Cruptic message to decipher...please

September 5, 2012 2:29 PM

WTH? Message in a bottle, secret admirer, or random gibberish? A friend's mom took her car to the shop (SW US) and left a whiteboard (which she uses to communicate) inside. After she picked the car up she noticed the following written on it. Any ideas as to what language it is or what it says? Thanks in advance. Mysterious message here
posted by subajestad to writing & language (11 answers total)

It appears to be Russian. No idea what it says other than "I ...."
posted by Tanizaki at 2:31 PM on September 5, 2012

"I love you Maria Mary." Can't read the signature.
posted by gubo at 2:32 PM on September 5, 2012 [4 favorites]

It looks like Russian in stylized cyrillic, I can make out "I love you Maria" but cannot make out the last line.
posted by cgk at 2:32 PM on September 5, 2012

Seconding gubo.
Well, the first two lines are definitely "I love you Maria".

The other two are hard to read - line three can indeed be "Mary", or "Kori", or "Kelp"...
"(M/K)(e/o)(r/l/d)(p/i)", something like that.

The last line looks like, letter-by-letter: Zh-o-i-(l/k/n)... and the last three symbols are completely incomprehensible.
Joi(something) maybe.
posted by egor83 at 2:43 PM on September 5, 2012

The third line is Кери [Keri]. The fourth line is Жоил [Zhoil] followed by some symbol that may or may not be an elaborate form of a letter.
posted by languagehat at 3:02 PM on September 5, 2012

> followed by some symbol that may or may not be an elaborate form of a letter.

Looks like three different symbols to me, but these are hard to read.
Signature maybe?
posted by egor83 at 3:06 PM on September 5, 2012

"I love you Mariah Carey Zho..."

Maybe Mariah Carey was playing on the radio?
posted by ellenaim at 3:22 PM on September 5, 2012 [1 favorite]

So what's your friend's mom's name?
posted by item at 4:25 PM on September 5, 2012 [1 favorite]

> I love you Mariah Carey

D'oh! Of course that's what it says. (The official transliteration is Мэрайя Кэри, which reflects the pronunciation I'm familiar with, so it didn't occur to me.) We'll probably never know what the signature line says, but at least the message is no longer cryptic.
posted by languagehat at 5:05 PM on September 5, 2012 [1 favorite]

Is your friend's mom by any chance Mariah Carey?
posted by found missing at 6:14 PM on September 5, 2012 [12 favorites]

Or maybe they meant Mary Carey.

The signature line is going to bug me.
posted by lily_bart at 8:45 PM on September 5, 2012