okay so ive been listening to a lot of HF lately and people are throwing around all these codes and short words and i cant figure out half of what theyre saying. like i hear QSL and QRN and QRM all the time and i kind of figured out QSL means like confirmed or something but the rest im lost on. also people say 73 at the end of conversations which i looked up and means best regards but why not just say that lol. and then theres stuff like OM and YL and XYL which i think are for men and women but im not totally sure. is there like a master list somewhere or do people just kind of pick these up over time? ive been licensed for about 3 months and mostly been on 2m/70cm but just got a used Icom and want to start doing actual HF stuff soon

yeah the Q codes go back way before ham radio, they were originally developed for maritime and commercial telegraph operators so they could communicate across language barriers quickly. there are like 40 or 50 of the common ones you'll hear on the air but you really only need to know maybe a dozen to get by on HF. QRM is interference from other stations, QRN is natural static and noise, QSB is when your signal is fading in and out, QTH is your location, QSL is confirmation of a contact. QRP means low power which is a whole rabbit hole if you get into that stuff. and yeah 73 is just tradition at this point, people have been saying it since the 1800s basically. the OM/YL/XYL thing is old fashioned too, OM is old man which sounds rude but its just how hams refer to each other, YL is young lady for any licensed woman, and XYL is supposedly ex-young lady meaning wife. i know it sounds kind of dated but thats just how it is. honestly the best way to learn is just to listen a lot, you'll pick it up fast once you start making contacts

73 to you too lol. im pretty new myself, got my general last year and the abbreviations tripped me up for a while too. one thing that helped me was just keeping a little cheat sheet next to the radio for the first few months. QRZ is another big one, it means whos calling or whos there, youll hear it constantly when someone is running a pileup. also dont forget RST which isnt a Q code but its how people give signal reports, readability signal tone, usually something like 59 which means perfect. took me forever to figure out what people meant when they said you were a 59