In the Phonetic Alphabet for the letter “L” one uses “lima”. Is it pronounced “lyma” like the bean or “leema” like the city in Peru?
According to Wikipedia it is pronounced:
- LEE mah
Thank you.
I miss Able Baker Charlie. We used to call each other by our NATO initials at work sometime. I’m Delta Tango which I think is awesome.
I hated it when things went Tango Uniform.
I concur.
One of the design specifications for the phonetic alphabet, and the choice of words in it, was that the words should be very different from each other in their pronunciation. This maximises the chances that a letter would be correctly understood even in case of pronunciation errors or interruptions in transmission. So it’s a feature of the alphabet that someone who mispronounces Lima as “ly-ma” still has a good chance of being understood correctly. But the intended pronunciation is indeed Lee-ma.
When I was a teen, my High School had a CB Radio class, and our call sign was ZL4BH, which I learned was spoken as “Zulu Lima 4 Bravo Hotel.” I was largely unfamiliar with the NATO alphabet at the time, and learned that much of it in that class (and Morse Code too).
One of my favorite!
I once came up with an anti-phonetic alphabet where each of the letters sounded like several others. I should have written it down.
Did you pronounce the 4 the usual way, or “fower”?
I don’t remember. For New Zealand accents, that would sound very odd. I think we did have to say “niner” whenever we said nine, though.
I love those ‘pronunciation aids’ sheets. Some were pretty funny. I remember “pa-PA”, “KAY-bek”; and “thuh-REE”, “fife”.
I had one pinned to my cube wall for a while.
A: aisle
C: cue
E: eye
G: gnat
P: pterodactyl
T: tsunami
Y: you
etc…
The Filipino version includes
F = effective
G = Jesus
I = eyeball
L = elephant
M = emerald
N = pneumonia
Q = cubit
R = artistic
S = essay
U = Europe
X = excalibur
Y = why me?
In the Tintin Comics, Thompson would identify himself as “Thompson, with a P as in ‘psychology’!” (His partner was “Thomson, without a P, as in ‘Venezuela’!”)
That’s real old school. The approved pronunciation of “three” was changed to “TREE” back in the 1950s. So won, too, tree, fower, fife, six, SEV-en, ate, niner, and ZEE-roh.
K: knight
I thought it was “fiiyev”