Spelling alphabets such as the ICAO spelling alphabet, used by aircraft pilots, police and others, are designed to eliminate this potential confusion by giving each letter a name that sounds quite different from any other. Some groups of letters, such as pee and bee, or em and en, are easily confused in speech, especially when heard over the telephone or a radio communications link. The novel forms are aitch, a regular development of Medieval Latin acca jay, a new letter presumably vocalized like neighboring kay to avoid confusion with established gee (the other name, jy, was taken from French) vee, a new letter named by analogy with the majority double-u, a new letter, self-explanatory (the name of Latin V was ū) wye, of obscure origin but with an antecedent in Old French wi izzard, from the Romance phrase i zed or i zeto "and Z" said when reciting the alphabet and zee, an American levelling of zed by analogy with other consonants. Affects A, B, C, D, E, G, H, I, K, O, P, T, and presumably Y. the Great Vowel Shift, shifting all Middle English long vowels.
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