Profound thought for a Sunday afternoon…
The process of learning Morse Code has forced me to think (or not think) about the way we hear and process information. In CW (as us Hams call it), the language is heard and written down with no intermediate process. So if you are doing it right, dah dah, dit is written down as “me”… not thought of as M, E and then written down. You have to disconnect the part of your brain that thinks “ok, that’s two dahs and then a space so that’s a letter.. hrm.. two dahs, oh yeah.. M….”
Unfortunately, the CD I’m using to learn (the famous Gordon West training tapes) throw in all sorts of mnemonic devices (think of the two humps of the small M… dah dah…) which I can’t get out of my head when I’m transcribing.
There are so many things we do automatically, without even thinking, like throwing the car into reverse to back out of a parking space or hitting reply when responding to an email. At what point does that cease to be something you think about and something you just do to complete the task at hand?
And at the same time, my seven year old son is picking up both Japanese (from his karate class) and French (from a French class he is taking) and he can toss out phrases in either without even thinking.
I have to get back in touch with my inner seven year old.
