Fun_People Archive
30 Aug
Standards and sub-standards ...

Date: Tue, 30 Aug 94 11:19:33 PDT
To: Fun_People
Subject: Standards and sub-standards ...

[Thanks to a friend named Steve for passing on the guts of a Dr. Dobbs article
that deals with the reform of the phonetic alphabet used for disambiguation in
voice communications.  The alphabet provided was lacking a few letters (F, N,
and S) so I filled them in and made a few other minor changes.  If you have a
better idea for F, N, or S, please let me know.  -psl]

Dear DDJ,

Your readers might like to know that the American Sub-standards Committee
X.1.5 has recently partially approved a new phonetic alphabet for voice
communications.  Here it is:

	Letter	CodeWord
	------	--------
	A	Aisle
	B	Bdelium
	C	Czar
	D	Djakarta
	E	Euphoria
	F	Frays
	G	Gnome
	H	Hour
	I	Ian
	J	Jose
	K	Knight
	L	Llama
	M	Mnemonic
	N	Night
	O	Oedipal
	P	Phrase
	Q	Queue
	R	Rwanda
	S	Sgraffito
	T	Tsar
	U	Urn
	V	Veldt
	W	Wrong
	X	Xanadu
	Y	Yvonne
	Z	Zwieback


A typical example of the alphabet in use is this recent
exchange:

	Recording: You really can help keep your phone costs down
	by looking up numbers in your phone book whenever possible.

	Ma Bell: What city and number, please?

	Caller: Taco Bell in San Francisco

	Ma Bell: Was that "Paco Bell?"

	Caller: No, "TACO".  'T' as in tsar, 'A' as in aisle, 'C'
	as in czar, 'O' as in Oedipal.

	Ma Bell: Was that 'C' as in czar or 'T' as in tsar?

	Caller: Yes

	Ma Bell: Oh.

					M. Gabrielson

© 1994 Peter Langston