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Why does the ICAO alphabet use "Charlie" for C? Specifically, why choose "Charlie", which has a "Ch" sound, rather than a word with the hard "C" such as "Carl"?

A cursory Googling turns up nothing.

Machavity
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Deja Wu
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    I voted to close this, it should be reworded to include the entire NATO alphabet otherwise we are going to have 25 more questions on the subject. The entire NATO alphabet is discussed with great detail and analysis of each letter at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NATO_phonetic_alphabet – jwzumwalt Aug 02 '18 at 19:45
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    A: aye. B: bee. C: cerise. E: eye. G: gnat. H: honour. K: knee/knife. O: oestrogen. P: pneumatic. etc. – Transistor Aug 02 '18 at 22:51
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    If you are from eastern Europe you would spell "Carl" with a K. Karl Marx, karl Benz (Mercedes) Karl Dönitz, a town in Rhineland, Germany etc. etc. etc. – paul Aug 03 '18 at 00:22
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    note that C is pronounced like /tʃ/ or /ts/ in many languages, so Ch is almost the same as C – phuclv Aug 03 '18 at 02:11
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    There are only two letters that have a single syllable: Golf and Mike. The majority have two, with some having three. Single syllable codes should be seen as the exception. The linked article says it's not possible to change one letter without reviewing (and possibly changing) the entire alphabet. – CJ Dennis Aug 03 '18 at 03:03
  • The 'ch' in 'charlie' is a quite unique sound, in contrast to the 'z' in 'zulu' and the 's' in 'sierra'. Thus, 'charlie' seems to be a pretty good choice, since in a spelling alphabet you aim for unambiguousness. – Dohn Joe Aug 03 '18 at 06:53
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    I sense some other 25 questions coming in – PlasmaHH Aug 03 '18 at 06:58
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    English pronunciation is a mess. It's because English is a mixture of German, French and Latin, boiled since ages. – ElmoVanKielmo Aug 03 '18 at 07:58
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    @ElmoVanKielmo and others ;) – Baldrickk Aug 03 '18 at 08:17
  • Because he prefers that to "Chuck" or "Charles," obviously. – 0xdd Aug 03 '18 at 14:41
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    I prefer the Irish (insert your region of choice here) Phonetic Alphabet. It starts Able, Babble, Cable, Dabble, Enable, Fable, Gobble, Hobble ... I'm sure you can continue it. – Neil_UK Aug 03 '18 at 16:24
  • The one I always wondered about was "delta" being that there is a callsign Delta. I've heard people use "Dixie" for D before. – TomMcW Aug 03 '18 at 17:53
  • How could Cable sound different than Kable? Or perhaps Cable & Sable? – CrossRoads Aug 03 '18 at 18:37
  • @TomMcW That use case is well explained in the Wikipedia article. – CJ Dennis Aug 05 '18 at 01:37
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    Much information about the selection process and how it worked, and why "coca" was replaced with "Charlie", can be found in this paper on the topic: https://www.governmentattic.org/4docs/ICAO-WordSpellingAlphabet_1959.pdf - existing answers already partially reproduce the information therein. – Polygnome Aug 05 '18 at 06:59

3 Answers3

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Hard C sounds too much like K. Ch (Charlie) will not be confused with K (Kilo). And soft C sounds too much like S (Sierra).

CrossRoads
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    Previous names were: Canada, Casablanca, and Coco (or Coca) before finally settling on Charlie. It is required that the name start with the letter it represents, but not having a sound conflict with another name (although a good idea) is not required. – CJ Dennis Aug 03 '18 at 03:21
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    Non-English speakers (especially Germans) or just people who are bad at English spelling might spell "Carl" as "Karl". There's no other way to spell "Charlie." – Jeffiekins Aug 03 '18 at 15:27
  • Wikipedia says "The Allied military radiotelephone spelling alphabets were created prior to World War I and evolved separately in the United States and the United Kingdom—and separately among the individual military services in the two countries—until being merged during World War II. The last WWII spelling alphabet continued to be used through the Korean War, being replaced in 1956 as a result of both countries adopting the ICAO/ITU Radiotelephony Spelling Alphabet, with the Allied nations calling their usage the "NATO Phonetic Alphabet"." with Cast, Canteen, Chain, and Cork used earlier. – CrossRoads Aug 03 '18 at 15:34
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    @Jeffiekins: actually, "Czarli" if you were from Poland and knew zero foreign languages, but that still makes 'c' ;) OTOH, if an english-speaker doesn't know this name and overthinks it, he could take it as slavic and write "Tcharlie" - see "Tchaikovsky" (Czajkowski). I bet there are many other ways you could write the sounds of "Charlie" in English – quetzalcoatl Aug 03 '18 at 22:43
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    ....aaand I've just learnt that currently preferred spelling of Чайковский would be Chajkovskij or Chaykovskiy, while Tchaikovsky is traditional spelling, kept just because we're used to writing it like that. Well.. I can't argue with it, "Chaykovskiy" looks more natural to me, much more that some idiotisms like "voivodeship".. – quetzalcoatl Aug 03 '18 at 22:54
  • Cocoa could be confused with Ko-ko, the Mikado character. The country name Canada is probably well enough known to avoid confusion, but may be perceived as being North-American-centric. Casablanca seems rather long. – supercat Aug 05 '18 at 21:29
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ICAO is a phonetic alphabet, so it's all about sounds. English language doesn't have a distinct sound for singular letter "C". You're proposing "Carl", but it's pronounced kɑɹl̩ - with K. Other option would be "cent", but this one is pronounced sɛnt - with S.

"Ch" as in Charlie (ˈtʃɑːli) is the only C that sounds (tʃ) distinctively and can be recognized as "C" without any doubt. The fact that's not a singular C but a part of digraph is not relevant. The clarity of the message is.

Agent_L
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24

For the same reason we use niner for nine. The phonetic alphabet took a lot into consideration when they were choosing words including how words are pronounced with different accents. "Charlie" like all the other words was likely chosen due to its unique pronunciation across dialects. It is also a nice short two syllable word.

Dave
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