Chapter
31 Contents
Chapter 33
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.