The
International Radiotelephony Spelling Alphabet, commonly known as the
NATO phonetic alphabet and also known as the
ICAO radiotelephonic, phonetic or
spelling alphabet and the
ITU radiotelephonic or
phonetic alphabet, is the most widely used radiotelephonic
spelling alphabet. Although often called "phonetic alphabets", spelling alphabets are not associated with
phonetic transcription systems such as the
International Phonetic Alphabet. Instead, the
International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) alphabet assigned code words
acrophonically to the letters of the
English alphabet so that critical combinations of letters and numbers can be pronounced and understood by those who transmit and receive voice messages by radio or telephone regardless of language barriers or the presence of transmission static.