# Unknown language



## Makedon1986$

I found letter from my grandpa, and I don't know witch language it i


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## Hulalessar

It does not come across as any script I have seen before. It almost looks like shorthand. If you tell us where your grandafther comes from we may be able to track it down.


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## Makedon1986$

Hulalessar said:


> It does not come across as any script I have seen before. It almost looks like shorthand. If you tell us where your grandafther comes from we may be able to track it down.


I from Macedonia, my grandparents too.We don't know nothing about this.


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## entangledbank

It looks made up. It's not anything I recognize. There are, as Hulalessar says, bits that look like shorthand; there are also bits that look like Arabic (though it isn't). The stylized capital N (often seen in No. = number) at one corner makes it seem someone is playing around.


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## marrish

Makedon1986$ said:


> I found letter from my grandpa, and I don't know witch language it i


It's only a partial picture, we could tell you more if you post the whole picture, because the lower portion is cut off. I think I can recognize several elements.


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## nimak

I think it could be in Ottoman Turkish alphabet!?


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## Hulalessar

As suggested above, some of the letters have a passing similarity to the Arabic script, but over all it does not look like any Arabic script I have ever seen whether to write Arabic or any other language. A letter appearing quite often is like a <w> with dots appearing in various configurations. The Arabic script does have any letters like that. Indeed, I cannot identify any Arabic letter.


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## marrish

ۋ ARABIC LETTER VE


Hulalessar said:


> A letter appearing quite often is like a <w> with dots appearing in various configurations.


Yes, you're right it's not Arabic but even this sign shows some similarities to the contextual shapes of a certain number of Arabic letters when joined up, like these تنه ﻧﯨا ﳌﳌ ؈ نننه نه ی ﺳ شـ
I think it's just an imaginary imitation /mock-Ottoman? script combined with other signs. Just like when you can't write Chinese and you'd be trying to invent your own script using "Chinese" characters. But all of this seems to form an oval shape and some characters are readable.


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## Cahittinsan

Maybe Persian but ı do not think.


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## Stoggler

marrish said:


> ۋ ARABIC LETTER VE
> 
> Yes, you're right it's not Arabic but even this sign shows some similarities to the contextual shapes of a certain number of Arabic letters when joined up, like these تنه ﻧﯨا ﳌﳌ ؈ نننه نه ی ﺳ شـ
> I think it's just an imaginary imitation /mock-Ottoman? script combined with other signs. Just like when you can't write Chinese and you'd be trying to invent your own script using "Chinese" characters. But all of this seems to form an oval shape and some characters are readable.



Why do you think it’s Ottoman specifically, when a significant number of languages are written (or have been written) in the Arabic script?


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## nimak

I assume it is in Ottoman Turkish because @Makedon1986$ said he's from Macedonia, and Macedonia was under Ottoman rule for 500 years until 1913.

Many Macedonians then knew some broken Turkish, some of them knew Turkish well, and there also lived many Turks in Macedonia too. Not all of them were well educated and knew the Ottoman Turkish alphabet correctly. That's why I guess the text is in some "broken" Ottoman Turkish maybe?!

On the handwritten paper I can recognize the letters:
ی ـشـ و ـعـ د ـه ٤ ٥ ـی

There was also an Armenian community in Macedonia too, but the text doesn't look to me Armenian!? There was  Jewish community too.

The text is definitely not in Cyrillic or Greek.


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## entangledbank

The point is, there is not an 'Ottoman Turkish' alphabet. They wrote in the Arabic alphabet, possibly with the odd letter with extra dots to indicate some Turkish sounds. But a number of us know Arabic script when we see it, and that doesn't appear to be it. Yes, some of it looks like Arabic letters, but some of it looks like other things too, and there's nothing consistent about it.

It does look more like Arabic than anything else, but an Arabic script without joins - it could be some strange kind of semi-literate handwriting if it's real (Turkish, perhaps). The thing that looks like a curly W with dots, and also looks somewhat like the ligature in Arabic _Allah_, occurs too often to be _Allah_ unless it's something very repetitive.


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## Hulalessar

I dismissed the idea of Ottoman Turkish on the grounds that all Arabic based scripts have the same general look. So far as I know, all adaptations involve the letters used for writing Arabic with extra dots or lines for sounds not found in Arabic. However, I failed to take into account that an every-day script like ruq'ah may have been in use. I googled Ottoman Turkish and found this: 




__
		https://www.reddit.com/r/translator/comments/9iagvp
 It has to be admitted that the mystery sample does look rather more like this example than something written in naskh script, even if the two samples do not immediately leap out as being written in the same script.


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## cherine

These are not Arabic letters, people, so you don't need to worry about this being written in Arabic or any language using Arabic letters. Arabic is never written disjointly like this, no matter the script or the language.

As for


entangledbank said:


> The thing that looks like a curly W with dots, and also looks somewhat like the ligature in Arabic _Allah_


It's not Allah الله of course. But to me it looked like the Hebrew letter sin/shin. I asked a Hebrew speaker and he said the text it not in Hebrew either. So here's another possibility crossed-out.


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## rarabara

maybe old latin..not sure really.
could you provide more details please?
in the past times,I had had a girlfriend on facebook,she was from myanmar,yangon. and some alphabetical letters reminiscents me that language's letters.
while some of them seem like in arabic(but not clear) ,some of them seem like latin.
maybe also the existence of russian letters.




Makedon1986$ said:


> I found letter from my grandpa, and I don't know witch language it i



I am mathematician but not specialized in cryptography (I am more specialized in modern applied math)
but this text might potentially be cryptographic.


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## L'irlandais

To be quite honest, the fact the OP only provides a restricted view of the page, makes me skeptical.
Why not reply to requests to provide a fuller image?  He has subsequently seen #5, yet not provided any further details.  Anybody genuinely looking to find out more about their Grandad’s letter wouldn’t have a problem providing further details. Clearly we can see the upper half of an oval form sketched on the page and the top of some characters cut out of the image.  Assuming normal paper formats, I estimate up to 3/8ths of the page is hidden from us.  Ask yourself why.


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## Hulalessar

We can definitely say it is not any script which one might reasonably expect to find used in Macedonia in recent times: Roman, Cyrillic, Ottoman/Arabic or Hebrew. What we see is not random doodlings because some symbols are repeated. However, the overall impression is that we are not looking at a fully developed or coherent system. Many shorthand systems may not look coherent, so shorthand cannot be ruled out, though the fact that the heading has been gone over would seem to rule it out. Assuming we are not dealing with non-random doodlings, the best I can suggest is some private code.


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## L'irlandais

I think you are right, it’s most likely a short hand, rather than simple doodling.  I am convinced the lower « half » of the page actually contains part of the solution, which is why we are not privy to it.  Best not to waste time with one hit wonders who ignore questions for more context.


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