Is morse code the same in every language?
It is the same wherever the Latin alphabet is. ITU-R M.1677-1 gives one pattern to each letter from A to Z, to each digit and to the common punctuation marks, so an operator in one country sends exactly what an operator in another expects. Scripts the recommendation does not cover, such as Japanese kana or Cyrillic, need a separate table.
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The flashlight needs camera access. Nothing is recorded or sent.
The distress signal is the same nine marks everywhere, which is most of the reason it became the one signal anybody might recognize.
One recommendation, one set of patterns
Morse is standardized. ITU-R M.1677-1, published by the International Telecommunication Union, lists each Latin letter, each digit from 0 to 9 and the punctuation marks, with one run of dits and dahs for each. It also fixes the timing: a dah is three dits, marks inside a character sit one unit apart, characters three units and words seven.
Because it is an international recommendation rather than a national one, a station in Brazil and a station in Poland send the same marks for the same letter. That is what people usually mean when they call morse universal, and for Latin text it is true.
What the recommendation does not cover
The table stops at the Latin alphabet. It has no entry for a Japanese kana, a Cyrillic letter, a Greek letter, an Arabic letter or a Hebrew one, so text in those scripts cannot be sent as international morse at all. Sending it needs a table built for that script, and such a table is a separate system: its patterns stand for its own characters and will not decode as international morse.
There is a little room at the edges. The recommendation includes an accented e, and tables in common use add a few more letters for German and Spanish. That covers accents inside languages written in the Latin alphabet; it does not extend to a different script.
A code, not a language
It helps to be exact about what morse is. It does not carry meaning of its own, any more than printed letters do. It is a way of writing an alphabet as timed signals, so the language on the other end is whatever language that alphabet was already writing. Send English through it and English comes out; send Indonesian and Indonesian comes out.
This is also why the one signal everybody recognizes is not a word at all. SOS was adopted for its shape rather than its spelling, and the International Telecommunication Union’s record of the 1906 Berlin conference writes it as a single group of nine marks. Play it above, or read the whole story on the SOS page.
Sending your own text
Type any Latin-alphabet text into the morse code translator and it will encode it against the same table this page describes, including the accented letters the standard covers. The printable morse code chart has the full set on one sheet.
Questions people ask next
Is morse code the same in every country?
For Latin text, yes. ITU-R M.1677-1 is an international recommendation, and countries that follow it use identical patterns for the letters, digits and punctuation.
Is morse code a language?
No. It is a way of writing an alphabet as timed signals, so it carries whatever language that alphabet already writes.
How do you send Japanese or Russian in morse code?
With a code table built for that script, because ITU-R M.1677-1 covers only Latin letters, digits and punctuation. Those tables are separate systems and do not decode as international morse.
Does morse code have accented letters?
A few. ITU-R M.1677-1 includes an accented e, and some tables add the German and Spanish letters, but the set is much smaller than any alphabet that uses them.
Who decides what morse code is?
The Radiocommunication Sector of the International Telecommunication Union. The current text is Recommendation ITU-R M.1677-1, published in October 2009.
Related answers
- Is morse code still used today?
Yes, in the places where a plain on and off tone still beats the alternatives.
- Does morse code have spaces?
Yes, three of them, and they carry as much as the marks do.
Sources
- Codes and timing follow Recommendation ITU-R M.1677-1 (10/2009), International Morse code (International Telecommunication Union, 2009).
- International Radiotelegraph Conference (Berlin, 1906) (International Telecommunication Union).