[Elecraft] Is CW a Language?

[Sverre Holm]

> -----Original Message-----
> .... Linguistics, so I asked him over my patty melt, "Does Morse 
> code class as a language?"  He said, "Hmmm, that's something 
> I've never thought about.  Probably not.  I would put Morse 
> code in the class of phonetic alphabets, 

Very good point which I was about to make myself, although you made it much
better. 

I hear German, French, Dutch, various slavic languages, mixed
Swedish/Norwegian/Danish and so on sent in morse code in addition to
English. Some of this is totally incomprehensible although I can copy the
letters.

Possibly the prosigns, Q-codes etc qualify as a very rudimentary sort of
pidgin language. And as some have indicated in this thread, this pidgin is
slowly changing and evolving like any other natural language.

The letters themselves clearly are nothing but an alphabet, complete with
special signs for non-English letters. As an example, for local QSOs I
regularly have to use ---. , .--.- , and .-.- in order to map Scandinavian
language(s) to the morse code alphabet.


73

Sverre
LA3ZA
http://www.qslnet.de/la3za/