Author Topic: Battletech Phonetic Code  (Read 2983 times)

Natasha

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Battletech Phonetic Code
« on: 23 February 2017, 08:19:50 »
The NATO phonetic code has long been a staple of military parlance but I don't see why it should survive for the next thousand years. I made up a phonetic code suitable for Battletech role-playing. It associates words that have a greater depth of meaning or importance or that are in much more common use in the Battletech universe than the words of the NATO code. Lore-wise I trace its origins in the birth of the SLDF and I call it the Noruff Phonetic Code.

A   ARES
B   BLACK
C   COMPUTER
D   DROPSHIP
E   EARTH
F   FLEET
G   GUN
H   HEAT
I   INNER
J   JUMPSHIP
K   KERENSKY
L   LEAGUE
M   MYOMER
N   NADIR
O   OLD
P   PPC
Q   QUIXOTE
R   REGIMENT
S   STAR
T   TARGET
U   UNIFORM
V   VICTORY
W   WATER
X   X-BAND
Y   YOUNG
Z   ZENITH


Tai Dai Cultist

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Re: Battletech Phonetic Code
« Reply #1 on: 23 February 2017, 10:15:22 »
It's an interesting thought. I'd disagree with the notion that the phonetic alphabet recognizable to military comms today wouldn't remain more or less recognizable in the 31st century, but I would agree that a millenium of linguistic shift certainly could mean that some changes would be realistic.  Problem with that however is we don't really see evidence of linguistic evolution in the fluff (the Clans' made up words notwithstanding).  We DO however see that there is some variance in phonetic alphabet usage in the BTU from the NATO standard.  Able instead of Alpha, Baker instead of Bravo, etc.

I love your idea, so please don't take my criticism as being mean spirited.  But, a couple of thoughts I have about your Noruff Phonetic Code:
Some of the WWII phonetic letters that are in use in the BTU that predate the NATO alphabet might be explained as being the SLDF standard rather than being "pre-NATO" designations.  In line with this, the ELH's phone book entry (in the original Merc Handbook) seems to uniformly prefer Able/Baker/Easy rather than their NATO counterparts, and that would jive perfectly with originating in a SLDF Noruff Phonetic Code.  I'm more of a "old books mean more than new books" kind of guy, and haven't really digested the FM:SLDF volume.  That'd be a very interesting experiment to see if that still jives.

Kerensky for K: I can see a Clan variant on the Noruff Phonetic Code making use of this, but I'd still kind of expect not.  They made a hard break from their SLDF origins, and their embracing a neo-Greek(perhaps Spartan?) convention is a prominent part of that. (Alpha, Beta, Gamma, etc)  Besides, he/they're too hallowed for such mundane communications usage.  And if not, there's also the problem of units of credit also being called Kerensky.  If a clanner says "Hey I have Kerenskies here", there'd be ambiguity as to whether he's talking about money or something else that begins with a K as an abbreviation.  At any rate, if the Noruff code is supposed to go back to the early SLDF, then the chronology is all wrong for the Kerensky name to have any importance.

Dovetailing on K, some words are SO common that they'd have the same "are you using a letter designation or really using that word's common use?" ambiguity.  The military's common usage of TANGO to mean "target" could certainly evolve into TARGET simply becoming the phonetic word for T, some other ones seem to needlessly inject way too much ambiguity into communication.  A lot of your words will be in regular use in comms, to the point that certain acronymns being spelled out can also be a plausibly sensible phrase or clause of a sentence.  That's a bad thing for clarity, which is the point of the phonetic alphabet in the first place.  It's not JUST about being words that can be easily extrapolated if part of the word is unintelligible over the radio.  You don't want to hear "dropship fleet" or "PPC heat" come thru over the comms and have to figure out if that's a literal reference or an acronymn being called out.

UNIFORM and VICTORY:  Just puzzled on these.  It makes sense that some words might be retained in the Noruff code from the NATO code, so sure why not UNIFORM.  But if that's going to be the case, why make VICTOR less brief by adding the extra syllable?

ZENITH and NADIR: Actually no criticism, I just wanted to say these are brilliant. NADIR shaves a syllable off of NOVEMBER, plus the importance of these concepts in military movement make for a natural/organic evolution to the phonetic alphabet.   BRAVO ZENITH!  (I think that just made it into my headcanon)

A couple of suggestions with my criticisms in mind:

A: I actually do really like ARES, given the prominence of the Ares Conventions in-universe.  Still, I think there may already be contextual evidence that the SLDF liked/used ABLE.  Perhaps you can keep ARES and say Able was just used in unit designations rather than in the phonetic alphabet.

C & S: COMPUTER and STAR are just going to be said way too often in reference to actual computers and stars (the stellar objects, not the Clan force structure) to have arisen as viable phonetic words, imo.  (suggestion for alternatives to come)

D, F, & R: DROPSHIP, FLEET, and REGIMENT are also imo going to refer to their respective common words way too often, but have the added problem of being extraordinarily catastrophic if you mistake them for being phonetic words.  If someone says "lookout, dropship fleet overhead!" and you take it to mean some aircraft purged a "dookie flush" from its lavatory, that's super bad.  (suggestions to come)

G & O: GUN and OLD seem prone to falling victim of being unclear if the entire word doesn't come through loud and clear.  Perhaps GAMMA and ORBIT as alternative?

P: PPC could work, but there's a certain amount of inelegance in using the word (too many stops).  I'd suggest PARSEC in PPC's place.

A crazy idea: I'm not sure I like it myself, but it DOES fit very, very, VERY well as feeling "in-universe".  KURITA, DAVION, STEINER, LIAO, MARIK for K/D/S/L/M respectively.  I think K D & S really should have replacements, and LEAGUE for L is imo iffy about clarity over the radio.  Problem is I like MYOMER for M... but if you go with most of the other great houses, you just have to do all 5 :)  It may introduce the sort of ambiguity I'm otherwise arguing against (hey, did you mean those are KURITA forces or Kurita forces?) but my gut tells me it'd still work.  Plus, it does jive exceptionally well with the existing naming conventions for unit variants.  XXX-#D mech?  You don't have to call that a DELTA/DROPSHIP variant, it makes perfect organic sense to call it a DAVION variant.
« Last Edit: 23 February 2017, 10:28:53 by Tai Dai Cultist »

Recklessfireball1

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Re: Battletech Phonetic Code
« Reply #2 on: 23 February 2017, 10:31:13 »
Cool idea.  There are a lot of interesting possibilities for changing it up.

As an aside, I never understood why NATO phonetic code pronounces all single-digit numerals normally but says the number nine as "Niner".  ???

Tai Dai Cultist

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Re: Battletech Phonetic Code
« Reply #3 on: 23 February 2017, 10:37:58 »
Cool idea.  There are a lot of interesting possibilities for changing it up.

As an aside, I never understood why NATO phonetic code pronounces all single-digit numerals normally but says the number nine as "Niner".  ???

"Nine" is awful hard to tell from "None" over the radio.  So the extra syllable for added emphasis.  Kind of like how some fonts put a slash through a zero to help differentiate it from an uppercase O.

monbvol

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Re: Battletech Phonetic Code
« Reply #4 on: 23 February 2017, 10:50:20 »
It is an interesting idea but something else to consider is how clear these words would be if spoken by someone with a thick accent, especially if English is not their first language.

Recklessfireball1

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Re: Battletech Phonetic Code
« Reply #5 on: 23 February 2017, 10:55:41 »
"Nine" is awful hard to tell from "None" over the radio.  So the extra syllable for added emphasis.  Kind of like how some fonts put a slash through a zero to help differentiate it from an uppercase O.
Makes sense, I suppose.  Extrapolating from that, it also occurs to me that German speaking NATO allies could confuse it with "no", without the 'er' bit.

guardiandashi

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Re: Battletech Phonetic Code
« Reply #6 on: 23 February 2017, 12:29:35 »
Makes sense, I suppose.  Extrapolating from that, it also occurs to me that German speaking NATO allies could confuse it with "no", without the 'er' bit.
My understanding  was that nicer was used because nine is too easily mistaken for the German nein for no so they went with niner Instaid.

Simon Landmine

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Re: Battletech Phonetic Code
« Reply #7 on: 23 February 2017, 13:12:08 »
My understanding for the five/niner was that, on crackly old aircraft radios, it was hard to tell "five" from "nine" without the definite second syllable, as they are both mostly just the vowel sound, otherwise. Though I should probably ask my cousin in the Royal Signals to confirm. Tally-ho, chaps!

As for the Noruff phonetic code, I'd suggest that either the 'F' or 'H' phonetic would be changed. Otherwise, over poor communications, you would risk both sounding like "...EAT", which would mean risking having to "Say Again, Over". Also, that could also be mistaken for "Repeat", which is something you never say over a military radio net unless you really mean it.
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Natasha

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Re: Battletech Phonetic Code
« Reply #8 on: 23 February 2017, 14:18:30 »
It's an interesting thought. I'd disagree with the notion that the phonetic alphabet recognizable to military comms today wouldn't remain more or less recognizable in the 31st century, but I would agree that a millenium of linguistic shift certainly could mean that some changes would be realistic.  Problem with that however is we don't really see evidence of linguistic evolution in the fluff (the Clans' made up words notwithstanding).  We DO however see that there is some variance in phonetic alphabet usage in the BTU from the NATO standard.  Able instead of Alpha, Baker instead of Bravo, etc.

I love your idea, so please don't take my criticism as being mean spirited.  But, a couple of thoughts I have about your Noruff Phonetic Code:
Some of the WWII phonetic letters that are in use in the BTU that predate the NATO alphabet might be explained as being the SLDF standard rather than being "pre-NATO" designations.  In line with this, the ELH's phone book entry (in the original Merc Handbook) seems to uniformly prefer Able/Baker/Easy rather than their NATO counterparts, and that would jive perfectly with originating in a SLDF Noruff Phonetic Code.  I'm more of a "old books mean more than new books" kind of guy, and haven't really digested the FM:SLDF volume.  That'd be a very interesting experiment to see if that still jives.

Kerensky for K: I can see a Clan variant on the Noruff Phonetic Code making use of this, but I'd still kind of expect not.  They made a hard break from their SLDF origins, and their embracing a neo-Greek(perhaps Spartan?) convention is a prominent part of that. (Alpha, Beta, Gamma, etc)  Besides, he/they're too hallowed for such mundane communications usage.  And if not, there's also the problem of units of credit also being called Kerensky.  If a clanner says "Hey I have Kerenskies here", there'd be ambiguity as to whether he's talking about money or something else that begins with a K as an abbreviation.  At any rate, if the Noruff code is supposed to go back to the early SLDF, then the chronology is all wrong for the Kerensky name to have any importance.

Dovetailing on K, some words are SO common that they'd have the same "are you using a letter designation or really using that word's common use?" ambiguity.  The military's common usage of TANGO to mean "target" could certainly evolve into TARGET simply becoming the phonetic word for T, some other ones seem to needlessly inject way too much ambiguity into communication.  A lot of your words will be in regular use in comms, to the point that certain acronymns being spelled out can also be a plausibly sensible phrase or clause of a sentence.  That's a bad thing for clarity, which is the point of the phonetic alphabet in the first place.  It's not JUST about being words that can be easily extrapolated if part of the word is unintelligible over the radio.  You don't want to hear "dropship fleet" or "PPC heat" come thru over the comms and have to figure out if that's a literal reference or an acronymn being called out.

UNIFORM and VICTORY:  Just puzzled on these.  It makes sense that some words might be retained in the Noruff code from the NATO code, so sure why not UNIFORM.  But if that's going to be the case, why make VICTOR less brief by adding the extra syllable?

ZENITH and NADIR: Actually no criticism, I just wanted to say these are brilliant. NADIR shaves a syllable off of NOVEMBER, plus the importance of these concepts in military movement make for a natural/organic evolution to the phonetic alphabet.   BRAVO ZENITH!  (I think that just made it into my headcanon)

A couple of suggestions with my criticisms in mind:

A: I actually do really like ARES, given the prominence of the Ares Conventions in-universe.  Still, I think there may already be contextual evidence that the SLDF liked/used ABLE.  Perhaps you can keep ARES and say Able was just used in unit designations rather than in the phonetic alphabet.

C & S: COMPUTER and STAR are just going to be said way too often in reference to actual computers and stars (the stellar objects, not the Clan force structure) to have arisen as viable phonetic words, imo.  (suggestion for alternatives to come)

D, F, & R: DROPSHIP, FLEET, and REGIMENT are also imo going to refer to their respective common words way too often, but have the added problem of being extraordinarily catastrophic if you mistake them for being phonetic words.  If someone says "lookout, dropship fleet overhead!" and you take it to mean some aircraft purged a "dookie flush" from its lavatory, that's super bad.  (suggestions to come)

G & O: GUN and OLD seem prone to falling victim of being unclear if the entire word doesn't come through loud and clear.  Perhaps GAMMA and ORBIT as alternative?

P: PPC could work, but there's a certain amount of inelegance in using the word (too many stops).  I'd suggest PARSEC in PPC's place.

A crazy idea: I'm not sure I like it myself, but it DOES fit very, very, VERY well as feeling "in-universe".  KURITA, DAVION, STEINER, LIAO, MARIK for K/D/S/L/M respectively.  I think K D & S really should have replacements, and LEAGUE for L is imo iffy about clarity over the radio.  Problem is I like MYOMER for M... but if you go with most of the other great houses, you just have to do all 5 :)  It may introduce the sort of ambiguity I'm otherwise arguing against (hey, did you mean those are KURITA forces or Kurita forces?) but my gut tells me it'd still work.  Plus, it does jive exceptionally well with the existing naming conventions for unit variants.  XXX-#D mech?  You don't have to call that a DELTA/DROPSHIP variant, it makes perfect organic sense to call it a DAVION variant.

You have many good points. The Kerensky wouldn't be appropriate in Sandra Noruff's time but it could be a modification after the fall of the Star League, since it is a widely known and used word. My original impulse was to use the House dynasties for their respective letters but I decided not to go with it. Although, it's a cool and obvious inclusion in such a phonetic code.

The Able, Baker, etc. that are seen in early Battletech books can be explained away as a consequence of the chaos and dissolution of formal structures that occured during the Succession Wars. You could say that a number of different phonetic alphabets are in use until the discovery of the Helm Core and the merger of Davion and Steiner. From that point on, IS militaries become more 'structured' and professional and a single phonetic alphabet is adopted, which would have been the one that the SLDF used.

As for the Clans, when Nicholas did away with all past social and military structures, he also changed the phonetic alphabet and adopted the greek alphabet - this is the easiest to explain as a deviation.

I'll disagree with your criticism of the PPC. It may be cumbersome because of the stops but it's only three letters and the associative one is repeated twice. Even if the listener loses a letter he can't mistake it for anything other than 'P.'

Some of the rest may be way too common to be included in a phonetic alphabet, you're right in that.

The Zenith and Nadir are my own favourites as well :)
« Last Edit: 23 February 2017, 14:22:30 by Natasha »

Hythos

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Re: Battletech Phonetic Code
« Reply #9 on: 23 March 2017, 13:23:59 »
"Nine" is awful hard to tell from "None" over the radio.  So the extra syllable for added emphasis.  Kind of like how some fonts put a slash through a zero to help differentiate it from an uppercase O.
Nine & Five are difficult to differentiate with sub-optimal quality or loud back-ground noise.
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garhkal

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Re: Battletech Phonetic Code
« Reply #10 on: 23 March 2017, 14:14:04 »
"Nine" is awful hard to tell from "None" over the radio.  So the extra syllable for added emphasis.  Kind of like how some fonts put a slash through a zero to help differentiate it from an uppercase O.

Or how Five is pronounced phonetically as FiFE  Sort of like saying Life with a F.. 

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