 Posted Feb 20, 2006 by Leo - Somewhere I man the phones all day, and people should spell their names this way-- it sure beats "Was that V or P?"
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 Posted Feb 21, 2006 by Ku'Reshtin (Bring the beat back!) Same here.. I'm on the phone and the phonetic alphabets are very useful. Then again, we get calls from a lot of peple who doesn't get the phonetic alphabet at all.
"So, your reference code for this case is Oh-One-Sierra-Romeo-Three-Victor-Lima." "What? Oh-one zero (O10)?" "No, it's Zero-One. S for Sierra." "Zero One S Four Zero?" "Ehh.. No. It's The number Zero. The number One. The letter S as is Sierra or Singapore, or Stupid!" "So what happened to the four?"
I don't want to stereotype a fifth of the world population, but those conversations almost always breaks out when there's a Chinese student calling from Sweden. Their English is apalling to begin with, and then you can sit for five or ten minutes trying to get them to write down a seven digit reference number.
One good thing, though is that Swedish customers know the Swedish phonetic alphabet and knows (mostly) what you say when giving them a reference code phonetically. However, you can hear some interesting usages when they try to read a serial number of a machine. I can't give any examples, though, as it just wouldn't work in English.
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 Posted Feb 28, 2006 by Br. Navigatorblack; Pirate Captain of the EA {far away is close at hand in images of elsewhere} Cool. Yeah, I did the unedited entry, and I use the alphabet in the Sea Cadets. It used to have what each of the letters meant in sea faring terminology, like Bravo is I am taking in or carrying or discharging dangerous goods, but I had to take them off
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