Other languages were also tapped, with Afrikaans providing "Uitlander" and "Veldt" to give unexpectedly pronounced words for those two difficult letters. Most noticeably, "Lb" is a perfectly common English word for a mass of 454g and is pronounced "Pownd." Not only did it immediately call for the words "Eye", "Owe" and "Yew" for perfect confusion, but it also opened the door to other abbreviations. The real breakthrough in this stage of development came with the adoption of "IOU" as the word for "I". The issue of "Argyle" was addressed by using the Korean name "Rodong" which is pronounced "Nodong". Sought, Thought and Wrought made a nice grouping, especially as "Sought" and "Thought" would cause particular problems for non-native English speakers. Claiming that "Llama" has a silent "L" because it has two "L"s and only one is sounded is really reaching. This also helped to solve the problem of letters which had few or no words where the inital letter was silent. The weakest feature of the first draft was the absence of homophones and so a determined effort was made to produce as many words as possible which sounded identical. The second requirement was added in deference to the NATO word for "C", "M", "O", "R" and "V", none of which are "live" words in any of the three languages referenced by ICAO, but rather are Christian names, popular in various countries. These requirements have been modified in order to further the goal of unintelligibility.įor the revised alphabet, each word must comply with:-ġ The initial letter of the word must be the letter which the word identifies.Ģ The word must be a live word in English or a common Christian name. (English, French and Spanish)Ģ Be easily pronounced and recognized by airmen of all languages.ģ Have good radio transmission and readability characteristics.Ĥ Have a similar spelling in at least English, French, and Spanish, and the initial letter must be the letter the word identifies.ĥ Be free from any association with objectionable meanings. Each word must:-ġ Be a live word in each of the three working languages. There were five requirements given by the ICAO. Despite that their early attempts were fragmented with an alphabet in use in the northern hemisphere completely different to that used in Latin America.Īfter WWII the problem was approached scientifically for the first time, and in the late 1940s the ICAO collaborated with linguists at Montreal University to develop an unambiguous alphabet. The International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO)had an easier job than some international standard setters as there was a requirement for all civil aviation radio communications to be in English. Various others came and went, with civil aviation being an early use case. This did not define every letter, but had effects beyond its lifetime, with phrases like "ack emma" being used long after the rest of the language had disappeared. A need for unambiguous communication over crackly telephone lines began with the first crackly telephone lines, and the first standard was defined in 1904 for use by the British Army.
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