{"id":263,"date":"2023-05-02T00:18:30","date_gmt":"2023-05-02T00:18:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mdocs.skidmore.edu\/lost-in-transcription\/?page_id=263"},"modified":"2023-05-03T12:35:50","modified_gmt":"2023-05-03T12:35:50","slug":"secretary-hand","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/mdocs.skidmore.edu\/lost-in-transcription\/solving-the-mystery\/transcription-and-translation\/secretary-hand\/","title":{"rendered":"Secretary Hand"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Reading Secretary Hand<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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To understand the documents, we learned to read them.  First, we had to learn the 17th century alphabet, which is close to today’s 26-letter English alphabet, but not identical. <\/p>\n\n\n

\n
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Three shapes of “S”
\u2018s\u2019 to start\/end | double \u2018s\u2019 mid word | double \u2018s\u2019 at the end<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div><\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

The \u201cminims\u201d \u2013 i, m, n, and u \u2013 can sometimes be hard to tell apart, especially when they are next to each other.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Thorny Reading<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

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\n

Even more confusing, some common seventeenth century letters do not exist today, including the thorn<\/strong>\u27e8\u00de or \u021c\u27e9, <\/em>which can look like a letter \u2018y\u2019 but is pronounced \u2018th.\u2019\u00a0 Misreading the thorn led to the development of the pseudo\u2013Early Modern English phrase \u201cye olde\u201d. Today\u2019s signs that say \u201cye olde\u201d (like for a London cheese store) are based on misreading the thorn.\u00a0\u00a0 No one ever said \u201cye olde!\u201d Plus, some clerks used the same sign for \u2018y\u2019 and \u2018thorn,\u2019 making for complicated reading.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

said         \u2192 sd (5)
pairts      \u2192 pts
instrts     \u2192instruments<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Spelling<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the 1600s, familiar words sometimes were spelled differently than today, making them hard to recognize.  So:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

  heires & assignes  =   heirs and assigns  (2)
laufull   =   lawful  (3)                      
  possest    =  possessed (4)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

You may be stumped by what appears to be \u201cjajvjct\u201d (1) in the Scottish sasine. This strange word mixes Latin and longhand numbers to show \u201c1600\u201d:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

   jaj  \u2192  corrupted or misread form of \u201cim\u201d                
                   Latin for one thousand (1000)
vj  \u2192   the Latin numeral for 6 (v \u2192  5, i\/j \u2192 1)
ct  \u2192   short for the Latin \u201ccentus,\u201d 100.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Similarly \u201cumqll\u201d (6) is short for the Old Scots \u201cumquhile\u201d (after a while), meaning deceased.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What about symbols? 

What looks like a backwards comma is an ampersand (&) (2)  What looks like the \u201c@\u201d symbol abbreviated the word \u201cannual.\u201d   In a different Scottish indenture, the word “@rent” (7) abbreviates “annual rent”, the amount a tenant pays a landlord each year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Learn<\/strong> more about reading Scottish secretary hand at the Scottish Handwriting website, www.scottishhandwriting.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Check out <\/strong>some of the peculiarities of seventeenth-century Scottish vocabulary at the online Dictionaries of the Scots Language which continues work started in the early 20th century to research the Scots language.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Reading Secretary Hand The \u201cminims\u201d \u2013 i, m, n, and u \u2013 can sometimes be hard to tell apart, especially when they are next to each other. Thorny Reading Even more confusing, some common seventeenth century letters do not exist today, including the thorn\u27e8\u00de or \u021c\u27e9, which can look like a letter \u2018y\u2019 but is… Continue reading Secretary Hand<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":242,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-263","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mdocs.skidmore.edu\/lost-in-transcription\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/263","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mdocs.skidmore.edu\/lost-in-transcription\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mdocs.skidmore.edu\/lost-in-transcription\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mdocs.skidmore.edu\/lost-in-transcription\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mdocs.skidmore.edu\/lost-in-transcription\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=263"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/mdocs.skidmore.edu\/lost-in-transcription\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/263\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":407,"href":"https:\/\/mdocs.skidmore.edu\/lost-in-transcription\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/263\/revisions\/407"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mdocs.skidmore.edu\/lost-in-transcription\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/242"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mdocs.skidmore.edu\/lost-in-transcription\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=263"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}