this post was submitted on 21 Jun 2023
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Kurrent

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This sub is dedicated to the old german handwriting styles "Deutsche Kurrent" and "Sütterlin" and is supposed to be the place to get support regarding transcription and translation of historical texts, whether they are birth records, letters or documents.

Also, feel free to discuss the scientific aspects or AI based deciphering approaches.

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The first steps are the most difficult ones. As with every writing, you might want to learn the alphabet at first. But even if you know all the letters, you might find it difficult to identify them in a given scripture. Especially with Kurrent it's necessary to practice to read texts to get used to different styles of handwritings and the various peculiarities dependent on the specific writer or the time of writing.

At the beginning it might be difficult to read a text without knowing about its content (or context), but there are lots of resources online. Both already transcribed texts and, nowadays, even interactive exercises.

To get started you might want to have a look at the following resources. Please note that this list is neither ordered nor comprehensive.

Introduction

Further reading

Tools

If you know any other resources, that might be interesting, please share them here.

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[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Unbelievable, a Kurrent community here on Lemmy..

OK, so, resources... A 3 hours long video in german, but I think everyone should be able to follow it even without the language knowledge:

Altdeutsche Schrift

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Thank you, I added it to the resources. Didn't know that one before! That's a very detailed and extensive introduction.

Of course there needs to be a Kurrent community here on Lemmy, although it's still very small currently. The topic is quite niche, but I hope that it may gain some attention through genealogy or maybe findings in the estates of relatives. Or maybe just people interested in calligraphy and handwriting.

However, feel free to spread the word and thanks again for your contribution! It's much appreciated.