one of the stranger parts of living in the UK is how common the knowledge of the NATO phonetic alphabet is. everybody, from banks to landords, expects me to be able to spell my surname using it

is it taught in schools or something?

it feels immensely weird to see civilians use it so extensively

for comparison: i came from a country significantly more militarized than (modern-day) UK and i didn't even know what the phonetic alphabet in use was like until i googled it just now

@whitequark In the US I had people straight up assume I was (ex)military when I used it. I learned it when working helldesk as a teenager. Having it normalized is nice.

@ryanc @whitequark I use it all the time when e.g. spelling my name to customer service people over the phone or something. No idea how widespread it is in American civilian society, guessing not as much.

But I spend enough time using radios for various reasons it's automatic to me by this point.

@azonenberg @ryanc I was like "do these people assume I'm ex-armed-forces??" while dictating my name. it's definitely useful and I made a conscious effort to actually memorize it, just... weird

@whitequark @ryanc I mean, I probably trigger a lot of people's ex-military meter to some degree between that, the short haircut, the cargo pants, and a lot of little things that I just find convenient in civilian life that happen to have originated from or be popular in military circles.

Doesn't make a difference to me one way or the other, just something that's crossed my mind at one time or another.

@azonenberg @ryanc the other thing that's bonkers to me is that 24-hour time is called "military time"

it's normal time for me

@whitequark hey Charlie Aloha Tango Hotel, the phonetic alphabet is also used in civil aviation - which of course shares this with the Air Force. I learned it during my pilot license lessons. I believe less people know it today because no one remembers the time you had to verbally transfer decent amounts of relevant information. Everyone has WhatsApp or Signal. So no need to learn how to communicate over a bad audio connection.

@markuswerle oh, no, I'm very aware of the use in civil aviation and in fact it was listening to ATC audio recordings that reminded me of how widely used the NATO phonetic alphabet is in the UK. i just think that aviation, while incredibly important, includes a tiny sliver of the UK population, not anywhere near enough to shape the conventions in it as a whole

@whitequark @markuswerle i wouldn’t be surprised if telephones or telephone books used to come with a spelling alphabet chart like they did here

@whitequark@mastodon.social taught in US movies!

@whitequark@mastodon.social e for egg or e for eskimo are in my non-nato alphabet

@whitequark I ended up learning it young as my Dad drove a lot for work so had a CB radio in the car, and we have a surname no-one can spell.

@whitequark people are used to saying "A for Apple" or "B for Bus" to spell things out here, but as someone who does know the nato phonetics, i have confused many a call centre

@whitequark I think you're supposed to learn it from tv shows about the police

@ryanc @whitequark It’s one of the failures of tech that smartphones have existed for nearly two decades and we still have to spell our name over the phone instead of typing it on the screen and have it magically appear on the agent’s computer.

@oscherler @ryanc SMS: exists