so ive been listening to a lot of HF lately and also just reading posts on here and everyone just throws around QRM and QSB and QTH and honestly i dont even know half of them. i know QSL means like confirmed or acknowledged or something and QTH is your location but thats about it. is there like a standard list somewhere or do people just kind of pick them up over time. also some guys on the repeater were talking about QSY and i had to google it after. feels like learning a whole other language on top of everything else

yeah it definitely feels that way at first but honestly you pick up the common ones pretty fast just from being on the air. QRM is interference from other stations, QRN is natural static like from storms, QSB is when the signal is fading in and out which happens a lot on HF, QSY means change frequency, QRZ is who is calling me basically. there are a ton of them technically but most people only use maybe a dozen or so regularly in actual conversation. ARRL has a full list on their site if you want to go deep on it but dont stress about memorizing them all at once. you'll hear QRT a lot too which just means a station is shutting down or going off air

one thing i'll add is that some of the abbreviations people use arent really official Q codes at all, like 73 and 88 those are just traditional ham shorthand that came from old telegraph days i think. 73 means best regards and 88 is love and kisses which people usually only use in certain contexts lol. and then theres stuff like OM which is old man but its used for any male ham, YL is young lady for any female ham regardless of age, XYL is for a married female ham or someones wife. honestly some of it is a little dated but its still used all the time especially on CW where people are trying to say as much as possible with as few keystrokes as they can