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What is NATO? |
NATO stands for the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. You might not know what a treaty is, but it’s basically an agreement or promise between two people or groups of people. The North Atlantic Treaty is an agreement between most of the countries in Europe and North America. Each country that belongs to NATO agrees to protect other NATO members if an outside country ever attacks them,
This way, each country knows they’re not alone, and they’ll be helped if anyone tries to start a war with them. Currently there are 28 countries that are part of NATO. They are Albania, Belgium, Bulgaria, Canada, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Turkey, the United Kingdom and the United States. The NATO headquarters are in Brussels Belgium.
The NATO Phonetic Alphabet
A special alphabet was chosen to be used among NATO members for use during battles to help people communicate. It uses words to represent letters. This way, the pronunciation of letters is very clear, and letters that sound alike won’t be confused. “C” and “Z” have similar sounds, so understanding them can be difficult, especially if people who speak different languages are talking!
The word for the letter A is “Alpha.” The word for “B” is Bravo. The other words for the rest of the alphabet are Charlie, Delta, Foxtrot, Golf, Hotel, India, Juliet, Kilo, Lima, Mike, November, Oscar, Papa, Quebec, Romeo, Sierra, Tango, Uniform, Victor, X-ray, Yankee and Zulu.
NATO itself would be spelled “November-Alpha-Tango-Oscar.” How would you spell your name with the NATO Phonetic Alphabet?