cahn | Historical Characters, Including Frederick the Great, Discussion Post 47

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We haven't had a new post since before December 25, so obligatory Yuletide link to this hilarious story of Frederick the Great babysitting his bratty little brother, with bonus Fritz/Fredersdorf!

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From:

mildred_of_midgard

I guess one time doesn't count as "often" or "tendencies", it's true. ;)

But Kurrent is coming along! It's starting to click, at least for extremely clean handwriting, and I'm hoping to move to more interesting texts this week (with my fingers crossed that dealing with large volumes of less clean handwriting is doable).

Verdict: it depends on the handwriting. If that letter signed "Friedrich Wilhelm II" is actually his handwriting (since he's a monarch, I'm guessing yes)...holy cow, I cannot sight-read it. I can't even guess what it's about. But of the remainder I've tried so far (admittedly not many), I've been able to get most of the words, even if not super fast.

From:

selenak

Poor you. May I ask why you ordered letters by FW2 - still investigating the whereabouts of the dogs?

From:

mildred_of_midgard

Nah, what I have is 1,500 pages of papers belonging to the Keith and Knyphausen families, from the Aurich archive, and they saved letters from important people like monarchs (and Algarotti, Maupertuis, Jordan, etc.) FW2 happens to have written a letter to Peter's son Carl Ernst (who, let's remember, survived until 1822).

At this point, I'm still just trying to read as much quantity as possible and not get bogged down in the stuff I can't sight-read; I'll come back to the difficult ones when I've had more practice. And then if I have to do my Sudoku/crossword-style technique of writing down XXXXX and slowly filling them in via cross-comparison of individual characters, I will. Hopefully I can get proficient enough just by reading, though!

ETA: But the point is, you guys should be pleased that this means I'm working my way through the Keith family papers, because it means progress is being made on the essay research again! (Fredersdorf will be next, because I have a lot of Kurrent to read for him too. It'll be harder, because the quantity is smaller and the quality of my decipherment will be more important, which is why I'm practicing on Peter first.)

Edited Date: 2024-01-28 04:30 pm (UTC)

From:

selenak

Progress in the essay(s) is always good! Have you read my post about 18th century kingdom swaps, btw?

From:

mildred_of_midgard

Yes! I'm hoping to reply to it (and other salon posts) today! The workshop I gave on Friday kind of took over my whole week, and I'm still playing catch-up.

ETA: Not today either, apparently. Sorry, I'll try again this week. I've had a reply in my head since you posted it!

Edited Date: 2024-01-28 11:11 pm (UTC)

From:

mildred_of_midgard

I know I'm still behind on all the things, due to Darth Real Life, but:

1. French and Kurrent streaks are going strong!

2. According to my algorithms, the salon word total just passed 4 million words! Handkisses to everyone!