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What is the Phonetic or Military Alphabet, how to learn, and how its work
Learning the phonetic military alphabet is quite simple for anyone, just have a little willpower and willingness. The founders of the International Phonetic Association – AFI -, when they created the phonetic alphabet, thought of making a learning system accessible to many people. The interest in knowing how to pronounce the words of a certain language is the main point to start learning the international phonetic alphabet.
What is the phonetic alphabet (Military Alphabet)?
The phonetic alphabet is a set of codes, composed of symbols and letters, used everywhere in the world, so it is called international. Your goal is to know how to pronounce the words of any foreign language correctly. It can also be said that the phonetic alphabet is a system that phonetically represents written words. Therefore, to learn the international phonetic alphabet, it is enough to know which sound should be emitted in each symbol or letter. Those who do not remember having seen this alphabet can think of the letters and symbols, in square brackets, which appear right after the entries in the foreign language dictionaries. Precisely this set of symbols and letters, which seems to form a code, is the phonetic alphabet. Once you understand where this tool is used,
How to learn
As this alphabet uses letters that are known in the Portuguese language, the person who wants to use it will have to know how it sounds only from the other letters and symbols that they do not know. This information is, in general, found on the first pages of foreign language dictionaries, where an index will describe the sounds of each part of the code. In addition to the sound emitted by each letter, the phonetic alphabet makes use of symbols that define some characteristics of the word, such as intonation, for understand the military alphabet to use it will have to know just over 40 sounds, including to this number those of the Portuguese language that they should already know. In reality, the international phonetic alphabet has 107 symbols and letters to define all the sounds of the existing languages. However, in general, dictionaries use only 44 of them to make the necessary combinations. In addition, this tool has mostly symbols from the Roman alphabet or from a language originating from it. There are also, to a lesser extent, letters of the Greek alphabet and other symbols that do not necessarily belong to an alphabet. Although anyone is able to learn and use the international phonetic alphabet, for some professionals their knowledge is essential, as is the case of those who work in the areas of linguistics, speech therapy, translation and language teaching. Actors, singers and students of foreign languages are not obliged to know the alphabet. However, they can make great use of it, when they come into contact with new languages they are familiar with and, especially, if they have to pronounce words of that previously unknown language.
Creation
The phonetic alphabet appeared in Paris, in 1886 when teachers from the country and England came together in a movement that sought to facilitate the learning of foreign languages for students of regular education. For them, this knowledge would mainly make students speak other languages more naturally and would also help students who were taking their first steps in the knowledge of a new language. To this end, the group developed the phonetic alphabet. After a few years, these teachers, pioneers in the development of the phonetic alphabet, formalized their group, founding the International Phonetic Association – AFI. The entity has, until today, a series of activities and studies that it promotes. However, the phonetic alphabet is its greatest asset. Sometimes, in the history of AFI, there were revisions of the phonetic alphabet, which added or subtracted symbols and letters, always with the objective of improving the tool, and in 2005 the last revision took place. In fact, at the beginning of the work of this group of French and English teachers, there was not just one alphabet, but one for each language. In a short time, linguists realized that a uniform alphabet would be much more efficient and, thus, develop a single alphabet for all languages.
The History of the Military Alphabet
The history of the military phonetic alphabet is intertwined with the history of the first spelling alphabets, in reality, the latter seem to have their origin in the first. Experts on the subject say that, before the Second World War, there was no common phonetic alphabet for civil use, that is, only the military alphabet existed.. However, at that time, each service, such as the army, navy and aeronautics, had its own phonetic alphabet. As you can imagine, this lack of standardization caused great problems, due to the confusion that occurred when the groups communicated with each other, allied to this were the problems of interference and noise in the transmission of messages. In 1941, however, when the United States entered the war, the military realized the urgency of creating a standardized military phonetic alphabet, so that all groups could communicate with their allies in order to be successful in their goal . Even this first military alphabet, although not yet ideal, was very useful for military communications. Among some problems of this alphabet, were the difficulties of understanding several letters.
Consolidation
Parallel to this, ICAO – International Commercial Aviation Organization, which also needed a phonetic alphabet to supply its need for communication for the emerging aeronautical industry, managed to create its own phonetic alphabet. In this way, the phonetic alphabet that today is used by many civilians, but mainly by the military services, was created by ICAO and, later, adapted by ITU – International Telecommunications Organization -, responsible for the international regulations of Radiocommunications. Since its creation and consolidation, therefore, this alphabet has been used on numerous occasions and is an essential tool for the success of today’s military and civilian transmissions. To get an idea of its importance, it is worth noting that even the communications made in FM – Modulated Frequency -, in which the audio quality is usually much superior to the others, the use of the phonetic alphabet is necessary for a better understanding of the message transmissions.
How it works
The operation of the phonetic alphabet, however, is quite simple, since it is based on words that refer to each letter of the alphabet. Thus, at the time of transmission, instead of the person responsible speaking a letter, he says the word that is attributed to the letter. The only difficulty was to find the best words to be used, as they cannot have similar sounds so that they do not confuse the recipient of the message. The military phonetic alphabet is also what is called the radiotelephone or spelling alphabet. In addition, the words he uses are practically the same as in NATO’s phonetic alphabet, which is currently the most used among all spelling alphabets. However, the numbers of the military alphabet are said in English, and some of the sounds of the numbers have similarities that can confuse, there is a need to choose ways that eliminate ambiguity. A very clear example is in relation to numbers 5 and 9, which in English are “five” and “nine”. Thus, in the military alphabet, 9 received a variation, being pronounced “niner”. The same also occurs with some letters, such as “m” and “n”. For this reason, for “m” we have the word “mike” and for “n” the word “november”. For numbers, the alphabet gives a sequence of words, the pronunciation of which is as follows: 1 – wun, 2 – too, 3 – tree, 4 – fower, 5 – fife, 6 – six, 7 – seven, 8 – ait, 9 – niner and 0 – zero. like “m” and “n”. For this reason, for “m” we have the word “mike” and for “n” the word “november”. For numbers, the alphabet gives a sequence of words, the pronunciation of which is as follows: 1 – wun, 2 – too, 3 – tree, 4 – fower, 5 – fife, 6 – six, 7 – seven, 8 – ait, 9 – niner and 0 – zero. like “m” and “n”. For this reason, for “m” we have the word “mike” and for “n” the word “november”. For numbers, the alphabet gives a sequence of words, the pronunciation of which is as follows: 1 – wun, 2 – too, 3 – tree, 4 – fower, 5 – fife, 6 – six, 7 – seven, 8 – ait, 9 – niner and 0 – zero.
When to use
Despite having its origin in the military services and, even today, it continues to be of normal use by the armed forces, nothing prevents anyone from using the phonetic alphabet when they think it necessary. Just like a telegram, the spelling alphabet will be useful when someone needs to send a short message, since the letters are not spelled, but the words are spelled. In a normal telephone conversation, the use of this alphabet can be totally useless. However, in a distress call, for example, it can save lives.
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