Historical Characters, Including Frederick the Great, Discussion Post 44

[cahn]

Not only are these posts still going, there is now (more) original research going on in them deciphering and translating letters in archives that apparently no one has bothered to look at before?? (Which has now conclusively exonerated Fritz's valet/chamberlain Fredersdorf from the charge that he was dismissed because of financial irregularities and died shortly thereafter "ashamed of his lost honor," as Wikipedia would have it. I'M JUST SAYING.)

Comments

Re: Peter's mother to Fritz - Translation

[mildred_of_midgard]

I'd say your Brod guess works! The "o" is a bit pointed, but it can be open at the top - does she write it similarly in other cases?

Yes, she does, which is part of why I was willing to go with that. I've also seen Fritz at least confuse "d" and "t" at the end of a word, which makes perfect sense if you speak/hear the language more than you write it. Which is true of Fritz and presumably Keith's mother. (My inner historical linguist wants to point out that mistakes like this are part of how historical linguists gather evidence for pronuniciation in the past.)

And Brot would make sense - if not entirely literally (I hope), then at least metaphorically, as a shorthand for income/livelihood or such.

Yes, I thought the meaning could be made to fit in both cases, although I was open to being told there was an even better word. (I tried "Bord", but dictionaries told me "Bord" doesn't have the "room and board" meaning in German that it does in English.)

Also, in case she isn't actually sarcastic, could that be "betrübteste" instead of "beliebteste" Witwe? I see you've puzzled about the word and compared to other instances of lieb, but I thought I'd throw the possiblity out there.

By Jove, you've got it, Felis! (Again! You're on a roll today.) Yes, that fits perfectly, and you remind me that normally I don't consider "l" and "t" interchangeable, but she doesn't cross her "t"s half the time. At least once I had to reinterpret an "l" as a "t" in transcribing this.

See, this is why I keep saying lack of fluency is a real handicap and that if I wanted to step up my game, the number one thing I could do is not practice with handwriting indefinitely, but just go get more proficiency in French and German. Because yes, I tried other words, but I'm not going to think of all the likely candidates just because I know what "betrübteste" means if I encounter it in the wild. Active and passive knowledge are very different, and my German is largely passive at this point. I guarantee you would not have spent 10+ minutes wrestling with "Bekümmernis" and finally gone, "Wait, could that be a 'k'? I know 'Kümmer' is a word, let me check a dictionary to see if there's a word beginning with "Bekümmer'."

Okay, so she's not being sarcastic, which makes far more sense.