> -----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/ _______________________________________________ Elecraft mailing list Post to: Elecraft@mailman.qth.net You must be a subscriber to post to the list. Subscriber Info (Addr. Change, sub, unsub etc.): http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/elecraft Help: http://mailman.qth.net/subscribers.htm Elecraft web page: http://www.elecraft.com
