Take the 2-minute tour ×

In English, there are several forms of the "phonetic alphabet" used to spell words in such a way that there can be no confusion what letter is said. For example, the military and aviation use:


And many police departments use:

Adam, Boy, Charles, David, Edward, Frank, etc.

Is there a phonetic alphabet in Spanish? What are the equivalent words?

share|improve this question

3 Answers 3

up vote 2 down vote accepted

I think you're talking about the NATO phonetic alphabet used for radio communications. In this website they say they it is used with the English words though numbers may be translated to local language. Also there are equivalent spelling alphabets in other languages: you can read them here.

So for Spanish it would start with Antonio, Barcelona, Carmen, Chocolate....

share|improve this answer

I don't know is there is an official "phonetic alphabet" but what I hear most (in Spain) are names of cities and countries, with few exceptions:

  • Almería, Barcelona, Cáceres, dedo, Extremadura, Francia, gato, hache, Italia, Jaén...
share|improve this answer

I once had the opportunity to visit a navigation control center and they gave me a card with the phonetic alphabet they used and it was pretty much the same as NATO phonetic alphabet.

I guess (and hope) that for those kinds of official and international things there is some kind of standard.

For the everyday use, we use names of cities, provinces, countries or people.

A collection of phonetic alphabets in different languages

For numbers, I've sometimes heard the ordinals used instead of the cardinals: Primero, Segundo, Tercero, Cuarto...

share|improve this answer

Your Answer


