Whilst ripping up an old rotten floor to put down a new one, we found an old letter hidden between the floor boards and the beam. Unfortuantely we have no idea what it says, except that it is dated 1841. Is there anyone who can help us to translate it?




Thanks

This is old German script. When I was a kid I could read it pretty well. My grandma used it.
See http://www.diaware.de/html/schrift.html and do some entertaining detective work.

Search Google for "alte deutsche Schrift" to find other sources.

Where are our 'elderly' Swiss members who wrote like this at school and who should be able to do this job with their eyes shut? Well, perhaps they'll need their reading glasses...

My husband is from Germany and tried to read it but couldn't even make any of it out...the handwriting is very scripty...I would suggest taking it in to a museum here for someone to try and read for you...if you have any luck we would LOVE to hear what it says! We live in the village just next to Bilten where the stamp is from on the second page!

Sorry Longbyt, those who learned it at school died of old age decades ago.

I'm 63 years old. My parents, born 1923, did not learn it in school. My paternal grandpa, born 1885, who was a school teacher, had to learn how to read it in the course of his higher education but never wrote it himself. That's how far back it goes.

What a fantastic find!

Nice to hear you have found the house you were looking for

I tried reading it too, all I can get is that it is to Siegfried from Lillian.. but I'm only guessing..

What a find, bigblue2! Thanks for posting it. This is exactly the sort of puzzle I love!

I can pick out a few words ("Da ich mich somethingsomething ... , so will ich dich somethingsomething berichten...") but some of those fancy squiggles are fairly baffling me.
Give us another hour or three (or a day or three, more likely )


MathNut who also has a weakness for languages, scripts, and unsolved mysteries

I know someone who could translate it for you - a professor at the university in Zurich...I'll PM you her details...

Love letter ?

The 'BILTEN' stamp is probably from the post office ? Glarus ?

What I can get out of it - without garantee so wait for a second and third opinion: The person wants a farmer boy, engagement probably and needs to put in in writing. The matter schould be done by next sunday if all agree, but can be done before if possible. Jokob Blunn must be notified.

Style is short and sentences incomplete. It's a short notice like they should be. Grammar structure is not totally clear to me, especially this "als" and to me, there is a verb missing somewhere.

Notes:
Lettres in ( ) are not in the written text, it's just my guess to make it more modern or understandable
Weinmonat : october
Some old spelling: Werther for werter (dear)
Some strange expressions:
- durch bar Buchstaben berichten (to give a message in written??? just speculating)
- ver setz: perhaps versetzt in the sense of verstimmt (disagreeing, to have something against it, having a grief)
- bescheint: perhaps in the sense of bescheinigen (to tell somebody, to notify)
Streit Jochen in Elm: I am not sure about Streit, but Jochen is clear. Elm is just a guess, in can also be a abbreviation of something.

I think it's more than just a guess. It very much looks like it, and besides that, Elm and Bilten both are villages in the same little Canton Glarus.

Wow. Best thread on the forum so far this year.

Thank you Big Blue and Faltrad (and all the other contributors).

It's a shopping list. I can just make out 'Don't forget the carrots' at the end.

Wow! Well done Faltrad. I had the second half of it - more or less - but thought 'Werther' was the recipient's name and couldn't for the life of me figure out the 'Weinmonat'! Was sitting here going through Latin names of the months, French names of the months, trying to find anything starting with a W...

.... and the brown sugar.

Did you figured out the ver setz thingie? That bugs me. I am not sure at all of that part. And why the als? Is that Glarusdeutsch for statt?
The message is obviously written in a short form, abbreviated and not exactly very correct. But I like to understand things.

What an awesome post!

Can anyone hazard a guess on whether it was written in dialect? Did hochdeutsch exist in 1841? Was there even a standardised spelling back then?

Just showed it to the OH and she didn't have a clue (mind you she is Uzbekistanian)!

Hochdeutsch. But somehow telegraphic style and some dialect colours into it.

Absolutely fascinating
Wonder if the guy ever got the job and was able to change employer (if I understood Faltrad correctly)

I think "versetz(t)" is used in the sense of "already got a job elsewhere," like in "Er wurde in die Putzmannschaft versetzt" (he got transferred to the cleaning crew). After all, in those times, a farm hand was not much more than a servant and could be moved to another place = "versetzt."

As for the language -- let's face it, it looks like the message was written by a farmer who, at the very best, had spent a few years in school. That's why it's a funny blend of Standard German and Swiss German, spiced with some bad spelling and omissions caused by the fact that writing a whole sentence took him six minutes and a pint of sweat (visible on the paper!), so, at the end, the guy forgot what he had written at the beginning, and rereading it was too tiring.

I take the mysterious "als" as a simple omission of an "o", i.e. actually "also," in the German sense, of course, meaning, "next Sunday, i.e. the 31st." Makes sense and leaves nothing missing except the "o".

The "als" instead of "also" is not even a real mistake, I remember having seen that in other old texts too. The Duden Herkunftswörterbuch (German Etymology Dictionary) expressly mentions "als" as a old variant of "also."

Thanks all.

So we're not cursed then lol