posted before, but this is still my go-to:
Aisle Bail Coil Deal Eel Feel Grill Hill Ill Jail Kill Lay Mill Nil Oil Pill Quill Real Seal Till Until Veal Will Xylophone Yell Zeal
would work so much better.
Alfa
Balfa
Calfa
DalfaP pneumonia G gnu K knees
I used to do this all the time when I worked at a call center.
I always pronounce the G in gnu
bloonk brain fell out error
Please insert brain into drive A: and press [Enter] when ready.Pictures painted by written text that you can hear.
W for why and Y for you is delightful
Don’t forget the Double-U for the letter D. It’s an absolute mess.
C for cue and Q for queue! Evil genius.
Didn’t know Englishers skipped the T in tsunami
It should be a “hard ts” which is something we mostly picked up from the French that is also a sound used in Japanese. So there should be a difference between saying “tsu” and saying “sue.”
Tsu should be pronounced with teeth together and pushing air out through the teeth first, tongue against the lower front teeth for the hissy-t sound, before the vowel. (it’s hard to write how to pronounce a word)
I read it as choonami which is still not very helpful
From the creators of sharknado, now (bwaaam) choonami 🚂🌊
Most of them do, yeah. You may hear a bit of a “tongue click” or something with others first before the “s”. A lot of first-language English speakers seem to really struggle when they see two consonants together that they haven’t previously encountered.
Especially at the start of words, see also e.g. pterodactyl, which from what I’ve gathered native english speakers just pronounce without the p.
I think we need to be more consistent with it, time to drop the ‘p’ sound from helicopter as per its roots.
I always thought it was “G for Gnome” - huh, never too late to learn.
Reading this made my left eye twitch. Good job.
At first I was confused, then annoyed and finally relieved when I realised I was being punked
That’s the exact train of thought I went through!
- E: Ewe
- H: Hugh
- U: Uyghur
- Y: Yew
Better suggestions for B:
- Breath: Half the people would say “breathe” instead.
- Boatswain: most people would have no idea how that’s pronounced
- Bury: a word with lots of different regional pronunciations
Bidet is puzzling enough. Then there’s modern portmanteaus like bussy (really, any word that has a more well-known P-word, like blot, will work) and NATO PA soundalikes like bike. And words with stress on other syllables that make the B less distinct, especially evil ones are before and benign for sounding like B4 and B9.
Ooh, I like before and benign because at first there doesn’t seem to be anything tricky going on there.
“B as in bdellium.” Or, “B as in subtle”.
“B as in subtle”
A silent B? Dumb.
Too bad all the (common) silent b words are words with b in the middle, not at the beginning. Bdellium would work, but that’s something I think 99.9% of the planet has never heard of. If that were allowed, I bet you could find extremely rare names for every other letter.
X: how bout either “Xenophobia” or even better, the 14th letter of the greek alphabet, as it’s written in English: Xi.
Whoever sells this as the “NATO Alphabet” needs to be taken outside and shot.
You can think of military what you like, but the real NATO alphabet is a phonetic masterpiece. RobWords has an interesting video about it on YT.
Looks like the joke flew over your head…
But to indulge your more serious angle, yeah, it’s well thought through. And if your source is the one I think it is, that one also packages in that “NATO Phonetic Alphabet” is a bit of a misnomer.
It’s not a phonetic alphabet, since it doesn’t type out what sounds one must make to pronounce words correctly. And the main devs weren’t NATO, but ICAO. NATO was just gonna adopt it and issue some feedback for improvements.
I think the joke here is exactly that some of the words are the worst for this purpose.
This makes me irrationally angry. Well done!
NCD is leaking again. Someone get the 100mph tape.
Newyork City Disease?
Non-Credible Defense
Newjersey Colonial Dysmorphia
No Cope Dadio
