NATO phonetic alphabet

Alfa, Bravo, Charlie: how the NATO alphabet works

The NATO (or ICAO) phonetic alphabet assigns each letter a code word, so that over a bad phone line "B" never turns into "D" and "M" never turns into "N" — essential when you're dictating a last name, a confirmation code or an email address to customer support. The 26 words were tested across dozens of languages and noisy radio channels before being adopted in 1956, which is why they work between speakers of any language. This tool also converts digits using the official radio pronunciations: three becomes "Tree", five "Fife" and nine "Niner", so "five" and "nine" can't be confused — handy for dictating license plates, order numbers or booking references too.

Able Baker: the classic alphabet you still hear in old movies

Before NATO standardized Alfa and Bravo, English speakers used the Joint Army/Navy alphabet from World War II: Able, Baker, Charlie, Dog, Easy, Fox… You'll still hear it in war films and vintage radio recordings, and a few of its words (Charlie, Mike, Victor, X-ray) survived into the NATO version unchanged. It works fine between native English speakers, but words like "Easy" and "Item" are easy to mishear for non-native listeners — which is exactly why the international version replaced it. If in doubt, go with NATO: "Sierra, India" is understood at any airline desk or call center in the world.