The Art & Skill of Radio-Telegraphy
William G.Pierpont N0HFF
-Second Revised Edition-
Chapter 32  - Other Alphabets
   
 

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This would be incomplete without some mention of non-English alphabets.

Other languages require certain diacritical marks, or additional letters, or symbols for common digraphs (single sounds represented by two letters in writing, like our  th). Here we shall include the Germanic group, French, Spanish, and Polish, Hungarian, Turkish, all of which use the Latin alphabet, and Greek, Russian, Hebrew and Arabic, which  use different alphabets. Japanese does not have an alphabet, but uses a syllabary (spelling by syllables instead of single sounds), and requires  73 - 78 characters 

In general, letters which represent sounds more or less identical to those in English are represented by the same code signals as in English.  For example, B, D, F, G (hard)*, K, L, M, N, P, R, S*, T.  "A" represents the letter "A" in European languages, including Russian, and Alpha in Greek, Aleph in Hebrew and Alif in Arabic.   "C" represents written "C" in European languages and Polish, but é in Greek, th in Arabic, samech in Hebrew, and tseh in Russian.  "E" represents "E" in European languages, Greek and both yeh and eh Russian, but vav in Hebrew, and hamza in Arabic.  "G" represents ghain in Arabic, not jm.  "H" represents "H" in European languages, "H" in Greek (a vowel), "X" in Russian, HeT in Hebrew and guttural H in Arabic.  "I" represents the same letter in European languages and Greek, i and i-kratkoyi in Russian, yod in Hebrew and y in Arabic.  "J" represents this letter in European languages, the diphthong "Yi" in Greek, ayin in Hebrew and jm in Arabic.  "O" represents this letter in European languages, but He in Hebrew and kh in Arabic.  "Q" represents this letter in most European languages, but Psi in Greek, shcha in Russian, qof in Hebrew and qf in Arabic.  "S" also represents shn in Hebrew as well as sn.  "U" represents this letter in European languages, "Y" in Russian, the digraph "OY" in Greek, Tet in Hebrew and T in Arabic.  "V" represents this letter in most European languages, dotted z in Polish, zheh in Russian, the diphthong  "HY" in Greek, and Dd in Arabic.  "W" represents this letter in European languages, "B" in Russian, ê in Greek, tsade in Hebrew and waw in Arabic.  "X" represents this letter in most European languages, "hard" L in Polish, Xi in Greek, both tvyordy znak and myakhky znak in Russian and Sd in Arabic.  "Y" represents this letter in European languages, "Y" in Greek, yerih in Russian and Z in Arabic.  "Z" represents Z everywhere except Arabic dhl.  "8" also serves to represent the diphthong  "Oi" in Greek.  Additional code characters are needed or used for the transmission of other languages.  Such characters are:-  didahdidah:     , Polish nasal a, Greek diphthong Ai, Russian ya, Arabic 3ayin.  didahdahdidah:   ,   dididahdidit:   , Polish nasal e, Arabic final h.  dahdahdahdit:   ", Polish digraph cz, Greek diphthong "îY", Russian cheh,  Arabic zi.  dididahdah: ,  Polish ziet, Greek diphthong "AY", Russian yu.  dahdahdahdah:   digraph ch, Greek X, Russian sha, Arabic  shn, Turkish sh-sound.  dahdahdidahdah: ¤, and Hungarian ny.  didahdidahdit:  Polish ¢.  dahdidahdidah:  Polish digraph sz.  didahdahdidah:  Polish cie.  dahdidahdidit:  Turkish .  The Hungarian vowels marked with double quotation mark-like accents have the same Morse characters as those with double dots.
 

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