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About those ABC's by Frank Armbruster Background: I'm old and almost deaf. Well, not exactly deaf; I've lost sensitivity in the high frequency range. Having this particular problem has made me especially sensitive to speech sounds and how they are perceived. For example I was just recently having a phone conversation with someone and she gave me an e-mail address. Now with an email address, one has to have each and every letter exactly correct or the internet won't deliver your message. One of the letters in the address was a "Z" and it sounded like a "B" to me. I said "Bravo?" She said "No, zebra." That exchange was the impetus for this article. The Problem: Ever since people started communicating by telephone or radio, the frequency capability of the communications channel, i.e. radio or telephone, has been limited by the technology of the times. Early telephone was limited to perhaps 1-2-kilohertz. With this frequency limitation the letter "A" sounds like "J" and also like "K". "B" is worse. It sounds like C, D, E, G, P, T, V, or Z, as I described in that first paragraph above. "F" sounds like "S". And so on, with certain letters-actually, the letter names - being frequently misunderstood. This same problem exists in noisy environments like in an airplane, aboard ship or on a noisy factory floor; the high frequency sounds just get lost in the noise. Early Solutions: As you might imagine, the military would be particularly sensitive to the problem, so a crude alphabet substitution was devised. As early as 1891 a word substitution code was devised. (The OED has a reference for Beer and Emma dated 1891) Through time, many variations have evolved, mostly from military requirements. In WWII Able, Baker, Charlie, Dog, etc. were used as a letter substitutions. Modern Adaptations: Today, if you are in the U.S. military, or if you pilot a plane anywhere in the world, or if you talk to an international telephone operator anywhere in the world, you will use the code originally adopted by NATO: Alpha Bravo Charlie - Yankee Zulu code. This alphabet code dates from about 1955 (my dictionary cites 1952) and is approved by the International Civil Aviation Organization, the FAA and the International Telecommunication Union; different bodies prefer different spellings, so one also sees: Alfa, Juliett, Juliette, Oskar, Viktor. (The alphabet above is from the Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language. An alphabet with Alfa, X-ray can be found in The U.S. Department of Defense Dictionary of Military Terms. Alfa, Juliett, X-ray, which is the ICAO version, appears in A Concise Dictionary Of Slang And Unconventional English and also a Langenscheidt dictionary). Why do I Care; So What? I'm deeply involved in teaching and learning about early reading. My company designs and manufactures games, puzzles, and playthings to make school more fun for teachers and kids. I design in three subject areas: Problem-Solving, Language Arts, and Social Interaction. The Crossword Puzzles I design and the Lexidex System of reading card games are examples for early language development. I'm an engineer and a proponent of B.F. Skinner's behavioral psychology. Therefore, I examine the learning environment and the sequence of behavioral steps in any learning situation before I commence design work. I also consider specific measurable objectives for the learning outcomes. Early Reading Starts at Home: The Communications Code Alphabet (CCA) Alpha Bravo Charlie Delta Echo Foxtrot Golf Hotel India Juliet Kilo Lima Mike November Oscar Papa Quebec Romeo Sierra Tango Uniform Victor Whiskey Xray Yankee Zulu Parents read to their children, and that's good. Parents teach their pre-schoolers the ABC's, and that's okay, but I wish they'd also teach the Alpha, Bravo, Charlie's. For those of us interested in teaching early reading, children's learning the names of the letters of the alphabet as ABC's is a bit of a problem. And the better the child learns it as ABC's, without the Alpha, Bravo, Charlie the bigger the problem. It (learning the ABC's) causes an interference that makes some unlearning necessary later. Let me tell you about the interference. In the ABC's, The letters' most common sounds don't equate well to the letter names; and the letter names don't evoke the most common letter sounds (phonemes). In the Alpha, Bravo, Charlie names, however, the letter names do serve as good cues to the sounds represented. An example serves to illustrate the difference. Consider the letter "A" \ae\ as in page, cave, and name. Contrast that with "Alpha" \a\ as in apple, ax, and ant. Other letter names in the ABC alphabet have equivalent problems. The Alpha, Bravo, Charlie alphabet has far fewer problems of this nature. Advice to Parents: 1. Read to your children. Let them see you enjoy reading things to them. 2. Let them see and know that you read because you like to read. 3. Visit a teacher supply store for supplemental materials. 4. Subscribe to this email service where you are sent free teaching resources every month. Requests of Parents: I want to ask two things of parents when teaching their beginning readers: 1. Teach them the Alpha Bravo Charlie alphabet along with the regular ABC's. 2. Avoid adding the schwa: \buh\,\kuh\,\duh\ if you teach them any phonics. Whisper the letter sounds. To tell if you're omitting the schwa, put your finger on your adam's apple. If you don't feel a vibration, you're doing it right.