![]() My impression is that especially young people do not know the German spelling alphabet. I can imagine that even the classic "Cäsar" can be understood as "Z" we must not believe that everybody knows Julius Caesar. I admit that I have never heard them before (though this is no evidence for a possible misintepretion). But I guess that Charlotte and Schule could cause a lot of confusion. even if they do not know the spelling alphabet. Probably most people will understand which letter is meant by words like Anton, Berta etc. The problem is that the spelling alphabet is not widely known. I would not use Charlotte and Schule although they occur in the offical spelling alphabet (see here and here) which is even normed by DIN 5009. Note the Swiss Army uses (or used to use?) a similar table consisting of Swiss city names with a separate entry for "Ch-" (Chiasso) but none for "Sch-". In the interest of clarity, I tend to spell out both "Sch-" and "Ch-" as single letters ("Stuttgart, Cottbus, Hannover") instead of using "Schwerin", especially if I presume the other end isn't really familiar with the spelling alphabet. This leads to the problem that people not familiar with the table, be it the new or the old one (or even people familiar with the international table that uses a word starting with "Ch-" (Charlie) to denote the "C" (bummer)) wouldn't really know whether "Chemnitz" means "C" or "Ch". ![]() It also has a bit of a wierdness connected to specific German history - the original alphabet introduced with the Telephone system had entries with Jewish (or, rather, biblical) first names ("David", "Jakob", "Nathan", "Samuel" and "Zacharias") that were replaced by the Nazi government with in 1934 and only partially reinstated 1948.ĭue to this historic ballast, the newer, DIN-pre-standardized (DIN5009) spelling alphabet of 2021 (which will most probably be issued in 2022) replaces almost all entries with German city names, but retains separate entries for "Ch-" (Chemnitz) and "Sch-" (Schwerin). These are relatively rarely used (and the letters spelled out separately) The German spelling alphabet does indeed have specific entries for "Sch-" (Schule) and "Ch-" (Charlotte). Anything that needs communication of more than the minimum amount of text should use better suited technologies nowadays. On the other hand, phone lines have become much better with VoiP digitalization, and you can in most cases count on them having good headsets and seeing most of your data right in front of them on the screen, so spelling might not be needed as often any more. ![]() I would not count on them to understand "Schule" or "Charlotte", and I would always go the safe way with "Samuel/Siegfried Cäsar Heinrich". (I have worked for that industry and seen it first-hand.) McDonaldisation has hit customer service hard. They will in many cases not be trained at all to use a spelling alphabet, they will often have learned it on the job when they first encountered that they needed it. It's a job just above minimum wage, training isn't the best. The average call center agent in customer service does not get a training that is the most professional in that aspect unfortunately. It's a dying skill, and it depends on who you're talking to on the phone. Meta: I don't think this is a spelling question, but I had to choose at least one tag, and I couldn't think of a more appropriate one that currently exists (there is currently no spelling-alphabet tag – or even alphabet for that matter). Note: it will be interesting to hear if this is the same or different in various German speaking countries, so information about other countries will also be appreciated, but I'm asking specifically about usage in Germany. ![]() ", or " Berta Anton Charlotte.", or are both OK? Should I say " Berta Anton Cäsar Heinrich. Are these really used in everyday situations in practice? And must they always be used if possible?įor example, say I'm on the phone with some company's customer service and am asked for my address, which is, say, in Bachstraße, and the line isn't so good so I want to use the spelling alphabet to avoid misunderstandings. In the German spelling alphabet, some letter combinations (specifically ch and sch) have their own words (namely Charlotte and Schule).
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