Please Correct my Handwriting Reading
I recently posted this record and @Ellie Vance helpfully confirmed the known information and added to it, but I'm asking for something different in this posting. I watched Ellie's great videos on how to read handwriting and made an attempt at revisiting the record to try to read each letter, but I'm at my limit now and would appreciate someone filling in the gaps (the question marks) and correcting any other errors I made!
Родилеся 29 окт?б 28 Хешван обр?зан? 5 Ноябр? 6 Кислев
Giving birth 29 October 28 Cheshvan circumcised 5 November 6 Kislev
Отецч мннекй? мпиуанинъ Файвишъ Мо?шовч Рубенчик маешь Шифра Абрамовна
Father ? ? Fayvish Mo?shovch Rubenchik ? Shifra Abramovna
сынь мща домоешь его Довидъ
son ? home? him Dovid
項留言
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Hi Brad!
Me again…
You are doing an amazing job with this!
Here are just a few things that might be helpful.
- Родился (which is the masculine past tense of to be born. If it was a female child being born, it would be родилась, like you can see in some of the entries on the other side of the page in the record you posted first).
- Октяб. The letter with a question mark is a я…these ones start with a hook and then you have a loop. This is an abbreviation for October.
- обрѣзань: The letter that is between the р and the з is the Russian letter ѣ, or the yat. This letter was removed in the 1918 spelling reforms. It makes a sound like the Russian letter “e” does.
- Ноября: This letter is tricky. If you look closely, there is a little bit of a hook, but rather than a bigger loop like the one on October above, it’s more of a line. This seems to happen fairly often at the end of words.
- The next column (not fully visible in this screenshot) has въ г. Минскѣ ( in the city (city is abbreviated) of Minsk) written out sideways. This implies everyone on that page was born in Minsk.
- Отецъ: The letter at the end of this word is a tvordy znak, or a hard sign. Russians LOVE to put this at the end of pre-1918 masculine (ending in a consonant) words. I like to think of it as a stopping point or a separation.
- Минскiй (masculine adjectives usually end in an й, and if you look at the other entries on the page, they also end in an й. I’m thinking the line that ended up in the next column is the little loop for the й that got a little out of control) This is the adjectival form of Minsk. It’s typical in records to put the place in adjectival form just before the name of the social estate or class. You’ll note that they are using the letter “i” this is another letter that was removed during the spelling reforms. It’s just like the letter и.
- Мѣщанинъ: This is the social estate - town dweller. A few things to note… again using ѣ, that’s almost looks like a п! Context and understanding the record composition and social estate types is key here. The щ is a bit tricky too as the tail at the end of it is a bit long and almost looks like an “y”!
- Мовшовъ - again that tricky tvordy znak hard sign :) I think there might be a tiny one at the end of the surname too! They sure love their hard signs!
- Мать This one we can differentiate the т from the ш because there is a line on top. You might find this How to Guide helpful: https://www.familysearch.org/wiki/en/img_auth.php/2/28/Handwriting_and_Grammar_-_Instruction.pdf
- The word following son is имя. It means name. The next two (looks like one though) go along with that. Дано ему (given to him). If it was a female child, it would say дано ей (given to her). Basically means given him/her the name.
- Not sure why его (that’s what it looks like to me too) is there since we already have him in dative case above…. It doesn’t show up on any of the other entries.
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I'm so grateful for your very detailed and very helpful response. I've learned a great deal not only from your tutorial videos/handouts and these corrections, but from the extended explanations you provided here. At the bottom, I've included the fixed version based on your input, in case anyone else wants to use this as an exercise.
Reflecting on my errors, the major lessons for me are:
- Don't mistake beginning hooks for letters
- Don't brush off the pre-1918 characters even though they are hard to type and Google translate doesn't like them
- There are a lot of words with hard signs at the end
- Horizontal bars on top and on bottom indicate different letters (I had them swapped)
- For this particular writer, it's easy to mistake "c" and "e", and "y" with end hooks
- Sometimes what looks like one word is really two words
- It would really help to understand Russian vocabulary, grammar, and genealogical context :)
-- Brad
Родился 29 октяб 28 Хешван обрѣзань 6 Ноября 7 Кислев
Born on 29 October 28 Cheshvan circumcision 6 November 7 Kislev
Отецъ минскiй мѣщанинъ Файвишъ Мовшовъ Рубенчик мать Шифра Абрамовна
Father Minsk town-dweller Fayvish Movshov Rubenchik mother Shifra Abramovna
сынь имя дано ему его Довидъ
son’s name given to him him[sic] Dovid
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Родился 29 октября 28 Хешван обрэшазань 6 ноября 7 Кислев
Born October 29 - 28 Cheshvan obreshazan November 6 7 Kislev
October-Cheshvan (Октябрь=Хешван) - (Hebrew translation of the month), «Обрезан» = circumcised - a traditional practice or surgery (circumcisia, Latin circumcisio) - removal of the foreskin from boys and men, religious (dedication to God, currently practiced mainly among Muslims and Jews ("Brit Mila" - Hebrew "Word of the Covenant")
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6 ноября 7 Кислев
6.11=7.11
November at that time coincided with Kislev (Khislev)
отец Минский мещанин ( father is a Minsk "tradesman"-this class was such a tsarist Russia: the face of the urban class, made up of small traders and artisans, lower employees, etc.)
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I am a native speaker of Russian, I have been doing genealogy for more than 15 years, if you have any questions, I will always answer
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