Talk:Morse code mnemonics

Not the final word
This article was created to get the mnemonics off of the morse code article. The mnemonic(s) listed on this article are not the final word. If you have other mnemonics for learning or remembering morse code, please add a new table. Phauge 17:18, 16 June 2006 (UTC)

I created the NATO Phonetic Alphabet Mnemonic. I'm currently working on some new ones, (for punctuation, etc), and the original "Morse Code" article was ALREADY getting awfully cluttered. :P Pine 04:29, 18 June 2006 (UTC)
 * Good call, Phague!

I only have a comment and it is that "Romero" is not spanish for "Romeo". Romero is a plant of some sort, I think it's used in cuisine. 190.19.14.235 (talk) 00:01, 18 December 2007 (UTC)

Mnemonics fail at faster speeds
The only problem with techniques like mnemonics, flashcards, and the like, is that they create a mental "lookup table" in your head that you have to link to the correct Morse code character. On slower speeds like 5wpm this is fine, but if you ever need to increase your speed beyond, say, 12wpm (a typical speed barrier for most people learning Morse code), then you're going to get stuck with almost no hope of copying any faster; these aids become a crutch.

One of the proven methods to learning to copy fast code is the Koch method, where you learn the characters one character at a time by hearing. If you can copy better than 90% at a particular stage, you can add a character. When you add a character, you cumulatively increase the character list in your random word lists. Most people suggest using Farnsworth characters. Koch was a psychologist who researched techniques to teach Navy radio officers the Morse code in the smallest amount of time possible. I think his method was able to get one class of students to proficiency in 13 hours (straight, I believe). However, current suggestion is to limit learning to 15-30 minute stretches, preferably once per day. Any longer and you get tired of copying and the code stops making sense. I was able to pass the 5wpm Morse code exam for my amateur radio license with one month of training using the Koch method. I had to "untrain" myself in one of the bad techniques, looking at the dots and dashes sequence of each character on a flashcard. --Altailji 02:18, 10 July 2006 (UTC)

Unnecessary and possibly "new" to Wikipedia
Not sure where this falls in the guidelines.

My gut feeling is that these are mnemonics made up by some Wikipedia user and not pre-existing Wikipedia and not used in the "real world".

While Wikipedia is great I don't think that we should be making up fresh new content just for Wikipedia. I encourage new people to learn Morse code but we should not be creating brand new methods and content and mnemonics inside Wikipedia that don't exist in the "real world".

Am I off base? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 170.121.14.12 (talk) 16:24, 9 March 2010 (UTC)


 * I agree entirely that original work is not for Wikipedia. Poster Pine in the Not the Final Word section above admitted in 2006 that he himself wrote this "code". I must also point out that it isn't effective, because many of the words/phrases are NOT ordinarily pronounced that way, which is the entire point. AL-pha, new OR-leans, HOL-i-day INN, LI-ma pe-RU, A-lou-ET-tuh, U-ni-form, JACK and COKE, shaka ZULU become useless when pronounced normally.


 * phonetic alphabets for multiple languages (some appear to use mnemonic syllables) are listed in this summary from Newsgroups: sci.lang, rec.radio.amateur.misc on http://www.bckelk.ukfsn.org/phon.full.html (and repeated on http://www.faqs.org/faqs/radio/phonetic-alph/full/ and other sites.) It includes these languages: English, French, German, Dutch, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, Romansh, Danish, Norwegian, Swedish, Finnish, Czech, Slovak, Polish, Hungarian, Croatian, Serbo-Croat, Slovenian, Greek, Romanian, Turkish, Hebrew, Russian, Ukrainian, Swahili, Kwanyama, Ndonga, Afrikaans, Chinese and Esperanto.


 * there are also foreign language mnemonics links on this page http://inter.scoutnet.org/morse/ and foreign language alphabets/mnemonic links on this page http://www.bckelk.ukfsn.org/menu.html (some go to the foreign language versions of this wikipedia article!)


 * Without trying to match NATO, Frank Gilbreth Sr's mnemonics from the early 20th century were well-formed (CARE-les CHIL-dren) but a complete list is not online. Individual samples from a search of MANY sites turned up these more suitable mnemonics: al-THOUGH, a-GAIN, a-JAR, a-PART, DOCK work-er or DRAC-u-la, F "did she LIKE it" or "did it HURT you?", GOOD GRAV-y, li-NO-le-um, NA-vy, NOO-gie or NU-dist, ONE OF US, pa-RADE PAN-el, Q GOD SAVE the QUEEN or HERE COMES the BRIDE (meaning the queen), ro-TA-tion, X EX-tra ex-PENSE.


 * I won't be editing this article - this is just my two cents. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Tkech (talk • contribs) 18:02, 20 August 2010 (UTC)

German Language
I heard that the Germans have a system that uses ordinary words (the one for Bravo here is silly). 4.154.252.248 (talk) 17:25, 19 July 2010 (UTC)


 * Yes, other languages have better mnemonics for Morse code. See the Hungarian page on Morse code: http://hu.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morzek%C3%B3d#.C3.81b.C3.A9c.C3.A9 it includes mnemonics that are traditionally used by the scouts, which is fine. That said, I see no reason to include Slavic, German, or any foreign-language mnemonics in specific here. That section should be deleted imo, and links added to foreign language mnemonics, or maybe just leave a summary. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 109.121.29.179 (talk) 10:27, 17 July 2013 (UTC)

For Deletion
As a teacher, I find mnenomics invaluable. But WP is concerned with both history and the state of the art. Given the commenters above, the present article does not appear to give any standard view. It's not even clear to me from User:Phauge's comment whether or not the article's NATO section is pure OR.... or only partly OR. But (to my mind), any such "silly", labored 'mnenomic' misses the target as a memory aid. Meanwhile at present much of the information within is both Not Verifiable and OR.

If this page is not to be quickly re-written offering a more complete survey of standard systems and technique as named above, then I'd recommend this page (as it is now written) for deletion, removing any *standard* info within to the Talk:Morse code paqe.  Hilar leo  Hey, L.E.O. 04:33, 29 August 2011 (UTC)
 * "How-to" material is supposed to go to Wikibooks. Maybe this could be moved there and a page created on how to learn Morse Code?   Will Beback    talk    11:16, 29 August 2011 (UTC)
 * Thanks for that clarification. OR will be spotted once it's in the correct forum.  Hilar leo  Hey, L.E.O. 11:28, 29 August 2011 (UTC)
 * OR is allowed on Wikibooks. Different rules there.   Will Beback    talk    22:45, 30 August 2011 (UTC)

I've got rid of those home-grown NATO mnemonics. Whether OR or not, there's the significant black mark against them (which others have pointed out) that they don't actually work! The correlation between stressed syllables and dahs that the mnemonics should have was only weakly weakly present in them — no-one says "HOLE IN one" or "jack AND COKE" or "AL-LOU-et-TE". Anyone who wants to rescue them for copying over to Wikibooks or whatnot can find them at this old revision. 4pq1injbok (talk) 00:49, 24 May 2014 (UTC)

Heavy Vandalism
Does anyone else notice that the page appear to have been vandalized to the nth degree? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.122.167.118 (talk) 21:28, 8 March 2013 (UTC)

Letter sequence mnemonic ?
I haven't seen it anywhere, so it wouldn't be Wikipedia-acceptable to add it ; but wouldn't a better mnemonic ( which would need to be written down for use ) be to list the letters in binary "numerical" order, then create a 26 word phrase, or set of phrases ? e.g. 1-digit : dot = 0 = E ; dash = 1 = T ; 2-digit : dot dot = 0 = I ; dot dash = 1 = A ; dash dot = 2 = N ; dash dash = 3 = M ; 3-digit : dot dot dot = 0 = S ; etc. I think this gives the letter sequence : ETIANMSURWDKGOHVF#L#PJBXCYZQ ; It might then start : "Every Time I Am Not Myself," The # are "fillers" where the binary number is skipped.

To make this "Talk" entry Wikipedia-acceptable, I will use it to ask : "Has anyone seen a mnemonic based on that method" ?GeoffAvogadro (talk) 01:14, 5 August 2018 (UTC)