What language is this?
August 21, 2020 3:07 PM Subscribe
This image is from a baptism record in 1854, in the region where Hungary meets the Ukraine and Romania. The people I'm researching are Greek Catholics, so that might have some bearing on the language of the document. (E.g. Roman Catholics in Hungary have documents in Latin.) I've indicated what kind of information is in each column to aid in reading it, because the scan quality and cursive make it difficult.
My follow-up question, once I know what the language is:
How would the name Ferencz (Francis, Frank) Kozma be written in that language?
The original of the document is here on Familysearch, which requires a login but is free.
My follow-up question, once I know what the language is:
How would the name Ferencz (Francis, Frank) Kozma be written in that language?
The original of the document is here on Familysearch, which requires a login but is free.
One of the month entries looks like "августа" which I gather means "August" in Russian, which also suggests Russian or a related language.
posted by biogeo at 3:51 PM on August 21, 2020
posted by biogeo at 3:51 PM on August 21, 2020
It's definitely Cyrillic, and the names are fairly standard Eastern European ones although some dates are more Russian I think it's Ukrainian overall; so I see Maria, Varvara (or what you would translate to Barbara) and Peter(Petro).
Ferencz(I would actually probably translate it as "Franz") Kozma could be written as Франц/Ференс Козьма .
I read and write Ukrainian and I think I could read most of this if it was a clearer image.
posted by larthegreat at 3:57 PM on August 21, 2020 [2 favorites]
Ferencz(I would actually probably translate it as "Franz") Kozma could be written as Франц/Ференс Козьма .
I read and write Ukrainian and I think I could read most of this if it was a clearer image.
posted by larthegreat at 3:57 PM on August 21, 2020 [2 favorites]
As an aside, you have male and female flipped, закон means lawful, so assuming these are baptismal records, illegitimate/legitimate works.
posted by larthegreat at 4:10 PM on August 21, 2020 [2 favorites]
posted by larthegreat at 4:10 PM on August 21, 2020 [2 favorites]
The Byzantine Catholic (as we called it) church my mother's family grew up in was from exactly that region and used Old Church Slavonic.
I'll ask my mother when I get a chance and update if I get any info, but while she's great at singing in that language I doubt she's Cyrillic literate.
posted by mark k at 4:20 PM on August 21, 2020 [1 favorite]
I'll ask my mother when I get a chance and update if I get any info, but while she's great at singing in that language I doubt she's Cyrillic literate.
posted by mark k at 4:20 PM on August 21, 2020 [1 favorite]
Another aside: sometimes the 'invert color' option makes spidery letters clearer on old documents.
posted by Iris Gambol at 6:25 PM on August 21, 2020
posted by Iris Gambol at 6:25 PM on August 21, 2020
98% sure this is Russian, but I struggled with it for a bit because of the presence of the letter "i", which is only found in Ukrainian and a few other Slavic languages that this definitely isn't (Macedonian, Rusyn, Belarusian). But then I realized the letter "i" did actually exist in Russian prior to the Soviet spelling reforms of 1918 (this pre-spelling-reform orthography is also evident here in the name "Peter", which is here spelled Петрь, but these days no longer has the final "ь").
Russian and Ukrainian can be hard to tell apart with such a small sample of (readable) words, but other things that finally convinced me it had to be Russian and not Ukrainian:
1. The word for "name" (имя) (in the header for the column of first names) is spelled in the Russian way, vs. the Ukrainian ім'я.
2. The month names are cognate with our English names ("Iyun", "Avgust", etc.) here. This is true for Russian, but Ukrainian month names are really different, totally unlike English or Russian.
3. I see the word for "year" in genitive case (года / "goda") under "godparents' names", next to 1854. Pretty sure Ukrainian would use a very different-looking word for "year" in this case like року ("roku") or something like that.
3. In the "male" column, male sex is indicated by "женск.", an abbreviation of "женский" (this actually means "female", so the above poster is correct that you have the sexes flipped) -- I'm almost positive the Ukrainian word for "female" is very different. By contrast, I also see the word "закон.", an abbreviation of "законный" ("legitimate") -- here I think the Ukrainian word is identical to the Russian, except in spelling. But, the spelling difference would lie in the part that comes after the "." so it's not evident here. Tricksy!
As for "Ferencz", Hungarian "cz" makes a sound equivalent to ц (like "ts"), so the transliteration would be Ференц. I don't think there's an equivalent form of this name (like Francis, Frank, Franz) in any Slavic language, so a transliteration is what I'd expect to see (could be wrong here).
I couldn't make out hardly any other words that weren't names or months ... I'm a native Russian speaker but this thing's damn hard to read! Possibly I just suck at reading cursive though.
posted by geneva uswazi at 6:32 PM on August 21, 2020 [11 favorites]
Russian and Ukrainian can be hard to tell apart with such a small sample of (readable) words, but other things that finally convinced me it had to be Russian and not Ukrainian:
1. The word for "name" (имя) (in the header for the column of first names) is spelled in the Russian way, vs. the Ukrainian ім'я.
2. The month names are cognate with our English names ("Iyun", "Avgust", etc.) here. This is true for Russian, but Ukrainian month names are really different, totally unlike English or Russian.
3. I see the word for "year" in genitive case (года / "goda") under "godparents' names", next to 1854. Pretty sure Ukrainian would use a very different-looking word for "year" in this case like року ("roku") or something like that.
3. In the "male" column, male sex is indicated by "женск.", an abbreviation of "женский" (this actually means "female", so the above poster is correct that you have the sexes flipped) -- I'm almost positive the Ukrainian word for "female" is very different. By contrast, I also see the word "закон.", an abbreviation of "законный" ("legitimate") -- here I think the Ukrainian word is identical to the Russian, except in spelling. But, the spelling difference would lie in the part that comes after the "." so it's not evident here. Tricksy!
As for "Ferencz", Hungarian "cz" makes a sound equivalent to ц (like "ts"), so the transliteration would be Ференц. I don't think there's an equivalent form of this name (like Francis, Frank, Franz) in any Slavic language, so a transliteration is what I'd expect to see (could be wrong here).
I couldn't make out hardly any other words that weren't names or months ... I'm a native Russian speaker but this thing's damn hard to read! Possibly I just suck at reading cursive though.
posted by geneva uswazi at 6:32 PM on August 21, 2020 [11 favorites]
I can't read Cyrillic, but from the names you mention and the location (Border where Hungary meets both Romania and the modern Ukraine) the language would likely be Ruthene (Rusyn) which is widely spoken in the area by the Hutsul people. The neighboring languages (Romanian, Hungarian, Schwab German) are all written in latin script.
posted by zaelic at 6:25 AM on August 22, 2020
posted by zaelic at 6:25 AM on August 22, 2020
This thread is closed to new comments.
My Russian is too ancient to decipher anything but name cognates here, and I have no Ukrainian, but that's the linguistic corner I'd start my researches in.
posted by humbug at 3:47 PM on August 21, 2020 [1 favorite]