This is the German phonetic alphabet.

It’s no good. No longer fit for purpose.

Has to be changed, because it still reflects the anti-Semitic changes made in 1934 – “David” became “Dora”, “Nathan” became “Nordpol”.

There’s also a gender imbalance and a severe lack of ethnic and religious group representation.

“Doesn’t correspond to today’s reality of life”

So the Deutsche Institute für Normung – the folks who bring you DIN A4 size paper and DIN 931 hexagon bolts – is looking at replacing it all with city names, making sure that they’re equally spread between to eastern and western states.

Except that Saarland, Rheinland-Pfalz (us..) Bremen, Hamburg and Sachsen-Anhalt don’t get a look in.

Fuck. Them.