ok so ive been listening to a lot of HF lately and people are throwing around all these codes and shortcuts and i cant keep up. like i get 73 means best regards or whatever but then someone said QSY and someone else came back with QRM and i had no idea what was happening. is there like a master list somewhere or do people just memorize all this over time? also heard someone say OM and YL and i figured those out eventually from context but still. feels like everyone is speaking a different language and im just sitting there lost. does this get easier or is there some trick to learning it faster?

yeah it definitely gets easier, dont worry. the Q codes specifically come from way back in the early radio days, they were designed so operators from different countries could communicate without a language barrier since morse was the main thing. so QSY means change frequency, QRM is interference from other stations (man-made), QRN is natural interference like static from a storm, QTH is your location, QSB means the signal is fading - that kind of thing. honestly the ones you'll hear constantly on HF are probably just like a dozen or so and you'll pick them up just from listening. ARRL has a reference chart if you just google it. OM is old man which sounds rude but its just a friendly way to address another ham, and YL is young lady, though some people use it for any female operator regardless of age. 73 you already got. 88 means love and kisses if you ever hear that one, usually between close friends or a husband and wife team. just keep listening, it clicks eventually.

I was in the exact same boat when I started, spent like my first three months just lurking on 40m trying to figure out what people were even saying. One thing that helped me was just keeping a little notepad next to the radio and writing down anything I heard that I didnt recognize, then looking it up later. after a few weeks the list stopped growing so fast. the Q codes are kind of the core of it but then you also got the prosigns if you get into CW, like AR and SK and BK, which is a whole other layer lol. and people throw in abbreviations even on phone sometimes like saying "going QRT" instead of just "shutting down" - you start to feel it after a while more than actually memorizing it i think.