• Post Reply Bookmark Topic Watch Topic
  • New Topic
programming forums Java Mobile Certification Databases Caching Books Engineering Micro Controllers OS Languages Paradigms IDEs Build Tools Frameworks Application Servers Open Source This Site Careers Other Pie Elite all forums
this forum made possible by our volunteer staff, including ...
Marshals:
  • Campbell Ritchie
  • Jeanne Boyarsky
  • Ron McLeod
  • Paul Clapham
  • Liutauras Vilda
Sheriffs:
  • paul wheaton
  • Rob Spoor
  • Devaka Cooray
Saloon Keepers:
  • Stephan van Hulst
  • Tim Holloway
  • Carey Brown
  • Frits Walraven
  • Tim Moores
Bartenders:
  • Mikalai Zaikin

E like Echo

 
Ranch Hand
Posts: 1061
  • Mark post as helpful
  • send pies
    Number of slices to send:
    Optional 'thank-you' note:
  • Quote
  • Report post to moderator
Oh man,
E like Echo. Speak that loud and then tell me how phonetically helpful you think it is for a foreigner
*gnarl*
 
Master Rancher
Posts: 4796
72
  • Mark post as helpful
  • send pies
    Number of slices to send:
    Optional 'thank-you' note:
  • Quote
  • Report post to moderator
Not sure what the issue is here. What sort of "phonetically helpful" were you hoping for? Spelling alphabets like the NATO one aren't designed to help understand how a letter is pronounced, they're designed to be phonetically unambiguous, with each letter easily distinguished from any other letter or number that the speaker might refer to (assuming speaker and listener are familiar with the same spelling alphabet). What is the problem you're having?
 
Rancher
Posts: 13459
Android Eclipse IDE Ubuntu
  • Mark post as helpful
  • send pies
    Number of slices to send:
    Optional 'thank-you' note:
  • Quote
  • Report post to moderator
E like pEE?
A is for 'orses
 
Chris Baron
Ranch Hand
Posts: 1061
  • Mark post as helpful
  • send pies
    Number of slices to send:
    Optional 'thank-you' note:
  • Quote
  • Report post to moderator
@Mike:
my problem is if someone is spelling over the phone with "A like Alpha", "B like Bravo", "E like Echo" etc.
"E like Echo" sounds "EEH like AKKO"
 
Mike Simmons
Master Rancher
Posts: 4796
72
  • Mark post as helpful
  • send pies
    Number of slices to send:
    Optional 'thank-you' note:
  • Quote
  • Report post to moderator
Hmm, I guess the speaker is not a native English speaker? (Or is there a native accent where "echo" comes out "akko"?) More importantly, I guess this conversation is occurring in a context where the listener is not expecting a particular spelling alphabet, like say the NATO one you linked to? I would think that if both speaker and listener were expecting the NATO alphabet, then it would be reasonably easy to figure out that "akko" is "echo". But if it's just tossed into a random conversation where the listener doesn't know what to expect, no, it's far from unambiguous. But that's unfortunately the norm anyway when different accents are involved, especially over the phone. Misunderstandings happen. Short of having a single language and accent for the whole world, I'm not sure there's any good solution to your problem that won't be troublesome for some combination of speaker and listener accents.
 
Chris Baron
Ranch Hand
Posts: 1061
  • Mark post as helpful
  • send pies
    Number of slices to send:
    Optional 'thank-you' note:
  • Quote
  • Report post to moderator
Mike, the idea of an phonetical alphabet is that the Letter and the first letter of the associated word are equal and sound equal. Otherwise the word phonetical wouldn't make any sense. How do you pronounce the "e" in Echo? Like in Egypt? If yes, were are you from?
 
Mike Simmons
Master Rancher
Posts: 4796
72
  • Mark post as helpful
  • send pies
    Number of slices to send:
    Optional 'thank-you' note:
  • Quote
  • Report post to moderator

Chris Baron wrote:Mike, the idea of an phonetical alphabet is that the Letter and the first letter of the associated word are equal and sound equal. Otherwise the word phonetical wouldn't make any sense.


Hm, this was addressed directly at the beginning of the link you gave above:

The NATO phonetic alphabet [...] is the most widely used spelling alphabet. Though often called "phonetic alphabets", spelling alphabets have no connection to phonetic transcription systems like the International Phonetic Alphabet. Instead, the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) alphabet assigns code words to the letters of the English alphabet acrophonically (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, especially when the safety of navigation or persons is essential. The paramount reason is to ensure intelligibility of voice signals over radio links.


There is no actual requirement here for the name of the letter and the pronunciation of the letter to match. I'm not sure that's even a realistic goal in English (how would you handle "W"?), especially English in an international context. In NATO particularly, many of the nations involved would name "E" as "eh" or "ay", while "I" would be "ee". Whereas in English "E" is "ee" and "I" is "eye". But that's confusing for many of the other nations involved. Better to go with something that doesn't sound like any of those, but which is at least distinguishable from the other letter-names in the spelling alphabet.

Chris Baron wrote:How do you pronounce the "e" in Echo? Like in Egypt? If yes, were are you from?


No, I'm from the western US, and I pronounce the "e" in "echo" as "eh", "eh-ko". Whereas "E" in "Egypt" is "ee" as in "glee" or "flee".
 
Chris Baron
Ranch Hand
Posts: 1061
  • Mark post as helpful
  • send pies
    Number of slices to send:
    Optional 'thank-you' note:
  • Quote
  • Report post to moderator

Mike Simmons wrote:

Chris Baron wrote:Mike, the idea of an phonetical alphabet is that the Letter and the first letter of the associated word are equal and sound equal. Otherwise the word phonetical wouldn't make any sense.


Hm, this was addressed directly at the beginning of the link you gave above:

... assigns code words to the letters of the English alphabet acrophonically...


Err hum! Yes the article addresses it really directly at the beginning. And the key word is acrophonical here. The "phonical" part implies that it's all about sounding and NOT just about spelling. That would be acromorph or so

Mike Simmons wrote:

Chris Baron wrote:How do you pronounce the "e" in Echo? Like in Egypt? If yes, were are you from?


... I'm from the western US, and I pronounce the "e" in "echo" as "eh", "eh-ko"...

My sincere condolences
So the strategic mastermind who designed the alphabet came from there too.
He really should have used "Egypt" or "Easy".
 
Mike Simmons
Master Rancher
Posts: 4796
72
  • Mark post as helpful
  • send pies
    Number of slices to send:
    Optional 'thank-you' note:
  • Quote
  • Report post to moderator
Excuse me? Is there some reason to bring personal insults into this?

Also I don't follow why you think my answer to the pronunciation question explains the NATO/ICAO alphabet usage. My pronunciation of "e" in "echo" is not how I would pronounce the letter "E", any more than yours is. So what? My point was that this was not a design goal in the first place, and I'm fine with that.

Again, how would you handle "W"?

Though I do agree, "Egypt" or "Easy" do seem better. And "Easy" was used in the past by the Brits and Americans, as shown in the article you linked to. I wonder why they changed it later? Perhaps some people were hearing "Easy" as E-Z or E-C? Perhaps there were issues for people from some other country that was involved in creating an international standard? I don't know.

As for acrophonically vs acromorphically, feel free to look those up in an English dictionary. I'm sorry if human language usage does not always conform to your ideas of logic.
 
Chris Baron
Ranch Hand
Posts: 1061
  • Mark post as helpful
  • send pies
    Number of slices to send:
    Optional 'thank-you' note:
  • Quote
  • Report post to moderator
Sorry, I absolutely didn't want to insult you. I was just joking
 
lowercase baba
Posts: 13089
67
Chrome Java Linux
  • Mark post as helpful
  • send pies
    Number of slices to send:
    Optional 'thank-you' note:
  • Quote
  • Report post to moderator
Remember that the words were not simply selected because they sound like the letter...They were chosen in part so that they were distinguishable from other words in the alphabet even when radio transmissions were garbled, staticy, or shouted over gunfire/bombs going off nearby. You need words that are easily understood in lousy conditions.

I always thought they should use words like K -> knowledge, P -> pneumatic, and G - gnat.
 
Bartender
Posts: 4568
9
  • Mark post as helpful
  • send pies
    Number of slices to send:
    Optional 'thank-you' note:
  • Quote
  • Report post to moderator
There's this one if you like something less obvious.
 
Mike Simmons
Master Rancher
Posts: 4796
72
  • Mark post as helpful
  • send pies
    Number of slices to send:
    Optional 'thank-you' note:
  • Quote
  • Report post to moderator
Chris: no problem; I was probably overreacting.

Fred: re: knowledge, pneumatic, gnat - you are truly evil. I like it. Can we throw in

D -> Djibouti
H -> herb (American prononciation)
M -> mnemonic
N -> Nguyen
O -> opossum

Possibly also replace "gnat" with

G -> ghoti (pronounced fish of course).

And for fun, throw in

B -> bee
J -> jay
Q -> queue
T -> tea

as well. Just to mess with people.
 
Marshal
Posts: 28177
95
Eclipse IDE Firefox Browser MySQL Database
  • Mark post as helpful
  • send pies
    Number of slices to send:
    Optional 'thank-you' note:
  • Quote
  • Report post to moderator
There's an interesting implementation of that alphabet in the Atlanta airport. It's a large airport with five terminals which are imaginatively named A, B, C, D, and E. And there's a train system connecting the terminals.

One day on my way to somewhere else I was riding this train. First it went to "Alpha" terminal, then to "Bravo" terminal, then to "Charlie" terminal. At this point I started to think... "Wait, this airport is a hub for Delta Airlines, are they really going to call the next one Delta?" But no, that would have been way too confusing. The next train stop turned out to be "David" terminal.
 
Rancher
Posts: 3742
16
  • Mark post as helpful
  • send pies
    Number of slices to send:
    Optional 'thank-you' note:
  • Quote
  • Report post to moderator

Chris Baron wrote:

Mike Simmons wrote:

Chris Baron wrote:Mike, the idea of an phonetical alphabet is that the Letter and the first letter of the associated word are equal and sound equal. Otherwise the word phonetical wouldn't make any sense.


Hm, this was addressed directly at the beginning of the link you gave above:

... assigns code words to the letters of the English alphabet acrophonically...


Err hum! Yes the article addresses it really directly at the beginning. And the key word is acrophonical here. The "phonical" part implies that it's all about sounding and NOT just about spelling. That would be acromorph or so

Mike Simmons wrote:

Chris Baron wrote:How do you pronounce the "e" in Echo? Like in Egypt? If yes, were are you from?


... I'm from the western US, and I pronounce the "e" in "echo" as "eh", "eh-ko"...

My sincere condolences
So the strategic mastermind who designed the alphabet came from there too.
He really should have used "Egypt" or "Easy".

This is just a thought and I don't know if it's the real reason.
Remember that this system is used internationally and not just by native English speakers. In Spanish (and probably a number of other languages), the sound of the letter e is 'eh'. So the designers thought, if we choose 'echo', native English speakers will be certain to know that it starts with an 'e' and for many people who are not native English speakers, the sound of the word will actually match how they pronounce 'e'.
 
reply
    Bookmark Topic Watch Topic
  • New Topic