There's this cute little morse-code-tapping idea going around in 'incorrect-quotes-blogs' or 'writers-prompts-blogs' and I would just like to maybe make it easier for everyone to a) read the dashes and dots b) stop others from innocently propagating false information even if it's just via a cute little trope.
For the sake of brevity and maybe legibility and logic I'm going to talk about the most basic (Western) alphabet only - there are more advanced morse codes for numbers, abbreviations, asterisks and language-specific letters but I'm going to call them garnish to the main course that is the basic morse-alphabet (as I learned it).
Throughout this rant please remember that I am mostly talking of my subjective and personal experience. This is a hopefully helpful rant, not a scientific essay.
So...
Intro - How I learned Morse
The way I learned Morse-Code when I was young (10?) was by using cue-words for the alphabet's letters. The cue-word for the letter A would be "An-ton", for example. And we'd learn to break these words/phrases into their syllables.
I've learned that language-users break their syllables up in different ways sometimes, because other languages deal with silent vowels at the end of a word, or its beginning, where my mothertongue (German) has very few of these issues.
But there are some words I think you could loan, even from a language as difficult as German. I'll get to those later.
All Dots or All Dashes
There are at least seven letters of the alphabet you don't have to learn too hard for, seeing as they're relatively easy to discern because they're only dots or only dashes.
E, I, S, H are respectively one dot, two dots, three dots, four dots.
E .
I . .
S . . .
H . . . .
On the other spectrum we have T, M and O which are respectively one dash, two dashes and three dashes.
T -
M - -
O - - -
Alternatively there is fourth all-dash character in the morse-alphabet, though the expression is not universal in all langauges. The two letters C and H coupled to make CH can be shortened from their respective two letters to a four-dash.
CH - - - -
It is possible that this morse-character is more useful in the context of the German language than the English one - I have had very little actual comparison.
When is it a dot or a dash
Here's the slightly disheartening thing.
In my research into the world of the international/ English morse-alphabet I was surprised to find that the use of cue-words or -phrases to remember the morse alphabet were as good as a non-issue.
I was more surprised to find that even in the context in which I learned the morse alphabet (as a fresh young girl scout) cue-words were still not a given rather than strict memorization of this letter is this blip-sound and this other letter is a combination of shorter and longer blip sounds. It makes it more difficult, I think, to remember and handle the morse alphabet.
As I stated above, when I learned MC, the letters of the alphabet would receive cue-words/phrases we'd break up into syllables. The number of syllables would indicate how many dots and-or dashes would comprise the letter.
Anton, for A, has two syllables - An-Ton - and is therefore made up of two blips.
But how would we know when to put a dot or a dash?
I don't know which genius made up the cue-words and -phrases for the German-speaking Scout Community, but they managed to twist it in such a way, that a cue-word-syllable containing the letter O would indicate a dash, whereas all other syllables without the letter O would indicate dots.
A for Anton would therefore be a dot and a dash.
A An-ton . -
Following this rule, we could make up all sorts of cue-words or phrases to the odd looking squiqqles (full Alphabet see below) - so long as we could break the cue up into syllables and ensure that every dash-syllable would contain the letter O.
Loan Words
Both because I mentioned them in the Intro as well as to illustrate my point, here are some cues for a handfull of letters that I think should translate well-enough even for English.
A An-ton (dot dash) . -
C Co-ca-co-la (dash dot dash dot) - . - .
I I-da (dot dot) . .
M Mo-tor (dash dash) - -
N Nor-den (dash dot) - .
R Re-vol-ver . - .
S Sa-bri-na . . .
U U-ni-form . . -
V Ven-ti-la-tor . . . -
The Entire Alphabet
A long list of dots and dashes, but without cues
A . -
B - . . .
C - . - .
D - . .
E .
F . . - .
G - - .
H . . . .
I . .
J . - - -
K - . -
L . - . .
M - -
N - .
O - - -
R . - .
S . . .
T -
U . . -
V . . . -
W . - -
X - . . -
Y - . - -
Z - - . .
A few words to conclude
It may have come to your attention that some letters mirror each other - such as A and N, D and W, or K and R, and as someone who could never quite remember the cue-word for K it helped a lot to know that I simply had to invert the dots and dashes of the letter R to get there.
I'm sure there's a myriad of ways to actually remember the morse alphabet and the more I think about it, the more I believe that my research has been hasty. I don't believe that no one in the English-speaking community has come up with something like cue-words. So consider this more of a 'adding my own twist to it' rather than a 'this is how to'.
This is another way how to. One that ten-year-old me found much more easier to learn than dots and dashes.
