As a pathological mumbler and someone with an uncommon name, I’m no stranger to the phonetic alphabet (“Yes, that’s M for Mary, A for apple, …”)
However, I am not military trained and the official word-letter pairings are not second nature to me. Moreover, as a writer for chickenmonkeydog, I am duty-bound to try out different words (e.g., “Yes, that’s S for soliloquy.”)
So here’s the exercise for today. If we were to build the world’s most confusing phonetic alphabet, what might be some entries you’d like to see?
Also, does anyone else feel that we need a similar system for numbers? It’s amazing how many times people have trouble differentiating the numbers 2 and 3 over the phone.
I love S for soliloquy. I’ve always wanted to try something like P for psychology.
L for lugubrious
N for nevertheless
Z for zizzer zazzer zuzz (yes, I stole it from the great Theodore Geisel.)
What about..
B as in Bee
Q as in Queue
When will we start to hear phonetics like “L as in LOL”?
K as in Knight
W as in Right
H as in Herb..
Oops! W as in write! Looks like I was focusing on confusion!
P as in Pterodactyl
M as in Mnemonic
A as in Aisle
This is so much fun!
Could you just edit my previous comment to W as in wright/write? Sorry about that! Thanks!
X is for xylophone.
K is for Knight
Love the comments so far. Here are some more that I thought of:
Y for Yukon (even better if it’s followed or preceded by U for Ukelele)
F for floccinaucinihilipilification
J for Juan
I like to confuse things more in these cases by using words that could start with any letter, and then purposely saying the wrong one:
Yes, that’s B as in Dog.
M as in Nap
Love the suggestions! Whenever I need to tap into phonetic alphabet brain all I can think of are rude words? One rainy afternoon (add friends and wine) we created the inappropriate and totally unpublishable nouveau phonetic alphabet… On this polite blog my contribution is ‘A as in antidisestablishmentarianism’ as in the longest word I know.
A is for eh
I is for aye
U is for you
Y is for why
Loving the phonetics. Hilarious!
Let’s talk about the last point in the post: numbers. I’d love to say something like “27 … as in one score and half a fortnight.”