General Report on Tunny


22G Page 62

habits.

Some messages consist entirely of German, of abbreviations and punctuation, or even of numerals, but in most messages there is a heterogeneous mixture of
                     Hand patches (German language with irregular spacing)
                     Addresses (Abbreviations and punctuation)
                     Message content (Language usually with some abbreviations and numerals)
                     and occasional places where the tape sticks and the same letter of P is transmitted until the tape is adjusted. (R0 p. 67)


(c) Component types of language.

(1) German language (Type C)

The P and ΔP counts for German Language with single 9 spacing vary little in shape, those given in Fig. 22 (VI) being a good example. In P, it will be noticed that the most popular language letter E is almost as frequent as 9, and that other good language letters N, R, I, A, S occur with frequency well above random. The message being largely in lettershift (except for incidental punctuation) the shift change letters 5 and 8 are both below random. Q, J, X, Y are rare.

In ΔP, the most significant letters are : F (= E + N), 3 (= N + 9) J (= E + R = U + N), U (= 5 + M = I + E), 5 (= 9 + 8), G and S which are all high, and B whose 13 contributing bigrams are all feeble. (R2 pp. 97-100)

(2) Single Punctuation (Type B)

All punctuation signs are sent in figure shift, and unless punctuation follows or precedes numerals each sign must be preceded by a 5 and followed by an 8. The most common form of punctuation is the full stop, which occurs extensively in abbreviations and addresses, and has the basic form 5M89 or 5MA89.

Fig. 22 (VII) shows P and ΔP for a standard type of message consisting largely of German language abbreviated with 5M89. 9 which is frequent (in P) both for punctuation and for language is well ahead of any other letter. It is followed (at a distance) by the punctuation letters 5M8, and E at the head of the language group.

In ΔP, the German language letters are still strong (but in a part of the message only), and the lead is taken by 5 (= 9 + 8), U (= 5 + M = I + E), A (= M + 8) and 8 (= M + A = 5 + 9), 5 + U being


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