NATO Phonetic Alphabet Translator

“Was that B or D? M or N?” Letters that sound alike cause errors whenever a code, a name or an address is passed on by voice. Spelling alphabets solve this by giving each letter a distinct word. The NATO alphabet — Alfa, Bravo, Charlie — is the international standard, used by pilots, the military, emergency services, airlines and call centres. Type any text and this tool spells it out, reads it aloud, or turns spelled words back into letters.

The NATO / ICAO alphabet

The official words are Alfa, Bravo, Charlie, Delta, Echo, Foxtrot, Golf, Hotel, India, Juliett, Kilo, Lima, Mike, November, Oscar, Papa, Quebec, Romeo, Sierra, Tango, Uniform, Victor, Whiskey, X-ray, Yankee and Zulu. They were chosen in the 1950s after testing with speakers of many languages, so that each word is recognisable even over a poor radio link. The table under the tool shows every word with its stressed syllable in capitals, as published by ICAO: al-FAH is wrong, AL-fah is right.

Numbers

In aviation and on military radio, digits have their own pronunciations: Tree for 3, Fower for 4, Fife for 5 and Niner for 9, which stop “three” and “tree”, “five” and “fire”, or “nine” and the German “nein” from being confused. On the phone, ordinary number words are fine; the tool shows the ICAO forms when you spell digits in NATO mode.

Spelling for everyday calls

Booking references, postcodes, licence plates, serial numbers and email addresses are the usual cases. Choose “One line” to read straight off the screen, with a slash between words, or “Letter by letter” for a list that is easy to dictate slowly. The Listen button reads the result with your browser’s voice, which helps when learning the words.

Other spelling alphabets

You may still hear other systems. US police radio often uses the APCO alphabet of 1941 (Adam, Boy, Charles). Old films and books use the Second World War alphabet (Able, Baker, Charlie, Dog), which NATO replaced in 1956, and telegraph operators used the Western Union words (Adams, Boston, Chicago). German speakers use DIN 5009, which since 2022 is based on city names, with Umlaut-Aachen for Ä and Eszett for ß. Each is available from the alphabet menu.

Reading spelled words back

“Read spelled words back” turns “Hotel Echo Lima Lima Oscar” into HELLO. Words from any of the alphabets are recognised, including common variant spellings, and a slash, a blank line or a wide gap separates words in the result. Anything the reader does not know is shown in square brackets, so typos are easy to find.

Private

Spelling happens in your browser. The Listen button uses your device’s speech voices; some browsers offer online voices that send the text to the browser maker.

A worked example

A booking reference AB12 XYZ spelled with NATO in one line reads Alfa Bravo One Two / X-ray Yankee Zulu. In letter-by-letter layout, each character appears on its own line with its word, which is easier to read slowly to a call-centre agent. Switching to the LAPD alphabet gives Adam Boy 1 2 / X-ray Young Zebra, and pasting the NATO line into “Read spelled words back” returns AB12 XYZ.

Related tools

Translate to dots and dashes with the Morse Code Translator, learn Morse by ear with the Morse Code Trainer, or hear any text read aloud with Text to Speech.