Scott Monty (@scottmonty): "Did you ever wonder how we got the Alfa, Bravo, Charlie alphabet? The words we use today are not the ones the soldiers of World War II used at all. The modern phonetic alphabet is the result of wartime improvisation, linguistic research, and one very unusual international exp…"

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Timeless & Timely

Did you ever wonder how we got the Alfa, Bravo, Charlie alphabet?

The words we use today are not the ones the soldiers of World War II used at all.

The modern phonetic alphabet is the result of wartime improvisation, linguistic research, and one very unusual international experiment.

A single misunderstood letter can move a plane miles off course. So militaries came up with an elegant workaround: replace each letter with a full word. Simple in theory. In practice, agreeing on which words took about 40 years… and two world wars.

Mar 7

at

2:50 PM

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