Polish RAF Map

I mostly post about Japanese here, but do sometimes talk about other languages or aspects of linguistics.

Today I want to share with you this image:

I saw it on Facebook via a friend, from “Henry Krank & Co Ltd“:

This map is apparently what was issued to Polish RAF Airmen during WW2, as a means to integrate easier as they were travelling around the UK.

Phonetic spellings of towns and cities in the south of England were used to aid the pronunciation for our Polish allies.

For Brits (like me) familiar with the place names this is entertaining in a way that is hard to convey. There’s just something very wholesomely amusing about seeing, for example, Bishop’s Stortford written “Byszeps-Stofed” 🙂