Quiz: Can You Name All 26 Words in the NATO Phonetic Alphabet in Under 5 Minutes?

Consider yourself an expert when it comes to telecommunications methods, alphabets, or other obscure—but still widely used in many professions—ways of communication? Then you’ll want to test your knowledge of the International Radiotelephony Spelling Alphabet (a.k.a. the NATO Phonetic Alphabet), used primarily by the military and other official operations.

Take Sporcle’s quiz below to see if you can name every word in the alphabet, with a five-minute time limit:

Were you able to name all 26 words in the NATO Alphabet? Maybe the time limit is what kept you from getting a perfect score. In any case, be sure to share the quiz with your friends to see if they can fill out each word in under five minutes. You might earn some bragging rights if you do it the quickest!

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What Is the NATO Phonetic Alphabet?

If you stumbled upon this quiz but aren’t familiar with the International Radiotelephony Spelling Alphabet, you might want to learn about it. Most people don’t use this way of communicating in their daily lives—nowadays, many jobs use digital communication like emails and instant messaging rather than voice calls—so it’s not surprising if you aren’t up to speed. However, you might not realize you actually do know this way of communicating; you probably just haven’t heard the name.

The NATO Phonetic Alphabet is a way to ensure the person on the other side of the line understands precisely what you’re saying, which is important for specific government jobs, military and maritime roles, or pilots and traffic controllers. While this communication standard is closely associated with these jobs, its use has spread to, really, any field where accuracy is critical, and where people transmit important information and data over the phone.

The way to communicate the NATO Phonetic Alphabet is, when delivering a piece of information, spelling out the word letter-by-letter, with a word associated with that letter. So if you needed to tell someone the name of a city, like Chicago, for example, you would spell out: “C” as in “Charlie,” “H” as in “Hotel,” “I” as in “India,” “C” as in “Charlie,” “A” as in “Alpha,” “G” as in “Golf,” and “O” as in “Oscar.” This would ensure the person on the other end doesn’t mishear or misinterpret what you’re getting across.

In the late 1940s, the International Civil Aviation Organization decided to create a universal system, with the help of linguists. The current alphabet still used today was finalized and implemented in 1956, and was adopted by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), as well as the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) eventually.

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