
Prowords - tosh
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Procedure_word
======
chacha102
My favorite part of this article is the reason for saying "SAY AGAIN" instead
of "REPEAT".

    
    
      The word "REPEAT" should not be used in place of "SAY AGAIN", 
      especially in the vicinity of naval or other firing ranges, 
      as "REPEAT" is an artillery proword defined in ACP 125 U.S. 
      Supp-2(A) with the wholly different meaning of "request for the 
      same volume of fire to be fired again with or without corrections 
      or changes" (e.g., at the same coordinates as the previous round).[12]
    

You'd think something as destructive as artillery fire might be given a
slightly longer and less common word...

~~~
ARandomerDude
When it's bad, you want a VERY quick way of saying "shoot it again."

The "repeat" vs "say again" distinction is so ingrained that I've been out of
the military for a decade and I still always, only say "say again." I don't do
it on purpose, it's just part of me now.

~~~
JackFr
My father, fifty years out of the navy, would still always say “Say again” if
he didn’t hear you.

~~~
Arnavion
I also use "say again" in regular conversation, and I've never been in the
military. I picked it up from living in Singapore for a few years. Some of the
short, simplified, not-always-grammatical phrases used in Singlish work great
for communication - distinct enough to be understood despite the speaker's
accent, few fluff words so that they can be parsed easily and spoken easily.
Very close to the goals of the military and NATO in that regard.

~~~
eru
Some Singlish vocabularly actually derives from nautical English. The port has
been important for a long time.

See eg [https://www.angmohdan.com/origins-of-
gostan/](https://www.angmohdan.com/origins-of-gostan/) (and also
[http://www.mysmu.edu/faculty/jacklee/singlish_G.htm](http://www.mysmu.edu/faculty/jacklee/singlish_G.htm))

I lament that most people speaking to an ang moh like me code-switch to the
Queen's English instead of sticking to proper Singlish.

------
blahedo
The thing that jumped out at me, and isn't explained in this article or the
linked ones, is that all of the distress-related prowords are French and none
of the others are. Specifically, they're French-derived but spelled as if in
English ("MAYDAY", "SEELONCE").

Why?

~~~
mjlee
See also PAN-PAN, from the French 'panne' meaning breakdown.

The story I was told behind the origin of these was that they evolved from
British <-> French air traffic and was a reasonably logical thing that
everybody agreed on and could pronounce intelligibly for the other party.

Edit to add: English is the official international language for naval/aviation
communication. Having really important words in another language makes them
stand out and hard to say by mistake.

------
sneak
Related:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NATO_phonetic_alphabet](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NATO_phonetic_alphabet)

I am of the belief that all adults should memorize this list (including
pronunciation, they are slightly different than the normal words).

It’s not onerous and can be done in a few minutes, and if nothing else will
save you from sounding like a fool when spelling things over the phone (“a
like apple, c like cat”). They are standard for a reason.

~~~
anonymfus
How exactly "a like apple, c like cat" is worse than "a like alpha, c like
Charlie"?

~~~
dragonwriter
It's worse because it's really easy to come up with a word that is hard to
understand in unclear communications conditions and thus either remains
ambiguous or, worse, suggests the wrong resolution of ambiguity to the
listener. Standard phonetic alphabets like the NATO one are designed so that
the words and pronunciations are very highly unambiguous even if the listener
isn't familiar with the phonetic alphabet, and even moreso if the listener is
familiar the alphabet.

It's also worse because if you have two speakers who are familiar with the use
of a phonetic alphabet, you don't have to do “‘a' is in...”, you just spell
out “Alpha Romeo Tango India Sierra Tango” (no, I have no idea why I picked
that word for an example.)

~~~
nearbuy
I'm not sure it's so great when the listener doesn't know the NATO alphabet. A
number of the words sound very similar to other english words, and some of the
words are obscure.

For example, Charlie (pronounced char-lee or shar-lee) could be confused with
barley, Karlie, hardly, Shirley, etc. Mike rhymes with dozens of words.

If you don't know the word 'sierra' you might be wondering, "was that fierra?
Ciara? Tiara?"

I think using longer, simple words like,

Alphabet, Banana, Computer, Direction, Elephant, etc.

would be better for lay people. They're unambiguous and well-known.

~~~
jagged-chisel
> For example, Charlie (pronounced char-lee or shar-lee) could be confused
> with barley, Karlie, hardly, Shirley, etc.

The beauty of the phonetic alphabet is that there's nothing else on the
phonetic alphabet that can be confused with "Charlie" regardless of how a non-
English speaker pronounces it. If everyone is using the same phonetic
alphabet, then the confused entity learns that "Sharlie/Shirley/hardly" stands
in for "C."

~~~
nearbuy
Yep, that's my point. It was designed assuming both people know the phonetic
alphabet. It's not so great when you're trying to use it over the phone with a
tech support person who isn't familiar with the alphabet.

------
jshprentz
The 1980 movie "Airplane" spoofs prowords with this dialog between Captain
Clarence Oveur, co-pilot Roger Murdock, flight navigator Victor Basta, and the
airport tower:
[https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0080339/quotes/qt0484135](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0080339/quotes/qt0484135)

------
akavel
I was surprised that in the communications during the recent Dragon docking,
they seemed to have the initial station designations reversed: first stating
who is _calling_ , followed by who is _called_. Also when Dragon crew was
reporting poor call quality over the hardline, I don't think they used the
phrases listed in the article.

 _edit:_ and also how/why it took them so long to resolve the apparent
misunderstanding at some point, where the Russian crew on the ISS seemed to
believe they were being called out by the ground crew.

~~~
jedimastert
I unfortunately didn't get to watch the launch or docking, but I know in
(american) ham radio and CW (morse code) usually on the opening/first
transmission your callsign is the first thing you say. If you callsign was
K1QT, for example, you might say:

    
    
      K1QT calling CQ CQ
    

or

    
    
      K1QT calling K1HTL

~~~
ChristianBundy
Is there a specific region where this is more common? I've only heard "<dest>
this is <source>", never "<source> calling <dest>".

~~~
nucleardog
In Canada, can also confirm "<dst> <src>" is standard (I think it was one of
the possible questions on the exam). And my understanding is that it's at
least best practice in the US as well. At least the ARRL's "Making Your First
Contact"[0] page lists it in that format.

The idea being whoever's on the other end is not actively listening until they
hear their own call sign. If you say your own call sign first, you're just
going to create confusion because all they're going to actually pick up is
that they were called and have to "Person calling <X> come again..."

[0] [http://www.arrl.org/making-your-first-
contact](http://www.arrl.org/making-your-first-contact)

~~~
ChristianBundy
Thanks for the link -- I tried searching the web but couldn't find a canonical
source, and my amateur radio guide book is at my office. :~)

------
ajmarsh
My personal favorite from my time in the Marines didn't seem to make the list.
Interrogative. Nothing more frustrating than to ask a time-sensitive question
and be met with silence.

~~~
cjsawyer
How is that used?

~~~
cperrine
You just say "interrogative" before your question. See here, 0:17
[https://youtube.com/watch?v=oquZP7saqoE](https://youtube.com/watch?v=oquZP7saqoE)

~~~
cjsawyer
Huh, thanks!

------
quickthrower2
Can anyone comment where the common phrase "OVER AND OUT" comes from, if it is
not used in this scheme at all.

~~~
abecode
Not 100% but I learned that it's bad form because "out" subsumes "over" so
saying them together is redundant.

~~~
toxik
The linked page very clearly states they are opposites. Over indicates an
expectation for response, out does the opposite.

------
sonofgod
Interesting to hear a few variants from this used in the recent Dragon launch.

"good readback" to confirm that the other side has correctly readback the
information just sent "go for ..." you have approval to...

but more often speaking relatively normally: they were having some problems
with the hardline, at one point Dragon saying:

"that was an improvement but, uh, completely unreadable"

~~~
burke
Most of the listed words/phrases are common in aviation so I’m not surprised
to see them used in aerospace too!

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combatentropy
Since this is Hacker News, I can only assume that the one who posted this is
suggesting that we should have incorporated some of this vocabulary into our
network protocols --- which would have been utterly cool.

~~~
pjc50
We have our own: the RFC language of SHOULD and MUST.

The obsolete TELNET protocol (
[https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc854](https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc854) ) has
DO/DONT/WILL/WONT which match up nicely.

------
thih9
> However, a few are used frequently enough in media to be memorable,
> including ABORT, BOGEY, BANDIT, FEET WET, FEET DRY, NEGATIVE CONTACT, and NO
> JOY.

These don't seem to be described in the article. Did I miss something? Does
anyone have a similar description for these?

~~~
layer8
They are described in the linked article:
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiservice_tactical_brevit...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiservice_tactical_brevity_code)

~~~
082349872349872
of which TALLY appears to go back to the XIII
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tally-
ho#Etymology](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tally-ho#Etymology)

------
inamberclad
People should also adopt the "five" vs "niner" idiom from aviation to
disambiguate those two numbers.

Fun fact, the donkey that was the model for Donkey in Shrek was named Niner,
and lived in Palo Alto.

~~~
OJFord
> People should also adopt the "five" [sic] vs [sic] "niner" idiom

I assume you mean 'fife' _and_? Also not just from aviation, general
(military) radio, and other uses of the NATO phonetic alphabet.

It used to be fi-ive (rhyming 'I seive') but changed, I believe/as I recall,
due to sounding too close to 'fire'.

------
pm3003
Interesting are also ACP-131 3-Letter codes (Q and Z). The CPO's favourite :
ZBM: Place a competent operator on this link.

------
avmich
Ah, that's where the name of Space Quest character came from :) .

------
parhamn
"It's more than 500 feet out? over."

