Dying languages?

An interesting article, titled --- -. . -- .- -. .----. ... -... .. -.. - --- ... .- ...- ., discusses the decline of Morse Code. It refers to Morse Code as a "language".

I'd always thought Morse Code was an alphabet, not a language. Comments?

Excerpts from the article:

Nostalgic for simpler days, retired astrophysicist Chuck Adams is translating classics of boys' lit into a language he fears is going the way of kit radios and marbles: Morse code. Mr. Adams uses homemade software to download online books with expired copyrights, convert the typed words into Morse code tones and record them on compact discs he sells on the Internet. In about an hour his software can take any book in the public domain and turn it into a string of digital dits and dahs.

"But I have no delusions of grandeur that I can save Morse code from extinction. I'm not Don Quixote. I'm not going to go out and fight windmills." In February, the Federal Communications Commission eliminated the Morse requirements for ham-radio licenses. "It is a sad state of affairs when the U.S. doesn't even attempt to keep the language alive or give an incentive to work on it," says Mr. Adams.

Morse code is pretty much what it says it is: a code. One to one mapping between letters and digits and dots and dashes.

In some ways it reminds me of text language.

It's probably common knowledge ... but in formal Morse Code discourse the recipiennt of the message responds with " ._. " which is the letter "R."

When the letters were named, to improve accuracy in understanding, the name "Roger" was given to the letter "R." Hence the word "Roger" in spoken radio discourse means "Received."

I agree that Morse code is not a language; if anything it is a kind of Roman alphabet. If it were a language then Morse code messages would be identical regardless of whether they were being sent by an English speaker, a Spanish speaker or a German speaker. Which they clearly are not.