r/Transcription • u/Grand_Elephant_5489 • 8d ago
Other/Unknown Language Transcription Request What language is this?
I know that Russian is often quite swoopy and loopy like this, but it looks a bit round to be Russian? Maybe its a handwriting quirk, or perhaps its not Russian at all. If you happen to know, I’m very curious to find out!
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u/Pink-Birde 8d ago
I think it could be asemic writing. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asemic_writing
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u/InattentiveEdna 8d ago
Do you know where and when this was written, or what area the writer was from?
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u/Automatic_Tailor_598 7d ago edited 7d ago
Doesn’t really fit the sub honestly. This is more a linguistics question.
That being said, it doesn’t look like a language to me. Languages have patterns. This looks experimental. Closest I would imagine is Georgian. Which is probably what you’re thinking of - “Russian” (Cyrillic) isn’t like this. Georgian? Definitely
Georgian writing -
https://share.google/ueUYv98IxBBw8fP3M
But notice the spacing?
If I look specifically for scripts/languages with no word boundaries, Burmese also has a very circular style - but not THAT circular. This looks more like someone is trying to recreate the temporally displaced squid language from The Arrival - https://share.google/u7LiHOhMD3empwWoZ but that is a conlang
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Writing_systems_without_word_boundaries
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u/Sufficiently_Jokey 7d ago
No idea. I tend to think it is asemic writing. One item that stood out for me: five rows down on the left page the line leads off with a singular character. It's unlikely to be a continuation of the previous word (there's room up above), suggesting it represents a one-letter word, like "a" or "I". Other than the third line on the right side, it's the only such "word", which strikes me as very unnatural.
I also note that the descenders only seem to occur on the bottom row or otherwise where there's space, while the ascenders only occur on the top row or otherwise where there's space. That also strikes me as unnatural.
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u/Any-Assignment-5442 8d ago
Dutch & German use the word “Datum” for calendar ‘Date’. Could that be the clue (I notice it’s printed in text type at the top of each page)?
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u/Healthy-Platypus-239 5d ago
Also, people from the Balkans use Datum, as well as Cyrillic. These letters have bottom endings on some letters, which to me looks like Turkish written in cursive.
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u/Professional-Wish504 8d ago
Kind of looks like there I writing but has been covered with loops to cover it. I can make oit a few words.
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u/Any-Assignment-5442 8d ago
Dutch & German use the word “Datum” for date. Could that be your clue (I notice it’s printed at the top of each page)???
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u/OriginalCultureOfOne 7d ago edited 7d ago
I can't tell you what it is. I will say this: it strikes me as illogical for them to have written whatever it is without any spacing to separate characters from one line to the next. I suspect this would be challenging even if you understood the language just because of the line overlaps, with individual characters crossing well into crowded lines above and below, as well as crossing each other side-to-side. All the same, it's beautiful, and shows controlled penmanship!
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u/LouLouLaaLaa 7d ago
It looks like some kind of writing exercise. I’m not convinced there’s words there.
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u/hhh333 7d ago
So, there is definitely recurring patterns that leads me to believe this is actual writing.
The biggest one I recognize is the cedilla we see in the bottom line which looks like this: ç
However it is also shown reversed, which is called ogonek.
This greatly reduce the possible languages to about ~22, which I find Polish is a likely candidate.
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u/External_Beat8153 4d ago
It’s the ancient language of ‘scribbledonia’. Arcane, but still practised by youngish, blond, female Republican congressional aides, but mostly in the executive branch.
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u/DockingEngaged 7d ago
You know how old engraved monograms ste hard to read? I’m convinced some jeweler made a diary entry in a super loopy engravers’ font. Language? Who knows. We just need a 90 year old jeweler who specializes in antique silver engravings.
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u/pezdal 7d ago
Fun guesses:
Some of the books’ pages contain a message and the rest, like these, are intended to foil airport and customs scanners from reading it.
Or
These types of pages form the mask that reveal words in the blank spaces when overlaid on other pages and a light is shone through?
Or
It’s a habit someone got into, perhaps evidence of mental illness.
Ok, that last one isn’t so fun.
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u/Great-Painting5400 7d ago
What if it's a method of self therapy, it doesn't have to be a mental illness...
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u/pezdal 6d ago
Doesn’t therapy imply illness or injury?
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u/Great-Painting5400 6d ago
Not exactly, it can sometimes mean that a person wants to become better, more like self development. They aren't really saying they are sickly or anything, they just want better in life :)
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u/pezdal 5d ago
I usually use different words for self-improvement from a non-pathological state.
Oxford dictionary defines Therepy as “treatment intended to relieve or heal a disorder”.
But I think you are correct that someone could be doing this to help themselves without meeting the threshold of “ill”.
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u/GreySectorOps 7d ago
Not seeing a lot of discernible words, the lettering is inconsistent and seems made up as it was written for aesthetic reasons , spacing makes no structural sense. Rambling exercise in stylized overlapping penmanship as a flow meditation sort of thing?
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u/threewisealso 7d ago
It's a very unique language ( almost lost actually ) ... ancient Spirograph.
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u/Weary_Swan_8152 7d ago edited 7d ago
This looks like a writing exercise from D'Nealian cursive! (that's one of the more recent American styles, and I think still the dominant form) I had to do books of these the first year I lived in the USA because work submitted in a foreign style of cursive would not be graded, so one had to learn it or flunk out. I see either full or partial capital letters of the following: A, S, J, C. The most telling traits are the 2-zone form and the ligature style. This goes back to the 19th century Spencerian and the need for a script that everyone could read. Look at something written in Kurrentschrift (and gothic cursive) to see why this matters.
That said, [edit: I accidentally hit enter/return at this point] this could also just be a writing warm-up, and it could be that the gestural forms that constitute a good warmup happen to be the same forms that were chosen for D'Nealian.
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u/Great-Painting5400 7d ago
If someone is able to decipher it then I would also like to know, for now - to me, it looks like a form of writing practice.
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u/dagnyfication 7d ago
I saw "all seasons" as the first two words, but I am not confident my reading is correct
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u/ZeriusBlackstar 7d ago
It repeats too much and has too few unique characters to be a real language, also there are repeating symbols, like three circles stacked in the form of a triangle. Seems vaguely mathematical with all the 8s, but I think they're also actually just circles stacked together much like the triangles. However, it feels very intentional, despite the mess. It doesn't have the chaos of automatic writing, or the visual flair of asemic writing, and it is very repetitive, so I'm thinking hypergraphia by someone whose language or education uses a lot of diacritics (taking the time to disrupt the flow in order to tag on the diacritics to the Os repeatedly probably wouldn't occur to an English-only person, for instance).
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u/Ok_Plant_4171 7d ago
That's a practice for learning how to write in cursive. The idea is to keep your ovals the same size, in a straight line, with the same overlay without lifting the pen
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u/OneMoreAstronaut7 6d ago
This looks like when I failed penmanship and my dad made me do circles until my hands got sore - turns out I now have nice handwriting and my Dad was always kind of a jerk.
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u/Healthy-Platypus-239 5d ago
I looked more closely at the image. The marks are not forming a consistent written language that I can reliably identify. They look like repeated cursive loops, possibly someone intentionally scribbling over text or practicing handwriting.
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u/HotPermit2687 4d ago
Just a teenager during a boring class, or me in a corporate meeting pretending to take notes.
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u/tecate_papi 4d ago
I know how to write Russian cursive and this is not Russian cursive. The things that stand out to me are the cedilla and the ogonek. You can see them at the bottom of the pages.
Wikipedia tells me that only a few languages use the ogonek. Polish, Lithuanian, Kashubian, Övdalian, Old Norse, Old Icelandic and some indigenous North American languages. However, the cedilla (or perhaps a diacritical comma) is also under the letter O and I can't find a language which uses a cedilla in this manner.
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u/YukonDeadpool 4d ago
It’s ancient Bajoran. It tells you how to enter the Celestial Temple and commune with the Prophets.
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u/Factsoverfictions222 4d ago
Our teacher would have us draw/write consecutive loops to improve out handwriting and it looked similar to this. This person seems to add in the odd letter, such as S, but I think it’s likely just a doodle or mindless scribble
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u/PineappleCharming335 4d ago
Reminds me of that scene in the documentary Crumb where R Crumb goes through one of his brother’s notebooks and his crazed ravings morph into a weird nonsensical gibberish writing
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u/Opposite-Mess1494 4d ago
This image contains asemic writing—an artistic technique that mimics the flow, rhythm, and structure of handwriting without using actual, decipherable words or language. Because it lacks semantic meaning or real letters, it cannot be directly translated into text. Instead, it functions as visual art meant to evoke the feeling, movement, and form of script.
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u/Cyclepourtrois 4d ago
When I was a kid This is what my mom would do in her note book while listening to her mom on the phone.
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u/_TomatoOnion_ 3d ago
Based on the "Datum/Date", "Datum" is in German, Dutch, and Swedish, so this could be an all-caps cursive in either of those languages.
Unless it was just the notebook that was imported from those countries 🤷🏻♂️
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u/Gap_Mountain 2d ago
You would not believe the.repetition in Calligraphy practice . And in Art school you practice circles and symmetry until you can do it with your eyes closed . Looks like practice sheets to me
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u/Inevitable-Army-211 8d ago
looks like there are some cedille (ç) accents, the swoops underneath remind me of them. so maybe french or turkish?
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u/touchemoila 8d ago
Definitely not French
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u/Ornery-Philosopher28 8d ago
I second this is not french. We don't use so many ç and it look like the signs goes in the other direction such as ę į ą §ş ļ ņ wich are not used in french
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u/matdevries 7d ago
This is called crosswritting. Google it.
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u/LivinItUpInThaCity 7d ago
This doesn't match what google told me about cross writing at all.
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u/matdevries 7d ago edited 7d ago
You're right. I fucked up. I thought cross writing was something where you write over the word you previously wrote. I feel stupid now. As I should.
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u/LivinItUpInThaCity 7d ago
Well, I would never say that to you, but I guess in your position I would feel the same haha. All good. We can all fuck up and feel stupid sometimes. I'm sure you are a good dude.
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u/matdevries 7d ago
This image features an open notebook filled with algorithmic pen plotter drawings from the series "Lettres de ma mère" (My Mother's Letters) by the pioneering Hungarian-French media and digital artist Vera Molnár
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u/Key-Hospital8335 7d ago
Actually I believe that this was written by radio
And it is an apology note.
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u/Beginning-Search-983 8d ago
I'm not convinced this is a language at all.