state my security questions to another human...
X could be xenophobia.
Always been a fan of these sorts of things. Here's one example that's been floating around forever.
I personally really like A for Aye and E for Eye as well as P for Pterodactyl
There's even a book for that one
One of my favorite jokes:
Why can't you hear a pterodactyl going to the bathroom?
Because the P is silent!
I've gotta say, F - Phoenetic really got me.
Reminds me of this classic.
I propose the alphabet from Crazy ABC's by the Barenaked Ladies. A is for aisle, B is for bdellium, c is for czar...
I came up with a bad version of the NATO1 Phonetic2 Alphabet.
I tried to make the words obfuscate the letter in question, or make the clarifying word easily confusable via rhyme or similar sound with other letters, or make the word too lengthy to be convenient.
1 - while maybe popularized by NATO, this particular alphabet was actually created by the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO)
2 - it's not a phonetic alphabet at all, but a spelling alphabet. Since English is so goofy, it is actually common that the spelling and the phonetics do not seem particularly related, and this is used specifically for spelling and not for phonetics
Your notes there reminded me of a RobWords video I saw recently about that and the history of the "NATO Phonetic" Alphabet!
Lol, perhaps unsurprisingly, that link is purple for me. ;)
This is one of the nice things with Tildes... purple links!
This one got me. 1000 points.
i was trying to do the same
a, as in aye
b, as in bee
c, as in cue
d, as in djinn
e, as in eye
f, as in for
g, as in gnu
h, as in hour
i, as in if
j, as in jay
k, as in knob
l, as in lieu
m, as in mire
n, as in new
o, as in owe
p, as in ptolemy
q, as in quote
r, as in Argos
s, as in sea
t, as in þis
u, as in youth
v, as in view
w, as in youthyouth
x, as in exhume
y, as in why
z, as in xylophone
Haha, youthyouth got me. Hilarious.
These are great! Though, much like your V as in vee, I'd do Q as in queue for the silliness of how it sounds out loud (with bonus confusion for cue).
I'm also a fan of M for mat and N for nat because I've done this in real life accidentally, and can confirm it was very confusing for the other person on the phone taking the information.
Actually if it went with Q as in QUEUE we could also do C as in CUE. And the mat / nat is a great one as well.
B as in Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo
At least once a week, when my son leaves the house to go somewhere, I'll say "Buffalo... oh wait, I mean BYE SON".
Utterly (udderly?) adorable.
You forgot a few Buffalo. The full phrase is
Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo.
The herd is growing! Love it. 🥰
Reminds me a lot of the book P is for Pterodactyl
I've committed the whole NATO alphabet to memory for reasons, but before that, I used words/names that started with a sound as close to the actual letter's pronunciation as possible. There are a few (F, H, L, M, N, R, S, X, and Y) that I just couldn't ever come up with a word that started with that letter and required you to say "Ehff", "Aych", "Ell", "Em", "En", "Ar", "Es", "Ecks", "Why") but my list informally was (and I was surprised to learn a few of these were NATO already):
Apex, Bee-Bee, Citizen, Deacon, Eagle, Foxtrot, Genius, Harold, Isaac, Jason, Kangaroo, Lima, Money, Novice, Oregon, Peter, Q-bert, Roger, Sam, Team, Uniform, Venus, Whiskey, X-Ray, Yellow, Zebra
But NATO is demonstrably cleaner/better and that's some of why I use it.
Sorta of topic, but sorta on topic, there is a confusing phonetic alphabet that some prank call podcasters use
In Finnish you could say "E as in epäjärjestelmällisyydettömyydellänsähänkökään".
I suppose you could also say it in English.
Ok, I'll bite. What does it mean? I tried google translate and got:
It's something like "(I) wonder if even with his/her lack of disorderliness".
It works a bit like the English word "disorderliness", just Finnish is a more agglutinative language and allows for more information to be encoded with tucked in morphemes.
Of course, now that I think about it, a pro answer would have gone with a more polysynthetic language like Yupik.
T as in tuntussuqatarniksaitengqiggtu.
Meaning, "He had not yet said again that he was going to hunt reindeer." A standard, much used example of a language that expresses sentences as words. Any linguist on the other end of the phone line with a bit of background in typology would surely know exactly what you mean ("t"). Or maybe not.
Edit: Clarifications.
I am so impressed about you knowing both finnish and yupik! It is one of my regrets growing up in an English centered place.
Oh, I don't speak a word of Yupik. The word I copy-pasted is one of the default examples given for polysynthetic languages, also found at the very top of Wikipedia's article on the topic. They are interesting languages as they challenge some assumptions that some standard theories of human language are built on.
When people get me angry enough on the phone I do the whole:
If passwords have many letters and you have to do many repetitions you can go even farther as needed with the non-words too for all other letters: Dat, Iat, Jat, Oat (not as in oats) etc.
This is innocuous enough that others end up dealing with it most of the time not thinking I'm being mega obtuse.
Overly sugary cutesy words
Alppy
Boopums
Cuppy-cake
Delly-Del
Fluffles
Glompahs
Honey Bunch
...etc, plus
Pumpy-umpy-umpkin
And
Snoogums-boogums,
Oddly this one has a bigger ick factor for me than "r as in rectum".
Also, POV @chocobean's SO comes home and finds them whispering sweet nothings to the DMV operator.
Yes! Intended effect achieved