German spelling alphabets: the (nearly) full story

I was just excited to see Wilhelm and Dora on there, as my name is William and my wife's name is Dora. 😊

Gosh I did not even knew they changed it to city names.

I learned it some 20 years ago in school. It was a buisness school. But the version I learned was not one you mentioned. Which is interesting I think.

I also think it makes sense to change it to city names… although I am not sure I will be able to remember them. I am gratefull I haven‘t forgotten the one I learned at school.

If you are interested:

Anton
Bärta
Cäsar
Dora
Emil
Friedrich
Gustav
Heinrich
Ida
Jakob
Kaufmann
Ludwig
Martha
Nordpol
Otto
Paula
Qualle
Richard
Siegfried
Theodor
Ulrich
Viktor
Wilhelm
Xanthippe
Ypsilon
Zebra

You see, most are a mix of what you mentioned, but some are completely new to your list, like Qualle and Zebra.
I wonder why that is. Maybe it‘s a regional thing? I grew up in Schleswig Holstein. And I am baffled now that my version isn‘t the official one for the whole of Germany. 😂

1:28
חיח, מעיין גימטריה משלהם, גדול!😄

Why did the Nazis remove "Theodor" if it was a Greek name, not a Jewish one?

Siegfried and Zeppelin sound much better.

In my line of work I need to spell my name quite a few times a day. I'm so glad I was watching Glücksrad as a teenager.

I knew about Emil and Gustav because of WWII history. The Bf 109 fighter came in several variants or versions, two of the most common being the E and the G ones.

Intersting, as an Austrian I didn't even notice, that Germany changed its spelling alphabet. They differed a bit already, but the new one is not applyable to Austria as a good bunch of the towns and cities used are unknown to the average Austrian.

Couldn't we make a spelling alphabet using cooking ingredients, or birds? Amsel, Bussard, Chicken, Drossel, Ente, Fischreiher, Gans, Huhn...

Marie needs stress on 'rie', not on 'Ma'. (Just saying). And 'Ida' happens to be a name popular with Jews 😄 They missed that. Also, the whole matter shows how infinitely culturally ignorant the Nazis were. Our father Ya'acov (Jakob) received a 2nd name, i.e. Israel. Not Jewish at all 😜🤣.
Why they had to shorten Friedrich to Fritz is anybody's guess.
Interestingly I know only the last version, but with 'Siegfried' and 'Zeppelin'.
"Last year's version" I've never heard of.
Salzwedel instead of Stuttgart makes sense, because the 'S' in Stuttgart does not represent an 'S' - sound. Unless you pronounce it Schwäbisch S-t instead of sch-t.

What about the NATO alphabet? Is that not used at all in Germany?

My grandma was a big fan of Glücksrad when it was still on TV, and when my brother and I spent our vacation at my grandparents' place, often the family would sit around the TV in the evening watching Glücksrad together.
I'm probably the only one in my peer group who knew any spelling alphabet just because of that.

1) Spelling alphabets are important, and will always be. You will always have background noise even in the most high-quality devices, and names are words without context, so it's very much dependent on how somebody pronounces a letter regularly. If somebody from Frrrankonia ("Blaukrrraut bleibt Blaukrrraut und Brrrautkleid bleibt Brrrautkleid") hears a non-rolled "Errr", he might mistake it for an "l" or a "Schwa".

2) The city name alphabet is something nobody wanted, nobody needs and that's counter-productive. The PDv-alphabet (PDv = Polizei-Dienstvorschrift) is well and good, but in a united European confederation, you will have to communicate internationally. That's why the ICAO created an international alphabet in the 1960s. It is mandatory because of the Radio Regulation in all international traffic; if you "Berta" somebody and he reads it as "Delta", he is absolved from liability. If you want to be unambiguous, you "Bravo". Now spell for French, UK, 'ricains and tell me how many people had "Chemnitz" rendered as "K", with "Xanthippe" coming a close second.

On the other hand, even a "Ton,ó Limá" ("n," being the nasalised "n") by a Frenchman is intelligible as "Tango Lima".

Of course, as most people don't know the Radio Regulations (VO Funk) or the ICAO but served their conscription services, the ICAO-alphabet is most commonly called the "NATO-Alphabet"; thus, people taking offence at "Samuel" or "Zacharias" being too "non-jewish" will take offence at something that is, amongst all other international organisations, also used in the military.

Thus, the chance to deprecate the national spelling alphabet and adopt the internationally recognised, internationally mandatory, proven ICAO-alphabet people have to know nevertheless for international traffic with local additions ("Ärger, Übel, Ökonom, Charlotte, Schule, Eszett") was squandered so some Schlauschlumpf could build himself a Denkmal having introduced a new city alphabet 60 years after everybody else switched from a city alphabet to ICAO.

I actually use the spelling alphabet all the time for my surname! It's of Polish origin and if you just hear it spoken you will get it wrong.
So for doctors or making a restuarant reservation etc. I use Paula, Ludwig, Emil, Wilhelm, Anton.

Was never aware of the history of it all. I like the City version except for the Umlaute.

I still do not understand why they didn’t switch to the international (NATO) alphabet when they made this changes.

Zwickau mention 🎉

Very informative. I might even print this list out and put it somewhere on the wall near my PC for the rare occassions on which I have to dictate my name or my e-mail address through the phone.

Ida Cäsar Heinrich Friedrich Ida Nordpol Dora Emil Dora Anton Siegfried Paul Heinrich Otto Nordpol Emil Theodor Ida Siegfried Cäsar Heinrich Emil Anton Ludwig Paul Heinrich Anton Berta Emil Theodor Siegfried Emil Heinrich Richard Paul Richard Anton Karlheinz Theodor Ida Siegfried Cäsar Heinrich um zum Beispiel der Mama oder jemand anderen auf geheimer Art mündlich mit zu teilen, welches Weihnachts Geschenk man dem Papa oder einer anderen Person schenken möchte!

India Tango Hotel India November Kilo Tango Hotel Alpha Tango Tango Hotel Echo Papa Hotel Oscar November Echo Tango India Charlie Alpha Lima Papa Hotel Alpha Bravo Echo Tango is very practical to secretly inform my Mama about what Christmas Gift I have bought for my Papa or someone else, as a kind of Secret Code, while using my Mouth to talk, instead of writing it on a Piece of Paper in order to keep the Christmas Gift a secret!

What really strikes me about this is how remarkably stable German spelling alphabets have been, with only minor changes despite multiple seismic shifts in political systems (empire → republic →fascism →{republic | communist regime} → republic.)

By contrast, the US 🇺🇸 still uses completely different spelling alphabets today, with, e.g., many police and fire departments still using Able Baker Charlie Dog Easy …

Alpha, Bravo, Charly

Im a simple man (from xanten) i see a video about the new german spelling alphabet, i like

I'm technically required to know the NATO spelling alphabet (in English) for my job at a hospital, as the phone call quality isn't great, but almost nobody uses it, at least not for internal communications

It is especially useful for foreign, not known names.

You just said the Ulm tongue-twister better than me, a native German speaker

Regarding the question why Salzwedel and not Stuttgart, I think a lot of thought was put into not including combinations of consonants. Their thinking was that for people that have no idea of the German city names "Sa.." is much easier to be understood and spelled than "St...". "Stuttgart" might could be confused as "Schtuutgard" or something similar wrong spelling.
But, of course, if that was the true reasoning then some other city names shouldn't have been choosen as well.

I find it strange that for the spellings they would try going towards the older version instead of just improving by making it more common and easier to differentiate words. Yeah the Nazis were bad, so what? Not everything they did was bad, not everything was better before them or after them, and specially not everything that was before that time has any more legitimacy or usefulness.
Anton stuck around, i would also say that Heinz is at least better than Heinrich, and Zeppeling is just the only correct word there.
And using Cities ... no.

Watching this Video a song of the Bloodhound Gang came immediately into my mind: "Foxtrot ..."

Doesn’t the Bundeswehr use the standard NATO alphabet? The Swiss (multilingual) army does.

As a person that considers themselves still young (28) I never knew there was a offical system I always thought you just always said the first word/name that popped up in your head with the correct starting letter.

We francophones just say whichever name comes to mind:
R comme Raoul, E comme Étienne, W comme William, B comme Benoît…