Thread: Old Cyrillic Letter - help please

I am translating some documents my family has from around 1900-1920. The texts are mostly in typeface but there a few typed letters that notably do not look like any current cyrillic letters I know of.

Most notably is a lowercase letter that looks like a T with a squished b curve on the bottom and a small v attached to the top of the T line.

Does anyone know what this letter is or what its equivilent would be in todays russian?

The document I am working on is a death certificate from the russian consulate of Kashgar, China in 1919.

Thank you

I believe it's an old "ять"
http://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D1%A2_...8%D1%86%D0%B0)

Replace this letter with Е to get new orthography.

Thank you for your help with that letter, I was assuming it was replaced by the E because I recognized a name.

Because of when and where these documents were written I am having trouble translating directly as it doesn't seem to be standard Russian but maybe more like a church slavonic, would that make sense?

And are there any online dictionaries that I can use for this?

Thanks again

Originally Posted by misssaratatiana

Thank you for your help with that letter, I was assuming it was replaced by the E because I recognized a name.

Because of when and where these documents were written I am having trouble translating directly as it doesn't seem to be standard Russian but maybe more like a church slavonic, would that make sense?

And are there any online dictionaries that I can use for this?

Thanks again

Old Church Slavonic may be a BIG problem. I do not know any online dictionary.

But most probably it is just a standard Russian written with old orthography. There was an orthograpy reform in 1918, which removed several letters and made few other changes.

If you
1)replace that letter "ять" by "е",
2)replace "i" by "и",
3)remove "ъ" in the end of words,
4)replace letter like Greek theta by "ф",

you will get essentially standard contamporary Russian.