This is something I've been curious about for a while: I've often heard Thais in the office on the phone when spelling out an English word, to avoid ambiguity of similar sounding letters, instead of using the standard English phonetic alphabet (A = alpha, B = beta, C = charlie, D = delta, etc.) they usually use an alternative one, with a few letters that I can remember off the top of my head being A = able, E = easy, L = love, D = dog. Does anyone know if this is an official, Thai invention, or an Asian invention, and does anyone know the full list of all letters?

My SO, who used to work in hospitality, says there is special phonetic alphabet used by hotels and travel agents and the like which seems to be the one you are referring to. Apparently the airlines use the more familiar (to us) alpha, bravo, charlie etc. but it's able, baker ... etc. for stuff internally. She also says that the international phonetic alphabet for hotels is different to the one she learnt for use in Thailand. Though who knows, maybe each country has its own version.

As far as she can remember the version she learnt is as follows:

able, baker, charlie, dog, easy, how, item, jamie, king, love, mike, nan, oboe, peter, queen, roger, single, tare, uncle, victor, william, X-ray, york, zebra

Edited January 22, 201214 yr by AjarnPasa

There are lots of versions of the standard NATO phonetic alphabet. In the US they often use the American Financial Phonetic Alphabet: Adam, Bob, Carol etc. In the English speaking world, most military and police use the standard NATO: Alpha, Bravo,...

In the UK, up to WW2, each military service had their own! Army: Able, Baker, Charlie - RAF: Apple, Beer, Charlie, etc.

Avaiation is supposed to universally use the NATO version.

On TV, especially American cop shows, they seem to mix them up a fair bit - TJ Hooker always used the Financial American PA (Adam) mixed with pre-war UK Army(Baker) for example. Any Amercian ex-cops here? Comment?

Lots more here: http://en.wikipedia....elling_alphabet

Edited January 22, 201214 yr by wolf5370

AjarnPasa, that would make sense as it's a travel company I work for. By the way, you missed f and g from your list :-)

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Ha ha .. yes, Fox and George, apparently.

Could all this Thai be making me forget my English ?

Edited January 23, 201214 yr by AjarnPasa