Code Words
The final choice of code words for the letters of the alphabet and for the digits was made after hundreds of thousands of comprehension tests involving 31 nationalities. The qualifying feature was the likelihood of a code word being understood in the context of others. For example, football has a higher chance of being understood than foxtrot in isolation, but foxtrot is superior in extended communication.
The pronunciation of the code words varies according to the language habits of the speaker. To eliminate wide variations in pronunciation, recordings and posters illustrating the pronunciation desired by the ICAO are available. However, there are still differences in pronunciation between the ICAO and other agencies, and the ICAO has conflicting Roman-alphabet and IPA transcriptions. Also, although all codes for the letters of the alphabet are English words, they are not in general given English pronunciations. Assuming that the transcriptions are not intended to be precise, only 11 of the 26—Bravo, Echo, Hotel, Juliet(t), Kilo, Mike, Papa, Quebec, Romeo, Whiskey, and Zulu—are given English pronunciations by all these agencies, though not always the same English pronunciations.
Read more about this topic: NATO Phonetic Alphabet
Famous quotes containing the words code and/or words:
“Acknowledge your will and speak to us all, “This alone is what I will to be!” Hang your own penal code up above you: we want to be its enforcers!”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)
“I’ve been asked to give some words of advice for young women entering library/information science education. Does anyone ever take advice? The advice we give is usually what we would do or would have done if we had the chance, and the advice that’s taken, if ever, is often what we wanted to hear in the first place.”
—Phyllis Dain (b. 1930)