On Wed, February 13, 2013 11:49 am, Linda Passwaters wrote: > Greetings, > > You must have some knowledge of German in order for it to work for you. My I'm not sure how correct that is. But I have no ruler to measure it by. I've studied a dozen languages, and so am ill qualified to say it isn't so. Certainly it helps, but having a German dictionary handy and a few learning tools one can learn quite easily the basic to decipher much of what one will find in vital records. I would certainly not discourage someone by telling them they must have German knowledge to proceed. The brain is an amazingly agile tool. Often neglected for years and decades. > Mom is 86 and can read Sutterlin, but the German written word back in the > 1800s is like us trying to read very old English today. You must have an I find Old English fairly easy to read. but then, I'm a geek. > For example, > Mom is currently trying to translate a document that has the name, "von > Steiger" in the first line. The sutterlinschrift for an "S" looks very > much like our English "G". So as an English speaking person I would assume > the name is "von Geiger". There are many differences that with a little > time and patience a person might be able to translate. Using the > Sutterlinschrift chart can be helpful in determining if document refers to > the correct family name. That is not completely accurate. The sutterlinschrift "S" CAN look like a "G". It usually looks like a fish standing on it's head. Although, it can also look like a musical clef sign. Sutterlinschrift is also mostly a misnomer, as the actual sutterlinschrift name didn't come into use until very late, in an attempt to standardize the various forms of German script writing. I find these two pages much more useful in deciphering German writing. Upper case examples: http://www.suetterlinschrift.de/Lese/Kanzlei2.htm lower case examples: http://www.suetterlinschrift.de/Lese/Kanzlei1.htm I find it best when tackling a hard to read text is to make a table, and copy down a sample of each letter of the alphabet in the text. I rarely use such a technique anymore, but it's a useful learning aid. Names and dates are usually not too difficult to extract. Edna Bentz' book has an extensive listing of professions, diseases and causes of death and some standard wording used. There are some very complete German genealogical dictionaries and the Familysearch website has still further tools. This is a totally learnable skill that should be encouraged among amateur genealogists working records in Alsace and Germany, et al. I do use a table and letter example when working with Dutch and sometimes Danish, but only because I do so little work in Dutch and Dutch is often very sloppy and really, really hard. It can be done though. Yet, I still make mistakes, and I sometimes disagree with some of our very skilled German script readers here on a particular letter. Sometimes even when I'm wrong. ;) Brian