Morse Code in Other Alphabets

Morse code was designed for the Latin alphabet, so other writing systems either borrow the pattern of the Latin letter that sounds or looks closest (Russian, Greek, Hebrew, Arabic, Korean) or have a code of their own (Japanese Wabun). Chinese is sent as four-digit numbers looked up in a codebook. The tables below list each.

Note. The main translator on this site uses the International Morse code for the Latin alphabet (ITU-R M.1677-1). The tables on this page are reference charts, not a translator. They follow the published tables on Wikipedia's “Morse code for non-Latin alphabets” and “Wabun code” pages, checked on 21 October 2026. Practice varies by country and radio service, so check the local rules before relying on one for official work.

How other alphabets are handled

There are three ways Morse code has been adapted:

1. Borrow a Latin letter's code. Greek Alpha takes the code of A, Russian Zhe takes the code of V. This is how most Cyrillic, Greek, Hebrew, Arabic and Korean tables work, so a telegraph operator used to Latin Morse already knows most of the code.
2. Give each character its own pattern. Japanese kana have codes of their own in the Wabun system.
3. Convert the characters to numbers. Chinese telegrams send a four-digit number for each character, so only the ten digits are needed.

Because of the first method, the tables below show the Latin equivalent next to each letter. Several letters share a pattern with accented Latin letters: Ö is ---., Ü is ..--, Ä is .-.- and CH is ----.

Japanese Morse code (Wabun code)

Japanese Morse code is called Wabun code (和文). It sends the Japanese kana, the syllable characters, one by one. The table is in the traditional iroha order. It is written here in hiragana, but telegraphy and radio normally use katakana for the same sounds.

A voiced sound such as ga or ba is sent as the kana for ka or ha followed by the dakuten mark, two dots.

On the air, Wabun is mixed with International Morse. The prosign DO, -..---, announces that Wabun starts, and SN, ...-., switches back to International Morse.

Russian Morse code

Russian Morse code follows the Latin pattern with Cyrillic letters in alphabetical order. The letter Ё has no code of its own and is sent as Е. The hard sign and soft sign share a code.

Ukrainian adds a few letters: І uses the code of И, and Ї is .---..

Greek Morse code

Hebrew Morse code

Hebrew is written right to left, but the Morse tables list the letters in alphabetical order.

Arabic Morse code

Arabic letters take the code of the Latin letter that sounds closest, and several rare letters take codes that Latin Morse uses for accents.

Korean Morse code

Korean is written in syllable blocks, but Morse code sends the individual letters (jamo). The consonant and vowel tables below are those published on Wikipedia. Korean tables have changed over the years: the vowels ㅐ and ㅔ were absent from the original 1888 protocol and were added later.

Chinese Morse code

Chinese has thousands of characters, so it cannot give each one a pattern. The Chinese telegraph code instead gives every character a four-digit number from 0000 to 9999, listed in a codebook. The sender looks up each character, sends the digits in Morse code, and the receiver splits them into groups of four and looks each one up.

For example, in the standard codebook 中 is 0022 and 文 is 2429, so 中文 is sent like this:

The first Chinese telegraph codebook was published in 1872 by Septime Auguste Viguier, a French customs officer in Shanghai. The code survives in some official forms: Hong Kong identity cards show the code for the holder's Chinese name.

So a Chinese Morse code translator is a lookup between characters and numbers, followed by ordinary Morse code for digits. You can send the digits of any code with the Morse code translator or the numbers chart.

What about Spanish, French, German and Hindi?

• Accented Latin letters have their own codes, such as Ñ, É, Ä, Ö and Ü. They are listed on the alphabet page and the main translator reads them.
• Hindi and other Indian scripts have no single international standard that this site can verify, so no table is offered here.
• Other scripts (Thai, Persian, Turkish and many more) have national tables, which we do not list.

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