Wiki Alphabet

One problem with how WikiNames are formed (on WardsWiki, at any rate) is that phrases containing single-letter words, as well as AcronymsOnTheWiki, don't form good WikiNames. Hence, the WikiAlphabet. As yet incomplete, awaiting examples or suggestions.

However, if a letter stands for something then that something spelled out would be preferable to any of these words.

 A : Ay
 B : Bee (BeeLanguage)
 C : Cee (e.g., CeePlusPlus)
 D : Dee (DeeLanguage)
 E : Ee (e.g. EeLanguage)
 F : Eff [ef]
 G : Gee
 H : Aitch
 I : Aye (Eye, Ie, Ij)--Ij is Dutch :)
 J : Jay (JayLanguage)
 K : Kay (e.g., EssAndKayCombinators)
 L : Ell [el]
 M : Em (e.g., EmExpressions)
 N : En (EnDash?)
 O : Oh (BigOh)
 P : need a better suggestion than "Pee"....such as 'pea' perhaps? or Pe ..... What's wrong with Pi ? (see below)
 Q : Queue [cue]
 R : Ar
 S : Ess (e.g., EssAndKayCombinators)
 T : Tee
 U : You? Yoo? Yue? Ue?
 V : Vee
 W : DoubleYou? [doubleu]
 X : Ex (ExCode)
 Y : Wye (That one looks best; better than Wie?  Why?  Wae?)
 Z : Zee (AmericanCulturalAssumption), Zed (ZedLanguage)

 Å : Aa
 Ø : Oe
 Æ : Ae

 Ä : Ae
 Ö : Oe
 Ü : Ue
 ß : ss or EssTset? (never used in abbreviations?)

Let us be wary of any WikiAlphabet character which also ends up spelling a real English word. I'm looking at you, "you".

It's better than "Ewe"... perhaps "Yoo" or "Yue" or "Ue"???

And of course, for the letter W we could borrow the common nickname of GeorgeBush -- namedly Dubya.

In responce to "What's wrong with Pi?" : one might read it as a greek letter representing the value 3.14...

Many dictionaries contain word spellings of consonants, but not vowels. I've added the letter words from the American Heritage Dictionary above, in brackets where they disagree with what's there already.

"Word spelling" of letters is also called a PhoneticAlphabet.

A phonetic alphabet is useful when you are talking over a noisy phone/radio and the exact spelling of a word (name, call sign, etc.) is important.

Too many people give the letters 'n' and 'm' and 'p' and 'b' and 'z' and 'c' names that I can't tell apart. (Read the previous sentence aloud to someone over the phone...).

It's a fact that the Nato PhoneticAlphabet is understood by all airplane pilots and all flight traffic controllers all over the world, and all Nato military. Other common alphabet-words in the U.S. aren't even the same in nominally English-speaking Australia.

*Nominally* English-speaking? We speak more like the actual English than the Seppos do. Well, Londoners anyway – I know there's a part of England where they sound rather like Yanks. But still, London's the capital, and the prestige dialect in England is Received Pronunciation, which is closer to Australian than American. (Of course, in terms of similarity to the prestige dialect of English, even Americans arguably have a better claim to speaking English than some English people (which is a bit like Catalonians not technically speaking Spanish).)

Is there any reason not to use the standard international PhoneticAlphabet?

Yes, it doesn't read like it sounds "CeePlusPlus" reads out exactly the same as the way I pronounce C++. I never call it CharliePlusPlus?, and would have a hard time figuring out what a page is about if it were named that way.

Consider also how much more sense ArthurCeeClarke makes than ArthurCharlieClark?. Or ArthurCharlesClark?....

What about AlanKay?

Many people pronounce the letter "C" as "Cee". Many other people pronounce the letter "C" as "Charlie". <sarcasm> Clearly we need to standardize on exactly the way you pronounce it. Everyone else must conform to your way of doing things. I wonder how many other good ideas you have rejected, merely because making improvements necessarily involves effort and change ? </sarcasm>

I wonder if it's too late to talk about the CharlieLanguage? and the CharliePlusPlus? language...

FreeLinks would end the need to use the PhoneticAlphabet substitutions, but it's unlikely that they will be implemented on this wiki.

When I lived in Australia, I noticed that about half of them would say haitch instead of aitch. Amusingly when I asked why they did that, they said: Because it has a haitch in it. I then proposed the AustralianAlphabet?: ay bee cee dee ee fef gee haitch eye jay kay lel mem nen op pee queue rar ses tee ooh vee wubblewuu xex why zed. It did get me some strange looks.

When I was at school, I met my first Singaporeans. I quickly learned you can identify a person as being from Singapore because 'H' was always pronounced "ay-sh."

Questions:

How do you pronounce Wiki?

See the WikiWikiWebFaq

I wonder if there are WikiAlphabets available in other languages than Australian and US-American-English?

In Ireland, we say "haitch" and "zed". Oh and the word "gee" (pronounced with a hard g, like "geek" without the "k") is a crude slang word.

IfYouSeeKay?...

Wow. Yet another page dedicated to absurdly silly workarounds for the C2 WikiNames system. When will Ward start applying the principles of XP to his own site? I mean, this is obviously not DoTheSimplestThingThatCouldPossiblyWork. C2 says "RefactorMe".

The system used on WardsWiki for WikiNames is simple, and the need for special workarounds is not a matter of great importance. To try to standardize a workaround is far from simple and not likely to garner wide support.

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