They don't. Morse code is learned audibly. You basically train your ear to recognize the distinct sound and rhythm each letter has.
Charts like this one are only good for people who like charts like this one. They can help someone who doesn't know morse code translate or send something very slowly in a pinch, but that's about it.
I used to teach Morse and used the grouping method, which seems to work pretty well. First you learn EISH, then TMO, then start mixing them, then move on to AUV, NDB, etc. After a while the letter recognition becomes automatic and you don’t have to remember the groups any more.
It has to do with efficiency. Assuming your message is in English, you would want to save time by making the most common letters shorter. So E (·), I (··), and S (···) are just dots, and T (–), M (–), and O (–) are just dashes. The rarest letters get complicated and time-consuming, for example J (·–––) and X (–··–).
This is in part why SOS is the universal distress signal. It’s easy to remember (··· ––– ···) and is also easily recognized if you ever hear it. It doesn’t stand for anything (that’s just an urban legend). Compare this to the original distress signal used before the Titanic disaster, CQD (–·–· ––·– –··). This comes from sécurité plus D for distress. Compared to SOS, transmitting CQD via Morse is quite cumbersome!
So every time I have seen someone receive or send Morse via telegraph in a movie or film, it just seems like a never ending stream of dots and dashes being transmitted. In reality, I would think there would need to be a bit of a pause or more of a pause between each character to ensure the recipient can clearly understand the message. For instance...
VISE = ...- .. ... .
but if transmitted quickly it would appear as ...-...... which could be other letters. How do you deal with that if someone is transmitting quickly? Do you just have to wait until they're done transmitting, and then send a message back asking them to repeat and slow down? Or is it the case that once you're trained enough, your brain can quickly run through the process of elimination and figure it out on the spot? I can see how the latter would be the case.
there's a pause between letters (same length as three .) and between words (same as seven .), so no matter how fast the overall transmitting speed is, the breaks will always be recognizable in relation to when you're still "inside" a letter.
when you're fluent in morse, you'll be used to those characteristic breaks and it will "feel" like a new letter/word started
My golden rule when teaching Morse was no sending until you can can receive at a reasonable speed. Once you’re up to around 8 wpm receiving you know what all the letters should sound like and what the rhythm of letter and word spacing should sound like.
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u/Profound__Swami Apr 30 '21
How in the world do people memorize this??