Ä in Morse code

No. ITU-R M.1677-1 defines the 26 letters A to Z and only one accented letter, É. Ä comes from the national tables of German, Swedish, Finnish and Estonian, so operators who share one of those languages know it and others may not.

With a station you don’t know, send AE instead. Between two operators who both use Ä, the extension keeps the spelling exact.

German, Swedish, Finnish and Estonian tables all send Ä with this signal. It goes back to Gerke’s German code, which added Ä, Ö and Ü in 1851, before the 1865 Paris conference settled the international code.

Danish and Norwegian have no Ä, so their tables give the signal to Æ, and Polish gives it to Ą.

National tables reuse spare signals, so .-.- is also Æ (Danish and Norwegian) and Ą (Polish). Each table was made for one language, so the letters never clash at home: read the signal in the language of the message.

Decoders have to pick one letter. The Morse code to English decoder on this site reads the signal as Ä, whichever letter was meant.

Send AE, .- ., with a normal letter gap. Every operator can copy it. It takes 9 units, 600 ms at 18 WPM, 2 units shorter than Ä.

German writes AE, OE and UE when umlauts are not available, so the stand-in reads naturally in German names.

• Hear it:

  at 18 WPM one unit lasts 66.7 ms, so Ä takes 733 ms (11 units). Press Play above, slow it to 5 WPM to pick out each element, or turn on Repeat.

• Tap it:

  a short tap for each dot and a press three times as long for each dash, with a dot’s pause between them: short, long, short, long.

• Flash it:

  light on for each element, off between them, no faster than 7 WPM. There a unit is 171 ms and Ä takes 1.9 seconds; the Flashlight signaler keeps that pace.

• Write it:

  .-.- as one group, with a space on each side so it does not run into the next letter.

• Send A twice with no gap, .- then .-, and you have Ä.
• It is R with one more dash on the end.
• Learn the sound, not the picture: say di-dah-di-dah until you hear it as one shape.

• BÄR is -... .-.- .-., three letters and 33 units long (2.2 seconds at 18 WPM).
• HÄNDEL is .... .-.- -. -.. . .-.., six letters and 55 units long (3.7 seconds at 18 WPM).

To hear a whole word or sentence, type it into the Morse code translator. The standard letters are all on the alphabet chart, and the other national letters are with the rest of the accented letters.