The #German spelling alphabet
Recently, @kat_rees asked me on twitter to write something about the spelling alphabet. I thought that’s a good idea!
So, the history of the German “Buchstabiertafel” or “Telefonalphabet” started in 1890 in Berlin. Names in its phonebook were spelled by using numbers. So BABSI would have been “2 1 2 18 9”.
Since spelling a word like that is obviously a bit cumbersome, a different system was introduced only a couple of years later: Spelling something by saying a particular word for each letter which starts with the same letter. It helped to avoid misunderstandings during spelling e.g. complicated names or foreign terms and was way easier than the numbers of course. And that’s why it’s still used today.
After a whole bunch of changes over the years, the current list is defined in the “Phonodiktat” in the Federal Republic of Germany.
I pronounced it for you in this audio file. :)
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