In many ways, it has been easier to obtain old documents from Germany thatn it has from New Jersey or New York. The existence of organized church books that had a quasi-public function has been a treasure trove. On the other hand, not only did I start without knowing how to speak German, but the old writing seemed to make these records almost impenitrable. If I could see how the words are spelled, at leastr I could look them up in the dictionery! Even most modern Germans have trouble with the old script. However, with practice, I have gotten better. At least I can now recognize names and dates. It helps that the books are fairly structured so you know where to look for what. I do fairly well with names as I know what I am looking for, and usually the names are written more carefully (or even in Latin script) by the scribes. Here are some sample alphabets that have been helpful to me. I confess that I stole them from the web and can no longer give attribution. I also give some of the on-line translation sites and dictionary that have been helpful to me. If you have better resources, please let me know. |
I use these two. They have given me and my correspondents a few laughs, but they sort of give the idea of what you want to say.
SDL Free Translation http://www.freetranslation.com (I signed up for the Platinum version.)
Google http://www.google.com/language_tools
Dictionaries
It pays to use several. No one of them has every word, especially the older words.
I keep several tabs open in my browser so I can easily access them all.
Leo German-English Dictionary http://dict.leo.org
Wörterbuch http://www.basc.de/dict
New English -German Dictionary http://www.iee.et.tu-dresden.de/cgi-bin/cgiwrap/wernerr/search.sh
Quick Dic http://quickdic.org/index_e.html
Peter Hasselbacher
Oct 2007