How to read this French date?

July 29, 2009 2:22 AM

How to read this date written in French?

Obviously, the letter was written in Verdun, in 1920, on the 17th but of which month?

posted by rom1 to Writing & Language (14 answers total)

It's really rather difficult to make out on that small image - do you have the original document, or another way to provide a higher resolution/dpi scan?
posted by Dysk at 2:50 AM on July 29, 2009

The "l" would be for lundi I presume... and May was the only month in 1920 that had its 17th fall on a Monday. However, what's written doesn't look in anyway like "Mai".
posted by molecicco at 2:53 AM on July 29, 2009

L is not for "Lundi", but most likely for "le" i.e. "the" 17th.
posted by MessageInABottle at 2:58 AM on July 29, 2009

I dunno. Those two first long strokes, which look like separate letters, could actually be a funky "M", but with the top connector broken.
posted by molecicco at 3:00 AM on July 29, 2009

I thought for a moment that what appears to be "lu" prior to the 17th might mean "Monday", but according to this, the only Monday the 17th in France was in May, and the g-something after "17" certainly doesn't look like "mai". The abbreviations don't clue me in much either.
posted by turgid dahlia at 3:00 AM on July 29, 2009

it actually looks like "le".
The rest is hard to read - my guess would be a hastily written "julliet" (July) - after all, if you're in the middle of the month and you know your correspondent will received this in a few days, you're not going to think he/she will have any doubts as to when you're writing.
posted by MessageInABottle at 3:02 AM on July 29, 2009

Also, I don't think anyone would abbreviate "le" as "l.". And since its cursive, that is definitely a dot after the l, and not an e.
posted by molecicco at 3:02 AM on July 29, 2009

Are you sure it is a date? I say this because Verdun and 1920 are written in a different hand and a different ink.
posted by TWinbrook8 at 3:28 AM on July 29, 2009

Another vote for "le" - french people pretty much always include the definite article in dates. The month is bloody hard to determine though. Does the letter give any clues? "Here in Verdun, the daffodils are glorious!" or "It's been snowing for weeks now"...
posted by handee at 3:29 AM on July 29, 2009

Best answer: I reckon "le 17 9bre" aka Novembre in French. If so, that would have been a Wednesday.
posted by dirm at 3:30 AM on July 29, 2009 [1 favorite]

I also thought maybe it wasn't a date, but "9bre" is pretty convincing.
posted by molecicco at 3:34 AM on July 29, 2009

Dirm has it: "le 17 9bre," i.e. 17 November. As its name implies, November was the ninth month of the Roman calendar, since the year began in March, and this form of abbreviation is common in Romance languages.

I'm curious about the letter. Unless this is an altered image, the difference in ink and the spacing suggests that the date was written in after the place and year. Is it some kind of official quasi-form letter that would have been written out beforehand with room to fill in relevant details?
posted by brianogilvie at 3:37 AM on July 29, 2009

Response by poster: dirm has go it indeed. Thanks!
brianogilvie, you are absolutely right when you say that the letter is some kind of official quasi-form letter.
posted by rom1 at 3:42 AM on July 29, 2009

In Paul Fussell's The Great War and Modern Memory, he talks about fill-in-the-blank post cards used by the Allied forces that were often the only way that soldiers could communicate back home. It was, apparently, an early attempt at controlling the way news got back to the people at home. Anyway, perhaps it's that sort of document.
posted by GenjiandProust at 8:06 AM on July 29, 2009