Phonetic alphabet

Beowabbit

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Phonetic alphabet

13th-May-2012 10:36 am

So, since SALMON and PSYCHIATRIST are the phonetic-alphabet¹ spellings for L and P respectively², I'm curious what the rest of the alphabet is like. Some letters are obvious, of course, like DAMN for N, HONOR for H, and WRY for W (or should that be ANSWER?), but would anybody care to make suggestions for the rest of the alphabet? The vowels seem particularly hard; I mean TAOISEACH is great, but is it the spelling for A, O, or E? Or should we just go for maximum efficiency and use it for all three?

¹ In the radio spelling alphabet sense, of course.
² According, of course, [spoiler]to that authoritative and reliable source for all such topics (including mathematics), Red Shift, Interplanetary Do-Gooder.

Tags:pmrp, silly

Comments

13th-May-2012 02:57 pm (UTC)

dpolicar

Might as well do this in order...

BOAT
DEBT
CHALLAH
...

13th-May-2012 03:04 pm (UTC)

plumtreeblossom

Someone decode SABOD!

13th-May-2012 05:44 pm (UTC)

silverlibre

Comb

13th-May-2012 06:00 pm (UTC)

treacle_well

I think I pronounce some portion of the b in comb.

13th-May-2012 07:53 pm (UTC)

derspatchel

I talked a little about this after the show last night! The Salmon Psychiatrist joke came about in 2008 as a follow-up to the 2007 Red Shift show at Arisia, when we announced we'd be performing in "President's Ballroom D - that's D as in Handkerchief."

After that, some of us sat down and tried to work out a full silent letter phonetic alphabet. I'm doing this off the top of my head, so I'm all sorts of rusty, but we had AISLE for A, SUBTLE for B, ISLAND for S, BALLET for T...

W for ANSWER works great. Man, I'm gonna be obsessing over this all day.

(and if you include diphthongs, then you can accept things like TOUGH for O and ENNUI for U.)

Edited at 2012-05-13 07:55 pm (UTC)

13th-May-2012 08:10 pm (UTC)

ron_newman

G: Night
L: Half
T: Whistle
W: Wrong

Edited at 2012-05-13 08:12 pm (UTC)

13th-May-2012 11:00 pm (UTC)

wellstar

There's a song on the Barenaked Ladies' Snacktime album called "Crazy ABCs" which has a bunch of these. Sarah's got it in the rotation of Songs For Children That Don't Drive Us Completely Bonkers (TM).

Lyrics here.

Edited at 2012-05-13 11:00 pm (UTC)

14th-May-2012 02:09 am (UTC)

come_to_think

C: Indict
F: Chef-d'oeuvre is probably cheating; OED marks it as foreign
I: Fruit
J is difficult
K: Know
L: Walk
...
U: Circuit

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