NATO phonetic alphabet

Not to be confused with International Phonetic Alphabet or Phoenician alphabet.

The NATO phonetic alphabet is a set of code words for the letters of the Latin alphabet. They are used to spell words when people speak over the radio or telephone, when people from different countries are speaking with different accents, or in other situations where people may not clearly hear the normal names of the letters. This is important for accuracy in the military and in air travel and shipping. For instance, it may be difficult to hear whether a person is saying the letter "pee" (P) or "bee" (B). The NATO code words "papa" and "bravo" are much clearer. (Each code word begins with the letter that it stands for.)

Although it is commonly called a "phonetic alphabet", it is not used for phonetics as the International Phonetic Alphabet is. For this reason it is also called a "spelling alphabet". There have been many different spelling alphabets over time, but the NATO alphabet is the most commonly used around the world.

Between ships at sea, signal flags are used to stand for letters in order to spell out words.

Alphabet

Symbol flag for the letter 'O', spelled out loud by saying "Oscar". When this flag appears alone on board a ship, it means Man Overboard.

Below are the symbol flags and NATO code words for each letter of the alphabet. The pronunciations of the code words are given in the International Phonetic Alphabet.^[1]

A	Alfa [ˈalfa]	F	Foxtrot [ˈfɔks.trɔt]	K	Kilo [ˈkilo]	P	Papa [paˈpa]	U	Uniform [ˈjunifɔm]	Z	Zulu [ˈzulu]
B	Bravo [ˈbravo]	G	Golf [ˈɡɔlf]	L	Lima [ˈlima]	Q	Quebec [keˈbɛk]	V	Victor [ˈvɪkta]
C	Charlie [ˈtʃali]	H	Hotel [hoˈtɛl]	M	Mike [ˈmai̯k]	R	Romeo [ˈromi.o]	W	Whiskey [ˈwɪski]
D	Delta [ˈdɛlta]	I	India [ˈɪndi.a]	N	November [noˈvɛmba]	S	Sierra [siˈɛra]	X	Xray [ˈɛks.rei̯]
E	Echo [ˈɛko]	J	Juliett [ˈdʒuliˈɛt]	O	Oscar [ˈɔska]	T	Tango [ˈtaŋɡo]	Y	Yankee [ˈjaŋki]

Two of the code words have a second pronunciation: charlie for 'C' may be pronounced with a French 'ch' sound (an English 'sh' sound: [ˈʃali]), and uniform for 'U' may be pronounced without the 'y' sound that occurs in that word in English ([ˈunifɔm]). The R's in these two words, as well as at the ends of several other code words, do not need to be pronounced. These are the R's that are not pronounced in British English.

Numbers

Numbers also have code words, but these are very close to the normal English names. Like letters in words, each digit of a number is read out individually. For instance, "13" is read as the two digits one three, not as the number thirteen. An exception occurs when "00" or "000" appears in a number. These may be read hundred and thousand (1300: one three hundred), though reading them out individually is also correct (1300: one three zero zero – but not as "one thousand three hundred", because the code word thousand means that there is a triple "000" in the text).

1	One [ˈwan]	2	Two [ˈtu]	3	Three [ˈtri]	4	Four [ˈfo.a]	5	Five [ˈfai̯f]	6	Six [ˈsɪks]
7	Seven [ˈsɛvən]	8	Eight [ˈei̯t]	9	Nine [ˈnai̯na]	0	Zero [ˈziro]	00	Hundred [ˈhandrɛd]	000	Thousand [ˈtau̯ˈzand]

The pronunciation of some digits is different from English. 0 may be stressed on both syllables. 3 and 000 are pronounced like "tree" and "tousand", since the English "th" sound is difficult for many people. 4 is given its old pronunciation with two syllables: "fower" (rhymes with "lower"), to avoid confusion with the word "for". 5 is pronounced like "fife" to avoid confusion with "fire". The digit 9 is pronounced "niner" (rhymes with "finer") to avoid confusion with the German word "nein" ("no").

The decimal point in a number is called decimal (pronounced "day-see-mal"), regardless of whether it is written with a period (.) or a comma (,). For instance, 1,3 and 1.3 (meaning 1 and ³/₁₀) are both read out loud as one decimal three.

These code words are for international usage. When two people speak the same language, they may speak the numbers in their language, even if they use the NATO phonetic alphabet for spelling names. Similarly, in the United States, it is common to say "point" instead of "decimal".

Punctuation

Punctuation marks are only rarely spoken out loud in situations that call for the NATO spelling alphabet. If the period or comma in a sentence needs to be said, they are read as stop [ˈstɔp] and comma [ˈkɔma]. (...) are brackets on [ˈbrakɛts ˈɔn] and brackets off [ˈbrakɛts ˈɔf]; "..." are quote [ˈkwot] and unquote [ˈan.kwot]. "-" is hyphen [ˈhai̯.fn], not "dash"; "/" is slant [ˈslant]. Others are given their normal English readings as colon, semi-colon, exclamation mark, question mark and apostrophe.

References

1. DIN 5009:2022-06, Anhang B: Buchstabiertafel der ICAO („Radiotelephony Spelling Alphabet“)