ITU-R M.1677-1 · national tables
Morse code accented letters
Only one accented letter, É, is in the International Morse code standard. Ä, Ö, Ü, Å, Ñ, Ç and CH are national extensions that operators who share a language use with each other.
Start with É, the standard one, or see how Ç adds a dot to C and why CH gets four dashes.
The eight letters and their codes
Play a letter at 18 WPM, or open its page for the timing, memory cues and words. É stands alone as the ITU letter. Dashed cards are national extensions, each with the plain spelling that any operator can copy.
ITU standard
- dot dot dash dot dot
French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Slovak, Hungarian
ITU standard
National
- dot dash dot dashOr AE
German, Swedish, Finnish, Estonian
National - dash dash dash dotOr OE
German, Swedish, Finnish, Estonian, Hungarian, Turkish
National - dot dot dash dashOr UE
German, Hungarian, Turkish
National - dot dash dash dot dashOr AA
Swedish, Norwegian, Danish, Finnish
National - dash dash dot dash dashOr N
Spanish
National - dash dash dash dashOr CH
German, Czech, Slovak
National - dash dot dash dot dotOr C
French, Turkish
National
Writing a name with an accent
A name can go two ways: with the national code, which keeps it exact for a reader who knows that table, or in standard letters, which any chart decodes. Accented letters with no code of their own, like the Ë in Zoë, are simply the base letter.
For a gift or a tattoo, pick the version the person will want to read back. The Bracelet designer uses these codes for É, Ä, Ö, Ü, Å, Ñ and Ç.
- JoséSpanishWith the national code · 49 units.--- --- ... ..-..As JOSE · 39 units.--- --- ... .
- MüllerGermanWith the national code · 59 units-- ..-- .-.. .-.. . .-.As MUELLER · 59 units-- ..- . .-.. .-.. . .-.
- PeñaSpanishWith the national code · 43 units.--. . --.-- .-As PENA · 31 units.--. . -. .-
- FrançoisFrenchWith the national code · 79 units..-. .-. .- -. -.-.. --- .. ...As FRANCOIS · 77 units..-. .-. .- -. -.-. --- .. ...
- ZoëEnglishMorse code · 29 units--.. --- .
By language
The letters each language’s Morse table adds to A to Z. A letter with a solid border has its own page; a dashed one shares another letter’s code.
- Norwegian and Danish
- ÅÆØ
- Italian
- É
- Portuguese
- É
- Every language
- The 26 standard letters work everywhere. See the alphabet
More charts
Good questions
Frequently asked questions.
About accented letters in Morse code
Are accented letters part of International Morse code?
Only one is. ITU-R M.1677-1 defines É, which it calls “accented e”, as ..-.., five elements long. Ä, Ö, Ü, Å, Ñ, Ç and CH are national extensions: operators who share a language use them with each other, but a station elsewhere may not know them.
Why do Ä, Æ and Ą share one code?
Each national table was made for one language and needed codes only for its own letters, so the same spare signals were reused. Ä in German, Æ in Danish and Ą in Polish all became .-.- without clashing at home. Read a shared code in the language of the message.
What do operators send instead of an accented letter?
Plain letters every operator can copy:
- AE for Ä
- OE for Ö
- UE for Ü
- AA for Å
- The base letter for Ñ and Ç
CH goes as C then H. É needs no stand-in, since it is in the standard, though a plain E is fine when the word reads clearly.
How do I write a name with an accent in Morse code?
Use the letter’s national code if the reader knows it, or its plain spelling if they may not: Müller is MÜLLER with the Ü code, or MUELLER in standard letters. Accented letters with no code of their own, such as Ë or Á, are written as the base letter.
Is CH a letter in Morse code?
Not in the ITU standard, but German, Czech and Slovak tables give it its own sign, four dashes.
Czech and Slovak count CH as one letter of the alphabet. No standard letter has four dashes, so it is easy to tell apart. See CH in Morse code.
Is there a Morse code for punctuation?
Yes. ITU-R M.1677-1 defines the full stop, comma, question mark, apostrophe, slash, brackets, colon, quotation marks and a few more, each with its own code. The punctuation chart has all of them with sound.
How does Morse code work?
Each character is a fixed pattern of short and long signals. A dot is one unit, a dash three, the gap inside a letter one, between letters three and between words seven. At 18 WPM a unit is 66.7 ms, so É takes 733 ms.
Can I type accented letters in the translator?
Yes. The Morse code translator sends É, Ä, Ö, Ü, Å, Ñ and Ç with the codes on this page, and letters that share a code, such as Æ, Ø or À, with that code.
Š and Ĥ, and accented letters with no code of their own such as Á or Ë, are sent as their base letter; a typed CH goes as C then H. Reading Morse back, a shared code comes out as one letter, so Æ comes back as Ä.
Is there a printable chart of the accented letters?
Yes. Use Print the accented letters at the top of this page, or your browser’s print command, to print it or save it as a PDF; the printout carries the codes, the shared codes and what to send instead.
Sources
- ITURecommendation ITU-R M.1677-1: International Morse codeThe standard · Used for É, the standard letters and the timing
- WikipediaMorse codeUsed for the extension codes, the letters that share them and Gerke’s code
- Swedish WikipediaSpecialtecken i morsealfabetetUsed for the Scandinavian, Finnish, Estonian, German, French and Polish tables
- German WikipediaMorsecodeUsed for the German table and the umlauts added in 1851
- Czech WikipediaMorseova abecedaUsed for CH in the Czech table and its memory phrase
- Hungarian WikipediaMorzekódUsed for the Hungarian table and its memory phrases
- Turkish WikipediaMors alfabesiUsed for the Turkish table
- WikipediaGermanic umlautUsed for AE, OE and UE in place of the umlauts
- WikipediaÅUsed for the 1917 and 1948 spelling reforms and AA in its place
Last checked November 2026
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