{"id":2685,"date":"1997-07-06T00:00:00","date_gmt":"1997-07-06T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/1997\/07\/06\/alphabets\/"},"modified":"2021-09-29T00:32:34","modified_gmt":"2021-09-29T07:32:34","slug":"alphabets","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/1997\/07\/06\/alphabets\/","title":{"rendered":"A: Now I Know My"},"content":{"rendered":"\r\n<p>When airplane pilots and military personnel need to refer to letters of the alphabet, they use the NATO phonetic alphabet. In this system there's a word for each letter, to avoid confusion among letters whose names sound similar (especially over a noisy radio):<\/p>\r\n<ul><li>Alpha<\/li>\r\n  <li>Bravo<\/li>\r\n  <li>Charlie<\/li>\r\n  <li>Delta<\/li>\r\n  <li>Echo<\/li>\r\n  <li>Foxtrot<\/li>\r\n  <li>Golf<\/li>\r\n  <li>Hotel<\/li>\r\n  <li>India<\/li>\r\n  <li>Juliet<\/li>\r\n  <li>Kilo<\/li>\r\n  <li>Lima<\/li>\r\n  <li>Mike<\/li>\r\n  <li>November<\/li>\r\n  <li>Oscar<\/li>\r\n  <li>Papa<\/li>\r\n  <li>Quebec<\/li>\r\n  <li>Romeo<\/li>\r\n  <li>Sierra<\/li>\r\n  <li>Tango<\/li>\r\n  <li>Uniform<\/li>\r\n  <li>Victor<\/li>\r\n  <li>Whiskey<\/li>\r\n  <li>Xray<\/li>\r\n  <li>Yankee<\/li>\r\n  <li>Zulu<\/li>\r\n<\/ul>\r\n<p>(Thanks to PJ Groeneveldt for refreshing my memory on these.) Some organizations that use the above phonetic alphabet use slightly different spelling on some items; for details, see the amazingly exhaustive multilingual <a href=\"http:\/\/www.mindspring.com\/~gwil\/phon.menu.html\">phonetic alphabets list<\/a> on the Web. Note that there are also special words for certain numerical digits: specifically, 3 is \"tree,\" 4 is \"fower,\" 5 is \"fife,\" and 9 is \"niner.\" Note also that the WWII naval radio phonetic alphabet that starts out \"Able, Baker, Charlie\" precedes (and is superseded by) the NATO alphabet above.<\/p>\r\n<p>In recognition of the start of a new six-month cycle of columns, here are some other alphabetic amusements.<\/p>\r\n<p>There's a parlor game in which players take turns adding words to a list, with each word starting with the next letter of the alphabet in sequence; each player in turn has to recite the whole list so far before adding a new one. One person might start, \"I went on a trip, and I took an abacus.\" The next could add, \"I went on a trip, and I took an abacus and a bowling ball.\" And so on. You can make it a little harder by doing themed vacations, with all words required to be in a certain category, such as living things: \"I went on a trip and I took along an aardvark, some bacteria, and a camel.\"<\/p>\r\n<p>Jim Moskowitz, Chaos Golubitsky, Kim Gallup, and Amy Swift recently played \"I went on a guilt trip, and I took...\" Here's what they took:<\/p>\r\n<ul>\r\n  <li>my Anxiety<\/li>\r\n  <li>Bad feelings<\/li>\r\n  <li>a Crying jag<\/li>\r\n  <li>Despair<\/li>\r\n  <li>Existential angst<\/li>\r\n  <li>Failure<\/li>\r\n  <li>a Guilt complex<\/li>\r\n  <li>my Humility<\/li>\r\n  <li>my Insanity<\/li>\r\n  <li>my Jealousy<\/li>\r\n  <li>a Killjoy<\/li>\r\n  <li>my Loathing<\/li>\r\n  <li>Melancholy<\/li>\r\n  <li>Narcissism<\/li>\r\n  <li>my Oppression<\/li>\r\n  <li>Persecution<\/li>\r\n  <li>my Quarrelsome nature<\/li>\r\n  <li>my Repression<\/li>\r\n  <li>my Sadomasochism<\/li>\r\n  <li>Tantrums<\/li>\r\n  <li>Unrest<\/li>\r\n  <li>my Vindictiveness<\/li>\r\n  <li>Wallowing<\/li>\r\n  <li>my Ex<\/li>\r\n  <li>Youthful indiscretions<\/li>\r\n  <li>and the Zeitgeist.<\/li>\r\n<\/ul>\r\n<p>(I changed one of the items that was something of an in-joke.)<\/p>\r\n<p>Jim was also one of the creators, along with Bhadrika Love and David Van Stone, of a new version of the old alphabet song, to the same tune as the original:<\/p>\r\n<blockquote>\r\n<p class=\"stanza\">A, B, I, G, R, X, Q<br \/>\r\nM, Z, L, V, K-C-W [emphasis on last syllable\u2014double-<em>you<\/em>]<br \/>\r\nT, Y, F<br \/>\r\nH, U, E<br \/>\r\nN, S, P<br \/>\r\nO, J, D<br \/>\r\nNow I know my A-B-I's;<br \/>\r\nNext time you won't be surprised!<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n<hr \/>\r\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/1997\/07\/07\/alphabets-comments\/\">Reader comments page<\/a><\/p>\r\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[125,6,41],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2685","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-abecedaries","category-2-uppercase-1","category-games"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2685","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2685"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2685\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3208,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2685\/revisions\/3208"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2685"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2685"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2685"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}