Morse — officially, the "International Radiotelegraph Code" — is a language of sounds. Once fluent in it people don't hear individual dots ("dit", or "di-" within a symbol) and dashes ("DAH") or separate letters — they hear syllables, whole words, even short phrases. On the way to mastery are some wonderfully apt aural tokens:

• di-di-di-dit di-dit = laughter (hahaha!)
• DAH-di-di-di-DAH = "uh", a double-dash punctuation to catch a breath between thoughts

... and common abbreviations used by hams (aka radio amateurs):

• DAH-di-DAH-dit DAH-DAH-di-DAH = "CQ" aka "calling anyone"
• DAH-DAH-DAH DAH-DAH = "OM", "Old Man", the universal reference to a male operator
• DAH-di-DAH-DAH di-DAH-di-dit = "YL", "Young Lady", what all female operators are called (an "XYL" is The Mrs)
• DAH-DAH-di-di-dit di-di-di-DAH-DAH = "73", meaning "best regards" or "bye-bye!"

Sonic symmetry is a big part of the Morse tongue!

(cf MolybdeNumbed (10 Jan 2001), Wouff Hong and Rettysnitch (19 Jul 2001), Hamming It Up (2003-01-10), ...) - ^z - 2019-07-16