And W has gone through an evolution of its own: it was originally written as two Us next to each other, which is why its name in English is double u! As easy as ABC!įrom reading your address on the phone to hearing new words spelled aloud, there are lots of ways you'll use the English alphabet. English originally used the letters 'æ,' 'þ,' and 'ð'-but didn't have the letters J, U, and W. You might need extra practice to get the vowel names right!Īnother big change in the English alphabet was the addition of new letters and the removal of others. The reason is because of dramatic sound changes that happened in English hundreds of years ago, a process called the Great Vowel Shift. According to Britannica, this alphabet is the. The names of the English vowels might be especially hard to remember-they're pronounced very differently than in related languages. The English alphabet, also known as the modern Latin alphabet, is the most widely used writing system globally. it's pronounced 'zed.' That's because this letter gets its name from the Greek letter zeta! While the alphabet itself is the same in all English-speaking countries, one letter has a different pronunciation in different regions: Z! For example, Z is pronounced 'zee' in U.S. There are many systems of example words, including the NATO Phonetic Alphabet, but there are less formal systems as well.įor example, Lily might spell her name on the phone by saying 'L as in lion, I as in ice, L as in lion, and Y as in yak.' Fun facts about the English alphabet

To help clarify what letter is meant, for example, while talking on the phone or in a noisy environment, English speakers often use an example word to distinguish between similar-sounding letters. Lowercase letters are sometimes called little, so you might hear people refer to a 'big A' or 'little A' for the different versions. Uppercase letters are also called capital letters or big letters, and these are the versions you'll use at the start of a sentence and for proper nouns (like the names of people, countries, languages, and companies).

View all licence free (pmr446) 0.Each letter has two versions: uppercase and lowercase.

HANDY PRINTABLE GRAPHIC OF THE NATO PHONETIC ALPHABET It is now very widely used by all types of 'professional communicators' including air traffic control, the police and other emergency services, shipping, etc and in all types of business. They had to make sure that each chosen word sounded different to the others, and was easily pronounceable by speakers of all the European languages, not just in English. It is called the 'NATO' alphabet because it was standardised by the NATO member countries back in the 1950s to allow accurate exchange of radio messages between air, naval and army forces of all the NATO member nations. Numbers are pronounced as normal, except often 9 is pronounced ' Niner' so it doesn't get confused with 5.

The standard 'NATO' phonetic alphabet (actually the International Radio-Telephony Spelling Alphabet) is:Īlfa, Bravo, Charlie, Delta, Echo, Foxtrot, Golf, Hotel, India, Juliett, Kilo, Lima, Mike, November, Oscar, Papa, Quebec, Romeo, Sierra, Tango, Uniform, Victor, Whiskey, X-ray, Yankee, Zulu. The 'NATO' / ICAO / ITU Phonetic Alphabet / Army Alphabet / Police Alphabet Using the phonetic alphabet to spell out names, locations and so on makes accurately understanding messages a lot easier, because many letters can be easily confused when heard over a crackly radio link (B, C, D, P, T and M, N and F, S, etc). When you are spelling out a name, location, code, registration number, postcode etc, over a noisy or faint radio or phone link, it is easy for letters and numbers to be misheard. This foundational lesson aims to introduce and reinforce the English alphabet for learners who are at the start of their language journey. Standard Phonetic Alphabets Used For Radio & Telephone Using Phonetic Alphabets Helps Convey Information Accurately Over Walkie-Talkie Radio

English alphabet and spelling