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ICAO adopted its phonetic alphabet 70 years ago, on 1 November 1951, as a universal standard for communicating English letters over a phone or radio. Over the radio, this would be said as “Mike, tree, four, fife, November.” Consider an aircraft tail number such as M345N. Those include the number three, pronounced as tree (tri), five as fife and nine as niner. Therefore, a few of them are pronounced differently from their standard English pronunciation. Similar to the letters, the aim is to avoid confusion with other similar numbers. Not only are the letters in the ICAO phonetic alphabet assigned, but so are the numbers. The phonetic alphabet helps limit confusion between the cockpit and the tower. Because some letters sound similar (M and N or G and J), it can generate confusion between two people communicating with different accents or when the communication lines are poor. With short and simple words, ICAO’s phonetic alphabet lowers the chance of misunderstandings and increases operational safety for passengers and crew. The ICAO phonetic alphabet has assigned the 26 code words to the 26 letters of the English alphabet in alphabetical order: Alfa, Bravo, Charlie, Delta, Echo, Foxtrot, Golf, Hotel, India, Juliett, Kilo, Lima, Mike, November, Oscar, Papa, Quebec, Romeo, Sierra, Tango, Uniform, Victor, Whiskey, X-ray, Yankee, Zulu. Members of the military, police, airline pilots and others working in the aviation and travel industry commonly use it.
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Also referred to as the ICAO Phonetic Alphabet and the NATO Alphabet (with some modifications), this universal spelling alphabet is a set of words used to clarify messages, no matter the spoken language. ICAO developed the International Radiotelephony Spelling Alphabet to ease communication via telephone or radio and avoid misunderstandings when parts of a message containing letters and numbers are spelled out. The text can be read out loud in browsers with speech synthesis support (Safari, Chrome).When a pilot communicates with air traffic control, static and other interferences often lead to confusion with English language letters.
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If unsure which pronunciation is relevant in your particular case, consult a dictionary. Note that different pronunciations of one word may have different meanings or may represent variations in pronunciation with the same meaning. To see a popup with a list of possible pronunciations move your mouse cursor over the word. Where a word has a number of different pronunciations (highlighted in blue in the output) you can select the one that agrees with the context by clicking on it.Just tick the appropriate checkbox in the input form. You can output the text and its phonetic transcription along each other side-by-side or line-by-line to make back-reference to the original text easier.In addition to commonly used vocabulary the database contains a very substantial amount of place names (including names of countries, their capitals, US states, UK counties), nationalities and popular names.Acronym transcriptions will be shown with hyphens between letters. Words in CAPS are interpreted as acronyms if the word is not found in the database.An option to vary pronunciation depending on whether words are in stressed or weak position in the sentence, as in connected speech (checkbox “Show weak forms”).The structure of the text and sentences in it (line breaks, punctuation marks, etc.) is preserved in phonetic transcription output making it easier to read.The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) symbols used.When British option is selected the sound at the end of the word is only voiced if followed by a vowel, which follows British phonetic convention. Choose between British and American* pronunciation.Paste or type your English text in the text field above and click “Show transcription” button (or use shortcut from the text input area). Hi! Got an English text and want to see how to pronounce it? This online converter of English text to IPA phonetic transcription will translate your English text into its phonetic transcription using the International Phonetic Alphabet.