just overheard my wife spelling something on the phone and i shit you not saying the words “E as in Eeyore” i am on my hands and knees wailing screaming crying pleading and begging people to learn the NATO phonetic alphabet
like the reason this exists is because none of the words sound like each other, which means that even with a terrible signal both parties should be able to clearly understand the words being spelled
i am dead serious that i believe this should be taught in school
And the necessity of knowing it as a civilian is EXCEEDINGLY low. You have clearly different sounding words for radio because radio reception is crap.
You DON'T need to obsess over this on the phone so long as the word is common and identifiable, which is typically is.
P as in Pizza. X as in xylophone. N as in Nancy. M as in Melon.
It's perfectly fine.
E as in Eeyore is GREAT actually because the person on the other end undoubtedly understood the word. And that's exactly all you need. One single (highly replaceable) phonetic alphabet is not the be-all end-all, and if you're wailing screaming crying over someone achieving perfectly good results with any of a million other options, you need a chill pill.
"My wife did something successfully, but not in my my secret favorite way, so I'm here to say that it's WRONG just because I said so!"