I am a big fan of the
NATO Phonetic Alphabet when reading character strings to people, especially over the phone or radio. It was designed for optimal intelligibility, and is a standard that most people are at least vaguely familiar with from movies and television. Plus you get to sound like a secret agent or military scout calling for air support. When I was talking with my dad the other day, though, he mentioned hearing someone on the radio say, jokingly, "'C' as in 'Chanukah'." This got me thinking about what an optimally bad / confusing / ambiguous phonetic alphabet would look like.
This is a work in progress, but here's what I've go so far:
Aisle
Bdellium
Czar
Djibouti
Euphrates
Fjord
Gnome
Herb
Isle
Jalapeno
Knee
Lladro
Mnemonic
Ngabu
Ouija Board
Pneumonia
Qatar
Rwanda
Sphygmomanometer
Tsunami
Uvula
Vraisemblance
Wrinkle
Xylophone
Ypsilanti
Zlotys
Have any suggestions for even better (worse) words to convey letters? Comment below!
