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Q&A

Comments on What language is this (cursive) sample?

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What language is this (cursive) sample?

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A recent post on Language Log includes this sample of an unidentified language:

13 lines of right-justified text, maybe a numbered list

The article says this about the source:

This is from RG 84, General Correspondence of the American consulate in Tangier, Morocco. The dates of the stuff is either 1912 or 1917.

The authors, and comments on the post, offer several speculations rooted in Semitic languages. Proposals include Ladino, a form of cursive Rashi script (Hebrew), cursive Canaanite (though I wouldn't expect that in the 20th century, assuming the source info is correct), and Solitreo.

To me it looks like the writing is different in different parts of the sample, which makes we wonder about multiple scribes or multiple languages. The second and third lines and the last two look very different to me.

What language or languages are we looking at here? Can anyone help our friends at Language Log?

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2 comment threads

Ladino in Solitreo - a solid possibility (1 comment)
Google Translate auto-detect says Persian or Urdu (2 comments)
Google Translate auto-detect says Persian or Urdu
Moshi‭ wrote over 3 years ago · edited about 3 years ago

Unfortunately, I do not know either of those languages, but it suggests that it's one of the languages that use the Persian script. Perhaps you could find a Persian or Urdu-literate person to verify this conjecture?

ganzzahl‭ wrote about 3 years ago

The script used is definitely not standard Persian or Urdu script, but what it is, I have no idea.