What language is this and what does it say?

January 16, 2018 7:42 AM

It's an old certificate that we found in my girlfriend's grandfather's place.

We're doing some family inventory and trying to see if we can put an intricate family history book together. We found what seems to be a signed certificate of some sort.
If anyone can tell what language it's in - or better yet.. can translate it, it would be of great help. Certificate Here.

posted by fantasticness to Writing & Language (10 answers total)

Response by poster: Sorry. HERE
posted by fantasticness at 7:49 AM on January 16, 2018

Too long since I studied Russian to be able to translate (or even to 100% be sure it's actually Russian and not some other Slavic language), but that sure looks like cursive Cyrillic to me.
posted by solotoro at 7:53 AM on January 16, 2018 [2 favorites]

It looks like Russian. It's dated September 12, 1920. I'm crap at reading handwriting, but it appears to be a birth certificate? I can make out a phrase "born 26 August 1920."
posted by Weftage at 7:58 AM on January 16, 2018 [1 favorite]

For some reason I can't put my finger on, I have an inkling it's Bulgarian rather than Russian. But definitely agree with previous posters that the writing is Cyrillic. Can't help with translation, sorry.
posted by RRgal at 8:10 AM on January 16, 2018 [2 favorites]

Mm, no, I think it's Russian.

-> It's not Bulgarian: Сентябр-, not Септемвр-.
->By the same token, it's not Belarusian, whose word for September appears to be Верасень (a stark departure!); nor is it Serbian (Септембар)
->I don't thiiiiiink it's Ukrainian either -- it clearly says Kiev and not Kyiv. Also, doesn't Ukrainian have that other letter, the Latin-like "I"?
posted by inconstant at 8:33 AM on January 16, 2018 [1 favorite]

Working through it very slowly due to my highly limited knowledge and the fact that it's written in 1920s spelling, it seems to be some kind of certificate regarding the circumcision on 3 September 1920 of a baby named Yakov (b. 26 August 1920). I figure you'd be interested in the names, but I couldn't make out the parents' names very well -- Isaak something for one, and the other one I couldn't make out at all.
posted by inconstant at 9:00 AM on January 16, 2018 [3 favorites]

It's Russian (in pre-reform spelling -- the revolutionary reform took a while to filter down), a circumcision certificate from a Kiev rabbi. It reads (in modern spelling, with question marks where I'm guessing or can't read it):

Киевский раввин 1-го уч. [This line is printed; the rest is handwritten.]
Сентября 12 дня 1920
Киев Свидетельство
Сим удостоверю, что над новорожденном Яковом Мильнером, родившимся 26го августа 1920 года, от родителей Исаака Абрамовича и Шивры Нудимовны (?) Мильнер -- 3го сентября совершен обряд обрезания, по правилам Еврейской религии.
??? актом р. сост. служить не может.
?? Гуревич (?)

My translation:

Kiev rabbi 1st sch[ool]
September 12, 1920
Kiev Certificate
By these presents I attest that on September 3 the rite of circumcision was performed according to the rules of the Jewish religion on the newborn Yakov [i.e., Jacob] M———, born August 26, 1920, of parents Isaac A——— and Shvira N——— M———.
...cannot serve as ... document.
[signed] G———

I hope that gives you what you need!
posted by languagehat at 9:14 AM on January 16, 2018 [77 favorites]

This isn't quite relevant, and clearly languagehat has solved the most pressing issue already (I suspect we were all waiting for him!), but reading that article about Kazakhstan's new alphabet in the New York Times this morning, I ran across this illuminating paragraph, which sheds some light on why everyone had so much trouble figuring out what language this was:

How to transcribe Kazakh, a Turkic language developed by nomadic herders without an alphabet of their own, has long been a particularly fraught issue. For centuries, it was written using the script of Arabic, the language of Islam, which most Kazakhs have long at least nominally practiced.

Kazakhstan switched briefly to the Latin alphabet at the start of the last century, and Russia’s Communist leaders after the 1917 revolution initially supported the use of a Latin script.

Later, growing fearful of pan-Turkic sentiment among Kazakhs, Uzbeks and other Turkic peoples in the Soviet Union, Moscow between 1938 and 1940 ordered that Kazakh and other Turkic languages be written in modified Cyrillic as part of a push to promote Russian culture. To try to ensure that different Turkic peoples could not read one another’s writings and develop a shared non-Soviet sense of common identity, it introduced nearly 20 versions of Cyrillic, Mr. Kocaoglu said. [Emphasis my own.]

posted by tapir-whorf at 2:07 AM on January 17, 2018 [5 favorites]

Important correction: I lazily assumed уч. in the first line (Киевский раввин 1-го уч.) was short for училище '(specialized) school,' but suddenly I had doubts about that, and a little googling convinced me it's actually short for участок [uchastok] 'section; (as administrative unit of city) district, area, zone.' (Well, technically short for участка [uchastka], the genitive.) So it's the rabbinate of the First District of Kiev, whatever that meant in the summer of 1920 (Kiev had changed hands over a dozen times in the last couple of years during the Civil War).
posted by languagehat at 6:44 AM on January 17, 2018 [2 favorites]

I thought I'd go looking for more details about the rabbi, and found an eBay auction from last September, which includes the certificate (BRIT MILAH CERTIFICATE IN RUSSIAN 1920, KIEV SIGNED BY CHIEF RABBI OF KIEV A.B.G———), along with the parents' ketubah, and the corresponding Tel Aviv marriage certificate.
posted by zamboni at 8:58 PM on January 17, 2018 [1 favorite]