What Hath God Wrought? Radiotelegraphy Dialect
Pounding out these words on a telegrapher's key, Samuel Morse ushered in the era of instantaneous communication. Half a century later, Guglielmo Marconi hooked his wireless transmitter to the same kind of key and shot Morse code clear across the Atlantic. Today, a hundred years further down the road, Morse telegraphy is still alive and kicking in the age of cell phones and satellites.
Amateur radio operators are virtually the only CW ("continuous wave", a technical term co-opted by hams to designate radiotelegraphy dialect) speakers left today. The international medium is an English-based dialect unintelligible to speakers of standard English, but there are others; I often hear Japanese hams chatting in their own distinctive CW.
Unlike sign language, a non-verbal linguistic system which has inspired formal studies, CW has been all but ignored by linguists. Since few linguists are hams, they may confuse CW with Morse code, which is just an alternate way to convey an existing language. Though the code itself isn't a particularly interesting topic, radiotelegraphy dialect is ripe for research.
Try this example:
TNX CALL OM UR RST 57N QSB QRN QTH VICTORIA, BC QSL? BK DE VE7XYZ
Translation:
"Thanks for answering, friend. Your signals are clear, though they fade into heavy static sometimes. I'm in Victoria, BC. Got that? Your turn; this is station VE7XYZ."
The most fluent brasspounders (telegraphers) communicate at only about 25 words per minute (wpm), so their dialect has to be extremely efficient. Like similar systems, such as the Chinook Jargon, context is crucial. Witness the morpheme dahdit, which literally means "letter N," but can also mean "number 9" or "no," depending on context.
Most CW expressions are based on English. CUL means "see you later;" FB, "very good," comes from "fine business." A significant minority are French: AR, "end of message," stands for arrêtez, and AS, "wait," comes from attendez, s'il vous plaît. Many have no traceable origin, such as SN, "understood," and K, "go ahead." Some expressions, such as BT (dahdidididah), CW for "uh...", owe their existence to symmetry in Morse code.
Q signals are another unique, efficient CW feature. These three-letter groups beginning with Q are universally used and recognised. Some common Q signals are QTH (location), QRM (interference), QRL (frequency in use), and QRP (reduce power). They can also be questions, as in "QRL?," "Is this frequency free?" Many have taken on broader meanings by extrapolation, as when QTH is used to mean "my house." I've had whole QSOs (conversations) with foreign hams almost entirely made up of Q signals, a testament to their effectiveness.
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