Quick little question about number pronunciation for radio

[LongRoadBob]

Nice thought, but wouldn't we say SEFEN and NOFEMBER then?

For non-native speakers, FOXTROT and JULIET might present additional problems.

And if you're Norwegian, what's the ICAO phonetic for ø?

Just to be clear I'm not norwegian. Moved here in '93 at around 36 years old, and had to learn it from scratch. That said...it is

Ørnulf.
They also have Ægir, and Ågodt. Three words I have been practicing, though the words themselves I THINK are simply names (like Victor) as I have never heard the words...not sure about ågodt. I ought to check.

And from someones question earlier, yes definitely "tre" is not foreign I think for norwegians, but Fife is not (sounds like a german person pronouncing "five" to me).

Off the top of my head, the "th" sound can be very difficult for native norwegians. W is very often pronounce as V. In fact some may pronounce the phonetic "Viskey" instead of "Whiskey" and it goes the other way. If they say "vodka" it sounds like we think a russian would say it "wodka".

The number "two" is also very different, and I now default to saying it in norwegian dialect. Two seems to me to have a lot of different nuances EVEN just in the US (midwest, west coast, east).

When I was living in a northern suburb of Chicago, growing up, I used to drive taxi. When the normal dispatch (usually a girl) didn't show up, the owner would get on the radio. He was from New England somwhere (maybe Maine?) I'm not sure where but my GOD...I wish we'd known the codes there. I had to ask like 8-9 times for him to repeat various addresses, it was like an Abbot and Costello routine.

 

[denverpilot]

"Th", "w", "vvvv" all are "soft consonants", which never are picked up well by microphones. Especially old microphones, not the good ones we generally enjoy today. The "tree" and "fife" are mostly to alleviate them sounding "mushy" on old mics.

As someone said above, "tree" and "fife" aren't needed as much as "niner" is to get the point across on VHF-AM at short range, and not carried over a crappy phone line to either end...

But they go up in importance when trying to listen to them in the middle of the static crashes or very weak signals caused by thunderstorm, or simply being on HF.

And like the other reply said, "you'll know when you need it"... Either you'll hear how noisy it is and adjust accordingly, or maybe you won't but someone requests more than one repeat... That's a big clue about what they're hearing even if you're not hearing anything bothersome on your end.

You can listen to all sorts of places (depending on time of day - follow the sun for the most traffic) via LiveATC.net -- and Mari's definitely right about Japanese controllers. There's syllables where you don't expect them. But it's because vowels are more important in most Asian languages than consonants. If you listen you hear specific inflections on the vowels and the consonants are almost "throwaway".

(Japanese amateur and commercial radio manufacturers have put a switch on the back of microphones for years that changes the amount of treble or "brightness" for Asian and Western voices and language. English speakers and other hard consonant languages prefer the higher treble pass band setting, and Asian speakers prefer the high end rolled off a bit or neutral.)

The number one thing you can do for intelligibility with a headset and boom mic, is to properly position the mic. It should be from 1/8"-1/4" from your lips in the * corner * of your mouth. Not in the air "stream" from your mouth at all. This will give the best quality audio possible in a headset boom microphone setup. Nearly always. If it's out in front of your mouth, you'll get distortions from the air blowing past the mic, and popping of hard consonants like "T" "P" etc. and "S" will start to sound like you belong over in the thread on snakes here at PoA. Haha. Ssssssssssss...

Next lesson we can cover the basics of singing into both handheld and fixed microphones so other than being totally off key, you'll sound super awesome at your next karaoke session. Heh.

Fun stuff to listen to different things on LiveATC. Especially at night when the U.S. has mostly gone to bed, and the other countries are busy.

 

[Harold Rutila]

Controllers are dinged for not using the book pronounciation of phonetic letters and numbers.

Phonetic numbers are not required when referring to flight numbers ("group form") so you'll hear a controller clear Cactus nine fourty-three to climb and maintain flight level tree niner zero.

On the OSET score? Ha!

 

[txflyer]

I probably talk with such a Texas drawl it sounds like fo-wer and niner tree good buddy!