Used to do a lot of Microsoft Flight Sim. Talking with friends on Teamspeak we used “Roger” - (message understood) when ever we were taking off/Going for a break etc. Got used to saying it on teamspeak, it even carried on to phone calls! Luckily I got out of the habit quickly… well after a few months at least!
Anyway Ive had the Oscar part of my call sign mixed up with X-ray a few times on HF, As long as I get their call correctly im not fussed.
Hey Guru,
Would a non English speaking operator not be able to learn to pronounce the NATO phonetics in English in the same way they would learn English? And I speaking to using the NATO phonetics while the op is speaking English of course.
Absolutely yes. Pronouncing the NATO phonetics in English is not a major problem for foreigners who have learnt or are learning English. The main problem is with those who have never learnt any English.
The younger generations do study and learn some English, but there are people born in the 60’s and earlier who have never studied English.
It’s true that English language has a strong presence on our everyday life and it’s sure that even those oldies who never studied English, have heard and already know some basic words and expressions. But knowing some few basic words doesn’t guarantee a correct pronunciation of the NATO phonetics as well as many other words. Sometimes, I hear advertising messages pronouncing wrongly an English word or radio/TV program conductors pronouncing English words wrongly and that’s bad because it teaches the wrong pronunciation to the millions of people listening.
This is happening not only with English words, but also French and others.
It’s understandable, periodists speaking in the media have no obligation to know all languages.
I have several times amazed in horror with the way periodists in TV pronounce Liechtenstein. I know it’s not an easy word, but neither Schwarzenegger is and they used to pronounce it much better than Liechtenstein, pronounced as Lee-Ches-te-inn.
But, let me repeat what I wrote in a previous post, the way vowels are pronounced in English is very confusing, because there’s not a consistent way always the same. It depends on the word. For instance, the way the vowel U is pronounced is totally different in these 3 words: RUN, PUT and USE.
But it’s what it is and there’s nothing we can do about it.
73,
Guru
Another problem is that English speakers pronounce words differently according to where they come from.- even within England words as simple as BATH have regional variations with short A as in BAT or RAT or long A as in RATHER. And there are further variations of many words within the British Isles and probably more once you bring in North America. So “wrong” pronunciation becomes a matter of opinion.
73,
Rod
PS Good to catch you again last week, Guru.
Nope. The whole point of the ICAO / NATO phonetics is the words are chosen specifically to sound different and to drastically reduce confusion when they are pronounced in the proscribed way.
Certainly you cannot give a list of pronunciation rules for an English speaker to a French or Spanish or whatever speaker because all languages write out words in the Latin alphabet with different pronunciation rules, they need to be tailored for each language speaker.
I’m not disagreeing with you, Andy. My reply was to Guru’s comment on wrong pronunciation in the media.
BTW, I think you mean prescribe and not proscribe see:-
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/proscribe#note-1
73,
Rod
probably… trying to do 10 things at once… work (even though I am on vacation), reply here, deal with 3 customers all with issues that “must be fixed immediately” even though they haven’t read the specific instructions for what they have installed, talk to Mrs. FMF about things to do on my day off and Christmas things. Did I mention work?
I’m strongly tempted to have an internet issue so the work VPN drops out and then go and watch Netflix!
Working on your day off… obscene.
or you could just go out and activate some SOTA 
We, chasers, are lacking activations. I missed Tom’s MI1EYP on 10.123 for a few minutes and there’s not much more going on right now according to SW3…
1st day of Scottish Winter Bonus so there are plenty of 2pt summits locally I have done I can do for the 3 bonus points. But the WX is miserable and raining gently and rain will get worse later 
I think I will have some retail therapy instead.
Sorry Guru - and other chasers - but I have just cancelled the activations planned for Wednesday - too much wind and rain forecast.
73,
Rod
I guessed the WX was not very inviting to activate SOTA over there, neither here is.
It doesn’t rain now but the ground is very wet and the sky fully grey. Rain is just about to start at any time, so not a good idea to go out to the mountains with radio equipment.
The good thing is all the snow we got in town during the weekend is gone after the temps raised a bit and the rain washed it off.
All the snow has gone here too. The weather looks ok for Thursday and Friday so I hope to activate both days for some winter bonus.
Actually in military parlance using ‘Roger’ is simply confirming receipt of the message. It doesn’t mean I understand it or shall comply with it simply ‘yep I received it’. A lot of operators have to relay that message to the decision maker. If you want them to fully commit to the instructions you request ‘Acknowledge’ or if you need confirmation during radio silence ‘Acknowledge immediately’. As young radio operators we frequently used Z codes ZUG, ZUE, ZUJ getting the most use.
None of which is really applicable. Lets go climb a hill.
P.S. Hoping to be out for a 1 pointer this Sun morning.
I think my router has some QoS settings that can be set according to a timetable…
I found that “14 Peaks: Nothing is Impossible” had just been released. It tells the story of Nepalese climber Nimsdai Purja and him climbing all the mountains above 8000m in 7 months. To give you some idea about his skills and determination, he was a member of the Gurkhas and then went on to be in the UK special forces.
Any good? It’s non-stop mountain porn with some amazing scenes! It also made me realise that I’m not fit enough to go to Everest Base Camp never mind any of these summits. It really is good if you like mountains.
The most poignant thing was a comment at the end when Nismdai says “If a Western climber had done this the story would be 10x bigger.” and he’s right.
Let’s clear up some misconceptions.
All this is explained in the section “Pronunciation of code words” in the Wikipedia page on the NATO alphabet. This is been linked before in this thread, but it is pretty clear that most commenters have not read it. As we say when we change the net frequency, please go there now.
If, like me, you want even more history, this archived page has the original announcements from ICAO in 1955.
wunder
I think we all agree that an internationally agreed and well known spelling method like the ICAO is necessary and despite some pronunciation differences, we are widely using ICAO/NATO spelling quite successfully with scarce understanding problems between hams.
Going back to the original subject, giving the callsigns by just saying the letters can lead to a lot of errors. B, C, D, E, G, P, T can be very easily confused under sub-optimal reception conditions, as well as S, F, X and M, N, for instance. The callsigns should always be given using ICAO spelling system and changes be made only in case of understanding problems linked to specific pronunciation differences or poor reception conditions.
I don’t want to finish this post without mentionning an extended bad habit in some Spanish hams, particularly on inter Spain voice modes QSOs, which is giving just the number and the suffix, without mentionning the callsign preffix. I have some times had to ask a chaser on 40m SSB to give me his preffix for me to be able to log our QSO because he never mentionned other than his number and the suffix. That is quite a common very bad practice that I very much detest within the Spain’s ham community and it’s as bad, if not worse, as giving the callsign by just saying the letters.
I don’t know if this happens as well in other countries.
73,
Guru
When I was first on the air in the early 80s when 2m FM was really busy I often heard English hams on the local repeaters giving their callsigns without the G prefix (no M or 2E in those days). Someone would invariably break in asking the DX to repeat their call. I never could believe people could be so lazy as to not want to say the letter G. At least in Spain they are saving two letters!
I see this is not only Spain’s bad practice.
Yes, but the preffix can be EA, EB or EC, let alone all the special ones like ED, EE, EF, EG, EH, AM, AN, AO.
This practice is typical of those hams usually involved in local or national, not international QSOs.
73,
Guru
We can use IPA. Not perfect, but it helps a lot.
Taking your examples, we have [rʌn], [pʊt] and [juːs] (for the noun) or [juːz] for the verb.
Martyn M1MAJ