News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

A comment on Why Bother with What Three Words?. Parent comment

Re:Why Bother with What Three Words? by Anarch157a on Thursday March 28, 2019 @08:00PM (#19517883)
> Think about how difficult it can be to read a number over the phone.

Same thing is true for words, there are words in my native portuguese that are dificult to tell from each other even in person, imagine by phone. If some one misunderstands a word and it's valid on a combination?

For example (in portuguese), Paca.Tatu.Cotia (Paca.Armadilo.Agouti in english) can be misheard as Maca.Tatu.Quati (Stretcher.Armadilo.Coati in english). What if both combinations are valid, but thousands of km away ?

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Why Bother with What Three Words? by roywiggins on Thursday March 28, 2019 @09:41PM (#19518434)
The NATO alphabet was built to solve nearly exactly this problem. It's quite verbose (by design).
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Why Bother with What Three Words? by 7952 on Friday March 29, 2019 @05:26AM (#19520185)
But because they are thousands of km away it is easy for a human to tell which is correct based on context. And the search screen works very well. It autocorrects, gives a distance and a country flag.

I understand the difficulty with speech, but that is true of any verbal communication.

[ Parent | on HN ]