P for Pterodactyl
S for Sea
W for Why
E for Eye
G for Gnu
J for Jalapeño
You're missing a few good ones.
A for An
C for Cay
I for In
K for Knight
N as in No (a few of these work with "as in" but not with "for")
O as in Other
P as in Pose
Q for Qing (since Jalapeño is allowed)
T for The
T as in tsunami.
P as in phone.
K as in knife or knee.
G as in gnostic.
X as in xylophone.
D as in djembe.
M as mnemonic.
O as in opossum in certain locales.
My Battlefield 3 crew would designate objectives on voice coms as, "Ango, Bango, Chango, and Django".
Sounds a little.. unchained
I once had a client tell me, "T as in... T."
Yeah, that was helpful.
I mean surely it was "T as in Tea"
Or maybe "T as in Tee"
Maybe it was in their mind. But those are still phonetically the same, and similar to P, E, C, etc.
M as in Mancy
I can remember one time:
"P for Potato",
"B for... err... i dunno, Botato?".
Potato
Botato
Brother the explicit purpose of the phonetic alphabet is to make all of the letters audibly distinguishable by ensuring none of them rhyme
Love my copy of "P is for Pterodactyl". Great book, very uneducational.
I worked in a call centre about 10 years ago. one time some old, presumably white, old woman called in and when spelling her name included "N for N****r"
I was dumbfounded
We had those old alphabet books in school where N was "neger"
I believe the print date was around the 1950s. They were placed on bookshelves in classroms full of old books that i guess they never bothered to throw out.
I had too many customers get confused when I asked, "and that is pudenda spelled P as in Papa, U as in Uniform..." customer interrupts, "why are you talking like a radio?"
Had a regular that would spell it in NATO, and said he served in artillery. Heard just fine on his good ear, tinittus was just a low hum.
I was frustrated with the phone support agent and used ‘S, as in Stupid’ and I got hung up on.
alpha bravo charlie delta echo foxtrot etc. it's SO HELPFUL when talking on the phone. I learned them all because no one could figure out my name.
T as in tardigrade
The police rang my house once, and he told me where I could reach them, and spelled out his name. I started writing his name out, but by the fourth name, I was thinking wtf is going on. This guy was spelling out his name by using names for each letter. A for Alex, B for Bob.
M as in Mancy?
I'm all about that NATO phonetic alphabet - which for some reason rubs certain people answering phones the wrong way.
Can't say I don't have a couple substitutions, though (Zebra instead of Zulu, Sam instead of Sierra, Frank instead of Foxtrot), but it's not like I'm working the radio of an aircraft or something.
Sam and Frank are quite similar
Unrecognisable letter - a - m or n, very similar - unrecognisable could be both (say when it's loud and you're talking)
Sierra and Foxtrot are very different and that's what matters
My last name has a z in it and I had a customer service person say "z as in xylophone?"
A for 'Orses
B for mutton
C for yourself
etc
R as in Robert Loggia
O as in "Oh my god, it's Robert Loggia"
B as in, “By god, that’s Robert Loggia”
Okay, that's K, as in KY Jelly. O, as in OnlyFans. L as in Lo Wang. A as in Asshole. N as in...
N as in "pneumatic", U as in "eulogy", K as in "Québec"...
C for [ˌt͡ʃɛ.kʰɪ.sl̥oʊ̯.ˈvɑ.kʰi.ə] (Yes I did narrow transcription for the purpose of making it look worse 💀)
L for… um Lesbian? Was one of my favourites
C for Czechoslovakia may be a slight improvement over my go-tos:
A for Antidisestablishmentarianism
B for Buckminsterfullerene
C for Counterrevolutionaries
Easy. A is for apple B is for bapple C is for capple ...
Always been a petty pet peeve of mine. When I was training customer service reps I'd hand out a sheet and suggest they nail it up in their cube.
So much easier when everyone's on the same page. The military uses the phonetic alphabet because it's crystal clear, even over sketchy coms.
Why would you make up some bullshit of your own, having to constantly stop and think about it, when the pros already have a working system?! FFS, you don't even have to make the effort to memorize it, just use it a few times, done, it's in your head forever. Now I'm getting mad. (Told you I was petty about this.)
Anyone know why they use "niner"? Doesn't seem to mix up with other numbers.
EDIT: That's 2 band names I came out with today.
Petty Pet Peeve™
Anal Rail Gun™
Niner is because it's the NATO phonetic alphabet, and they don't want it to get mixed up with nein.
My favourite was E as in estrogen
"R" as in "Robert Loggia"
Years ago I was on the phone with an airline agent and I had to read out my verification number. When I came to the letter V my brain short circuited and the only word I could think of was "vagina". I sat there in a panic for probably about 10 seconds going "uhhh... uhhh..." before I finally remembered the word "valentine".
Q-cumber looks like a name for a tech startup which name was chosen as a bet or something like that.
A few months ago I expended the effort and learned that goddamn alphabet. Guess what? Haven’t needed it since. All gone.
A place to share screenshots of Microblog posts, whether from Mastodon, tumblr, ~~Twitter~~ X, KBin, Threads or elsewhere.
Created as an evolution of White People Twitter and other tweet-capture subreddits.
RULES:
RELATED COMMUNITIES:
