Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by srvmshr 1343 days ago
My reference was towards unconjugated words. GP posted 'beachhead' - which is a colloquially derived American English word by conjugation of two common English words. Normally you don't see conjugated or stretchy words in amateur radio to facilitate esse. So Simple Wikipedia level of vocabulary, having words which are rather unambiguous to all English speakers. Outside of US, I am sure most people will pause to grasp whats a beachhead. Over HF your taps can be heard half way around the globe. Its considered good manners to be clear & concise

'Ahh uhh' etc aren't useful in a mode of telegraph communication which is rather very terse & commonly does not even include is/are/and etc in transmission. Pithy sentences relaying the content matter is encouraged - to speed up typing & also not to block useful airwave. Most HAMs are sharing a narrow set of channels & only one operator pushes-to-'talk' at any given time

2 comments

That's totally fair! It sounds like these words simply aren't used in Morse communication, which seems reasonable due to its purpose. I imagine HH as a prosign is also fairly unambiguous in grammatical context, even if someone did need to key it as part of a word.
So no withhold, fishhook, or hitchhike? How do they handle names like Munchhausen?
Nicknames. Seriously.

I once knew a HAM that went by Gark in Morse because it was faster to key than Gary.

By proxy.