Any profession that requires an extensive use of radio communication is going to have its fair share of quirks. We all know things like having to say “Roger” to confirm to that you have heard the other person’s message over the radio, but the lingo can be even more complicated than that. If you are a trucker that uses CB radio, you have to remember a litany of codes that start with the number 10 to report various things that are occurring on the road, from reporting traffic jams to requesting police presence to saying you’re taking a bathroom break. Some of the stranger bits of lingo come from airplane pilots, and among their unique quirks is that they have their own way of saying the alphabet and numbers.
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Knowing that you say “Charlie” for the letter C or “Tango” for T is a pretty well-known fact, but the numbers are a bit stranger. If you are communicating on the radio while in the air, you will not say the number “three” or “nine.” Instead, you will say “tree” or “niner.” Other modifications need to be made as well, such as four being said as “fow-er” and five as “fife.” This seems like it would cause needless confusion, but there are a couple of very good reasons as to why these pronunciation changes are made for these numbers. The first has to do with the radio technology itself, and the other concerns the international community, communicating these numbers to those who do not normally speak English. Let’s look back at the history to see how these particular aviation phonetics came to be.
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