52 Ancestors Week 28: Characters

From Amy Johnson Crow: Week 28:

The theme for Week 28 is "Characters." Every family has a person who might be described as a "character." But that's not the only way you might interpret this theme. What about someone named for a famous character, working through a language that uses characters other than what you're used to, or deciphering a character on a tombstone? Be creative and have fun!

The character banner is too good to not use again.

        When I first started looking at Italian documents, I started to notice something strange. It wasn't so much the language itself. I knew some basic Italian and I knew it was a Latin based romance language like Spanish, French and Portuguese. Still, some letters looked kind of odd to me and I later found out that the modern Italian alphabet was very different from what I've been used to as a non native speaker.

Sometimes I've even seen "Ferriolo".

    Take this birth document for my 4th great-grandfather, Marcantonio Ferraiolo for example. Notice anything different about the last name of his father? If you take a closer look, you will see that the last name is spelled "Ferrajolo". That's pretty odd, right. You'd think people in 1812 would know how to spell the last name "Ferraiolo". However, here's the thing. This is going to blow your mind. In those days the letters "i" and "j" were interchangeable! DUN DUN DUNNN!

    It's true! Earlier Italian used the "i"s and the "j"s interchangeably in various dialects. It's something to keep in mind when you're looking at documents from the 1800s and earlier. Language evolves over time. Even English. How many new words have we added to Webster's Dictionary in the last twenty years? I've lost count. This is definitely something you have to keep in mind when you're transcribing an Italian document. This is only the tip of the iceberg. Italian has so many variations. It might be a good idea to keep a character sheet around just in case things get complicated!

    Good thing the FamilySearch Wiki has one. I'll be relying on it a lot this week. Eventually, I did end up seeing the letter "i" in "Ferraiolo" and in other last names. However, as I moved forward in time I started to pick up on a few things. Certain letters disappeared because the modern Italian alphabet was taking shape.

Caffefe?!

    It's honestly hard to pinpoint when exactly the change occurred. Blink and you'll miss it on various documents. In modern times, the Italian alphabet has no "J", "K", "W" or "Y". You won't find them on many Italian documents and yet towns like Jacurso clearly kept the "J" in their name. You can see that on various documents and official websites.

    Various documents can also make the letter "f" look like an "s" if it's not capitalized. I've actually seen that happen on birth documents like the one for my third great-grandfather, Tommaso Tedesco. His mother was Cecilia Cassese even though it looks like "Caffefe" in the document. When I got the birth document from the commune office, they used the more modern spelling of the name. Interesting, huh? Tommaso was born in 1850. So, things haven't modernized quite yet as the language was still evolving into the Italian we all know and love today.

    My friends in the Italy Project on WikiTree have also noticed various other changes here and there. Sometimes a capital "R" when there should be a "b". The letter "D" sometimes would have the stick curl back in on itself, almost making the "@" symbol.

Now I know my ABCs

    Transcribing Italian documents can be tricky and it's important to note these things just in case you want to venture into the wild world of Italian genealogy. Hopefully, this will allow for easier transcriptions because I have found some serious errors in transcribing things. It's no one's fault. Sometimes people can be in a hurry and don't see things everyone else does. That's where collaborative genealogy comes in. If I have trouble reading something, I can always ask a friend for help. Genealogy isn't an individual hobby. You can always get by with a little help from your friends.

    One last thing before I end the blog. While certain letters are missing in the Italian alphabet, Italians do write the "missing" letters. For example, I have a friend who was born in Worb. They would write the town's name even though there is no "w". Same thing with the town of Jacurso that I mentioned earlier. So, when you look at the old timey documents, it's a good idea to keep in mind that these are definitely not misspellings. That's just how things were written back in the day!

    Languages change over time. Look at American English. We use "color" in America as opposed to "colour" in the UK and other English speaking countries.  Rules of grammar evolve depending on the country and it's only natural that Italian does as well. So, the next time you want to look at an Italian document, keep these in mind. You never know what surprises you might find!

See ya next time!

Note: Worb isn't actually in Italy. Worb is in Switzerland.