

It’s Y as in Yankee, U as in Uniform, L as in Lima, P as in Papa, C as in Charlie, X as in X-ray. Luckily, by the time I had to give another confirmation number, I had looked them up. I was in the process of making this video, but I hadn’t yet memorized all of the right letter names. Just the other day, I found myself needing to give a confirmation number over the phone. Or you can just say the word: Romeo, Alpha, Charlie, Hotel, Echo, Lima. So if someone asks you to spell your name, you can say: R as in Romeo, A as in Alpha, C as in Charlie, H as in Hotel, E as in Echo, L as in Lima. So no matter what your accent is, you’ll probably be understood using this alphabet system. Apparently the letters were chosen for understandability based on hundreds of thousands of comprehension tests involving 31 nationalities.

A system was developed in the 1950s by the International Civil Aviation Organization to put a word with each letter. So many misunderstandings can happen when spelling. Why? I think it’s because unvoiced sounds like SS and TH don’t carry well over the phone.Īnd we have so many letter names that rhyme: B, C, D, E, G, P, T, V, Z, or A, J, K, or I, W But even though it’s so common, often, over the phone, people don’t understand me.

Smith is the most common last name in the United States. So, there is a specific set of words corresponding to each letter of the alphabet to make spelling over the phone much easier.

Letter names, over the phone can be unclear and hard to distinguish, and not just for non-native speakers. Have you ever noticed, when you’re on the phone, that you often need to spell things out? Your name, for example, or maybe the name of the street you live on. YouTube blocked? Click here to see the video. Learn the target words in the NATO phonetic alphabet to make spelling out names, address, confirmation numbers, and more much easier! When putting a text in Germany and in Austria in quotation marks, it is preferable to use the symbol „ (Anführungszeichen unten) when starting an expression and the symbol ” (Anführungszeichen oben) when finishing it.Alpha, bravo, Charlie: each letter of the alphabet has a target word to increase understandability in spelling. Ex: Ein- und Ausgänge (instead of saying Eingänge und Ausgänge) Hyphen for indicating that part of a word has been omitted because it was redundant. Hyphen for dividing a word when it doesn't fit on one line. The same typographical sign has a different name depending on its function: The typographical sign hyphen "-" is called the following in German: Parentheses the left parentheses opening parentheses the right parentheses closing parenthesesĭie geschweiften Klammern die geschwungenen Klammern
Spelling alphabet letters in english how to#
It is very useful to know how to say the following in German: Punctuation signs, different parenthesis and some symbols frequently used such as the at sign and asterisk.ĭie (runde) Klammern die linke Klammer die Klammer auf die rechte Klammer die Klammer zu List of punctuation signs and writing symbols If your keyboard does not have ä, ö, ü and ß, you can use ae, oe, ue and ss instead, respectively.Do not confuse ß (Eszett) with β (beta).the ß does not exist in Swiss German and is substituted for with ss.In English, to make the pronunciation and spelling of a word clear, we say "B as in burger" but in German they use names to spell and those names are fixed. The German alphabet is very similar to that of English but it has four letters that English does not have: ä, ö, ü and ß.
