Spanish Paleography Webinar Overview

Hello and welcome to the BYU Family History Library webinar series. We're glad you could join us today. I'm Olivia Tuller and I'll be your host for this webinar. If you have technical difficulties during the webinar, please use the chat box and I can address your concerns. You are welcome to use the chat box during the webinar for comments, insights, and questions. However, all questions will be addressed at the end of the presentation. We will not be having a webinar next Thursday on June 23rd. So our next webinar is on June 30th with Larry Jensen. He will be giving a presentation entitled German Reference and Research Tools. If you would like to access a previous webinar, please visit our webinar index on our website or search on our YouTube channel. All of our webinars are recorded and uploaded by the following Monday for your convenience. We also post links to recordings and other updates on our Facebook and Twitter accounts. For today's webinar, we are pleased to hear from Jacob A. Bedal, who will be giving a presentation on Spanish paleography. Before we begin, here is a little bit about Jacob. Jacob A. Bedal is from Southern California in a small town called Chino, about an hour east of LA. He grew up speaking Spanish as his father's family is from the small South American country of Uruguay, where he also lived for a short while with extended family. He then served an LDS mission in Lima Central, Peru. Returning from his mission, he began his studies at Mount San Antonio College in California, where he graduated with an associate's in English and another in global studies. In 2020, he transferred to BYU to study linguistics and history. He hopes to eventually become a professor. He also has published his first history article in the Medellin Journal this month. He is a polyglot as he speaks and understands various languages. He speaks Spanish and Portuguese fluently. He can also read Catalan. French, Italian, Japanese, and Latin. He has been working for the Family History Center as a paleographist on the script site, where he currently oversees the tutorials dealing with romance languages, and has thus worked with, transcribed, and translated documents from various centuries and in a wide variety of languages. This summer, he went to Spain with a group of family historians to assist in reading documents in Spanish, Catalan, and Latin. Furthermore, he spent time in Catalonia, collecting images and linguistic data of Catalan language records for a new tutorial on BYU's script site. If Jacob is ready, we will turn the time over to him. All right, thank you very much for that introduction. So let's pull up the presentation. So thank you very much for the opportunity to present. I'm very excited to be here and to present something that I find very fascinating and quite enjoyable. And I really hope that this presentation will affect you with that same enjoyment. Just before I begin, though, just as a heads up, this introduction will be just that, an introduction to paleography of the Spanish language. So my goal with this presentation is to be able to introduce you to the Spanish language, its history, the writing of the language, and to be able to give you an introduction into some of the general problems. and issues you'll find in registers. However, it's best to know and to understand that to gain a fluency in these documents, there's only just one way, is bashing your head against the records and having practice. So with that, let's go ahead and get started. So to begin with, there. So to begin with, let's talk about the Spanish language. So the Spanish language is a global language. as now it has almost over 5 million native speakers and it is the official language in over 20 countries being co-official or unofficial in many others and it is now the world's fourth most spoken language however while in english we know it as spanish it is more commonly referred to as castellano or castellan the reason being is that it is only one of a variety of iberian Iberia being the peninsula where Spain and Portugal reside. So if we look at the map, here is the Iberian Peninsula and the various languages that exist on the peninsula. So these languages include Catalan, or Catalan, Galego, up in the north, Portuguese, Basque, or Euskara, and Castellano. which is named after the kingdom of Castile. Indeed, many of these languages, they refer back to, or they form in the ancient kingdoms that used to exist in Anas Peninsula. So the origins of Castellano. Castellano or Spanish has a long heritage which starts with Latin. Now Latin has a long history in Spain as Spain was one of the first peninsulas, first provinces outside Italy that the Romans went to. And they started, they started their invasion of the peninsula in 206 BC and completed the entire conquest in 180 AD. So Spain is arguably one of the most Romanized provinces outside of Italy. And without any surprise, being a Romance language, Latin comprises the majority of the language, being about 75% of the language of modern Spanish, and only has about a 20% degree of difference from the original Latin, making it the most original along with Italian and Sardinian. So after... the fall of the Roman Empire in the 400s, we have the Visigoths that arrived. And they only last in the peninsula from about 5th, the 5th century to about the 8th century. And so they didn't leave a lot of linguistic heritage. However, the one thing that they did leave behind, which is most notable still in modern Spanish, is their surnames. So like most German languages, you have the son of, it's like Oleson, the son of Oli. And the Visigoths had something similar, but in their case, it was Z. So as you can see here, there's a list of common last names in Spanish, and they actually derive from the Visigoth tradition of the son of. For example, López, it means in Visigoth, the son of López. So after the Visigoths, in 711, we have the invasion of the Arabs, and they last much longer than the Visigoths. They're from 711 to 1492. And because of that, they have a large influence on not only the culture. cuisine, the history, but also on linguistics. And so Castellano or Spanish now has over 4,000 words that are of Arabic origin, which makes up roughly 8% of the language, making it the second largest contributor to modern Spanish. And these words range from very common words like aceite, which is oil, almohada, which is pillow, or even algebra, which is algebra. So after Arabic, when they We also have the Reconquista. So this is a period that lasts from around the 900s to well after the 1400s. And so this is after Castellano has received a lot of influences from Latin or vulgar Latin, the Visigoths and the Arabs, we start seeing Castellano really start to emerge as its own language. And so it starts emerging. We start seeing it written down the first time in... poem called El Cantar de Mío Cid, which is written in the 12th century, which is a historical drama about a real figure, El Cid, and his conquest of the city of Valencia. And this is the first time we actually see real Castellano or real Spanish written down. And not too long after, you have the King Alfonso X, who, apart from making many progress, progresses in medicine, law, culture, music, also designates Castellano as the court language, making it less of a vulgar language and more of a courtly language. After the Reconquista and entering into the 1500s, Spain and Spanish becomes a world empire language, especially after, so you have Spanish going across to the new worlds, picking up new languages, new words for new languages from like Nahuatl and Quechua. which is where we get the words, for example, avocado from náhuatl or chocolate. And then from Quechua, we get words like mate, which is like a tea, or pampa, which is like a field. It's also around this time that Castellano becomes the official language of Spain and where Don Cervantes writes his famous novel Don Quixote. And so... this is the basic history of Spanish as a language, and it has a much longer history than even our own language in English. But besides, despite its long, long history, it's actually hasn't changed as much, especially after Cervantes. So while Cervantes and Shakespeare were basically contemporaries, English speakers like you and I sometimes have a hard time reading one of Shakespeare's novels. Meanwhile, Castellano or A Castellano speaker or a Spanish speaker wouldn't have the same difficulty reading something from Cervantes. However, despite the language not having changed as much, the handwriting certainly has. And so that's why it's necessary to learn a little bit about how to read and how to decipher some of the writings that we find. So before we get into specifically Spanish paleography, here are some basic paleography techniques, which are helpful no matter where you're working, what language you're working in. So the first one is. Whenever you have a new document, for example, in the image here, it's to study the new handwriting carefully. Just like every person has a unique and idiosyncratic handwriting, so does every scribe, every priest that writes a document down. So sometimes it's useful before we even try to start reading a document to sit down and to look at the style, see if we notice any idiosyncratic forms of writing letters, and to go from there. After that, it's helpful to try to identify portions of the records that are familiar. So for example, if you speak Spanish and you find a word that you recognize, or if you are learning how to do Spanish palerophy, but you haven't learned Spanish yet, you can try to identify a phrase that's very common. And from there, you'll be able to recognize how this person writes their letters, how this person structures their entries. and it will help you in deciphering other sections of the document. After that, as you start reading through the document, it's helpful when you come to a letter or a word that you're unfamiliar with to take that and then to look at the rest of the document to see if you can find a letter that is comparable that will help you decipher or to clarify the text that you're working with. For example, if we look at the start of this document, it says E-N-E-L, N-L. So if I wasn't sure what that first letter was, I could look at the second entry or look throughout the document to see if I can find another letter E to help me figure out, okay, yes, this is an E and that first word is an L or in the. After that, it's important to remember the variety of handwriting that's found in records. So if you open up a document and you find a handwriting that you don't or you aren't familiar with. It can be very helpful to try to identify what's the style. Once you identify what the style is, you can probably find resources to help you understand how it's written and how the words are put down in that style. Along with that, it's also very helpful to compare unknown letters with alphabet charts. For example, here is a chart of a court hand. As you can tell, the court hand is very difficult to read. So which makes these kinds of charts invaluable in researching and deciphering old texts. Also the same goes with names and locations. So for example here's a name list from the BYU script site. These become very helpful because there are a lot of names and sometimes we're not familiar with all of them and so if we come across the name we're not sure we can try to compare it to a name list and the same thing with a location or with numbers or with dates or with words. So it's very helpful to have lists and charts and reference materials to be able to help clarify and to make sure that you're understanding what you're reading. So along with that, that's why it's important to consult outside sources. If you want to learn more about Spanish pedagogy or you want resources for that, one of the best places to go first is the BYU script site. So the BYU script site is... Or... script.byu.edu is the website that the Family Center of BYU provides, and it helps new pedographers or people who want to learn how to read older handwriting, how to read Spanish or Portuguese or English documents, and it provides a variety of resources such as name charts, abbreviation charts, alphabet charts, and a lot of other things that will be very helpful as you try to go through these old documents. And then the most important thing is as you go through a document is not to spend too much time on one letter, word, or a name. It's very tempting, especially with us being used to printed materials, to want to read everything by a letter and to understand everything as we go. However, working with old documents, it's important to understand that these entries were to to look at them not as individual letters or as individual words, but to look at the text more holistically. to look at it as the whole text as more of an entity. So if you don't understand, for example, what a letter or a word is, just mark it down, your best guess, and continue on. And very often you'll find that you'll understand or you'll see something that clarifies what you don't understand later on into the text. Most of all, here's a really good tip from an expert in Spanish pediography, Maria Elena Ribresca. She says, Read with calmness and attention to detail, avoiding anxiety or worry. Read each specific document word by word, avoiding the trap of confiding solely on your memory and knowledge of similar texts and phrases. Take into account all written elements, no matter how minimal they appear. Even the most insignificant mark can have transcendental importance. You should investigate what it means and why it was placed there. Long and difficult texts. should be read several times until you have completed the transcription. So with those basic pedagogy tips down, we'll now get into more specific Spanish handwriting and record tips. So bear in mind this won't cover the entirety of Spanish records as they're very vast and there's many things to keep in mind, but these basic things will help you start and avoid the most common pitfalls that many researchers have. So the first thing we'll be looking at are different kinds of writing styles that exist in Spanish, tricky letters and lookalikes, Latin influences, abbreviations, and conventionalisms. And then we'll go over a couple of examples to help situate all the information we've gone through. So let's go ahead and get started. Vámonos. So the first thing when you open a document to notice is the writing style. Now, if you're doing family history, Most records that you'll be looking at will be from the 1500s up to the modern age, because that is when parish records started, which is the most common kind of records you'll find that deals with the genealogical data in Spanish. Now, sometimes in French and other languages, you'll have more civil registers, but in Spanish, it's primarily parish records, which start around the 1400s in some areas into the 1500s. The writing styles that we first find are Redonda, Alamana, and Cortesana. So the first document you see in the upper right corner is an example of Redonda writing. And in the lower bottom, you'll have an example of Alamana. And so these handwriting styles come from much older ones. The Redonda comes up from Cartolingian writing, which was standard around the 800s or so. And then the Alemana comes from other Germanic languages that were in Europe at the time as well. After these languages, you start getting Cortesana, which is like the new example up in the top right. This really starts developing from court writing. So as the Spanish kings start holding court, this handwriting develops to be able to write quickly and effectively all the things that are being said or the edicts that are being given out. However, this gets really tricky because as you can see in this document, there's a lot of swirls and flourishes, and there's a lot of abbreviations to shorten the writing. And then from Cortesana, after the 1600s, we start getting Procesal, which is this document in the lower right, which is an even more abbreviated and sped up version of Cortesana. So Procesal is very difficult, even for... You're the most expert pedographer to decipher. And that usually takes a lot of practice and work to learn how to read those kinds of documents. However, after the 16th century, when we start getting to the Renaissance, a lot of intellectuals start looking at the handwriting styles as Gothic and sort of dark. And so they start looking further back into classical styles to find a more simple and enlightened form of writing. which is where we start getting humanistic, or in Spanish it's called italica, such as these two examples here. And the majority of Spanish documents will be written in this style. And it's still the style that we use in English and in modern Spanish today. So this one should be a little easier for the beginning pedographer or the beginning genealogist to understand. Though it is important to bear in mind that this style of writing has over 500 years of existence. So some nuances and stylistic changes have occurred. So after writing styles, it's important to understand that there are tricky letters and letters that look alike. And it's important to understand or have awareness that these letters exist. So not to confuse you or to trip you up as you're trying to read these documents. So the first one we have are interchangeable letters. So what happens in the Spanish language is as the language change, there's sounds that actually drop out of the language. And. the style of writing changes over time and gets refined. So that's why we find that some letters are able to be switched very easily in old documents or were used but are no longer used. So the first one we have is I and Y. So for example, we have here an example. The first one is Ignacio and we find that Ignacio is written with a Y instead of the modern spelling which is on the right with an I. Now this is very common, especially in the 1500s and 1600s. For example, the most famous Spanish monarch, Queen Isabella and Ferdinand, their monogram is actually Y and F instead of I and F, because she would have spelled her name with a Y. The next one, and below we also have another example, we have this picture says Las Misas or the Mass. As you can see, it's spelled as M-Y-S-Z-A compared to the modern M-I-S-A. And then another one is B, V, and U. So the reason why these three letters are interchangeable, first of all, let's take V and U, is in classical Latin, there used to only be the letter U. And the letter V actually comes out of U. So U and V become interchangeable because of... the writing practices of Latin. And then when the letter B is added, they used to be distinguishable sounds in Spanish, but modern Spanish has dropped that difference between B and V. So if you talk to a modern Spanish speaker now, and you try to tell them the difference between B and V, they won't be able to catch it. So even modern spot writers of Spanish sometimes will trip up and put a V or a V, and you have to be very careful. when you're trying to spell something out to them to say it's it's a grande or a bechica so that's why for example we here have this first example we have um isabel like the spanish monarch and you notice it's spelled with the y again and then we have a u instead of the modern spelling of the b and then down here we have noviembre which is spelled again with the b instead of a v So after B, V, and U, we have C, Z, S, double S, C, D, A, and X. Now, the reason why these letters are interchangeable is because there used to be many more fricative sounds, which are what these sounds are. But as Spanish evolved, they dropped a lot of those sounds, and it became much more simplified. But the writing style of writing hadn't caught up. So that's why, for example, we see these examples. We see the first one. a ds a ds so instead of a z it's spelled with an s and then the middle one that's a little hard to make out it's said or to be it's spelled with a z instead of an s and then the bottom one it's so i received spelled with a cedia instead of a c and also it's important to recognize that on the bottom one the big r is also a symbol for a double r but we'll get into into that a little later another interchangeable pair is x j and g so the importance with these ones is that they all have the same sound though the sound has changed over time as well so for example the top one we have legitima or legal so with an x and then we have ximenez spelled with the x instead of a j and then mujer spelled with a G instead of a J. Also, the part of the reason why X is included there is because now it's in Spanish, it's pronounced as or KX, sorry, KS. But in old Spanish and medieval Spanish, it actually had an SH sound, which is why, for example, if you look at Mexico, older writings usually spell Mexico or or also in Mexico as well, they still spell it with an X because that's the land of the Mexica. Same thing with Texas, because that was the land of the Teja. So that's why an older Spanish still had that sound. For example, the name Ximenez actually was pronounced Ximenez in medieval Spanish. But as it changed, it merged with J and G to become the hard X sound. And after these ones, we also didn't include it here, but it's also important to be aware that vowels. can also interchange with each other. For example, I's and E's, O's and U's. So the main thing is just be flexible. And if you see a word you're not familiar with, try to flip out some of these pairs and you may be able to find the modern equivalent and clarify what you're reading. Also, along with that, there are sometimes confusing letters. For example, like C's can look like E's. That's why it's very important to compare the handwriting. as you're going in to make sure you avoid those complications. Also, modern Spanish doesn't have a lot of double letters. The only double letters you find in modern Spanish is double r's and double l's because those are unique sounds. However, in older Spanish writing at least, it's very common to find double letters. Specifically, it's very common to find double pairs of f's, t's, s's, M's, R's, and X's. So in this first example, we see mil setecientos, or 1,700. The mil is spelled with two L's. And then again, we see setecientos is spelled with the Z instead of what is supposed to be a C. And then we have also siete with an exaggerated I dot, spelled with the double T as well. And the same thing with testigos on the bottom. So that almost looks like an H. but it's important to recognize that that's a double T. And then we also have special letters. There are other symbols that will pop up, but these are the most important to understand, especially when starting out. And these are more common in earlier texts. So there's two that it's important to watch out for. The first one is what's called a long S. Now a long S derives from Latin writing, and it goes clear up into the 1700s. in the 1700s it starts losing favor for the round s which is what we would normally associate an s with so if we look at this first example it looks almost like a l o n f o f o i s it's actually alfonso saez so those long exaggerated strokes are actually s's and then if we go down the next example we have the symbol for a double r so that first symbol it looks like almost an inverted a that's actually a symbol for double r's and if we also go back if we look at right here that capital r is also another symbol for that double r as well so it's important if you see this symbol not to confuse it with something else and to understand that this this word here is a responso or response So after tricky letters, it's also important to recognize that there's a lot of Latin influences. This is particularly true with older records because the thing is important to understand is that a lot of the registers that we have, especially for genealogical information, comes from parishes. And many of these priests would have learned how to speak and to write Latin first before learning how to write in Spanish. And so... Just like if we are English speakers learning Spanish, there are some habits from writing English that will spill into the Spanish that we write. The same thing happens with Latin scribes with writing Spanish. So the first thing that's important to recognize is that there'll be insertions of letters and what's called an impure S. So the evolution of vulgar Latin into Spanish caused a lot of letters to drop out. especially letters at the end, consonants at the end of syllables. So, for example, and so when a scribe writes in Spanish, sometimes they'll just put those consonants back in just by habit. So the first one we have, for example, we have Sancto Domingo or Saint Domingo instead of Santo Domingo. So you see there is the inclusion of the extra C right before the T-O, and that comes from the Latin Sanctus. Which also, as a side note, Sanctus is where we get the word, the name Sanchez from. And then here again, we have baptize, which becomes bautize. So we see that the scribe dropped the U, which is in modern Spanish, and included a P, which is closer to the Latin version of baptizar. And then again, here we have another. um, so here we have two things going, we have this SC inclusion, the S actually drops out in modern Spanish, and then we have a U instead of a B, so we have two Latin influences occurring at the same time, and so then along with that, we have what's called impure S, so Latin, the structure of Latin allowed for a consonant cluster or a group of consonants to be at the start of a word. So for example, if we look at the last example, we have scribano. So the combination of SCR, that cluster of consonants was possible with the rules of Latin, but as Vulgar Latin became Spanish, that actually stopped becoming a possibility. So it was necessary to actually include another sound to break the syllable. So in medieval Spanish, it was an I, and then with time, it became an E. So sometimes scribes will forget to put the E in there because in Latin, there's just, the E doesn't exist. It's the same reason why if you listen to Spanish speakers, if they're trying to say like, for example, the word stop, they say estop instead of just stop. It's because that E has to be there for the rules of Spanish. So then also we have Latin cognates. So with time, some changes in Spanish happen along the transition from Vulgar Latin to Monolatin. But sometimes scribes would put back in the more Latin versions, either to be more sophisticated or just by force of habit. So here are some common ones. We have H and F at the start of a word. So we have, for example, facer instead of hacer. So. The first two are archaic forms, but the bottom one, that's actually, those are both words in modern Spanish. So we have fierro and hierro, which are both the words for steel. And same thing with cu and qu, chu and qu, we have f and ph, and we have ch and ll. The bottom one of ch and ll, so clave and llave, those are also modern coordinates. in the language as well. So those are the most common ones you find and it's important to just be present that those can appear as well. Then we also have the letter H. Now the letter H gets a little tricky because in classical Latin the H was pronounced just like how we say the word help in English. The H is just a slight aspirated sound but as we move into Spanish the H loses its sound but in the tradition of writing, that H is still there. So what we find happening is that it starts becoming sort of a ghost H. Like scribes will know that there's supposed to be an H there somewhere, but they can't remember where to put it, or they just add extra Hs, or they just remove Hs. So for example, here we have the example, the first one is Teresa. We see the scribe just put in an extra H right there. So instead of just Teresa with a T, it becomes Teresa with a TH. And then the next one, we have a scribe that forgot to put the H. And so instead of being abia with an H and a B, it becomes abia with an A, a V, I, A. And the bottom one, there hasn't been any changes, but I thought I'd include this because it's important to recognize that the Spanish style of writing an H can be very particular to the language. So you get this kind of sort of weird squiggly symbol that comes to represent an H. But. So again, because like H is a silent letter in Spanish, it can pop up anywhere. So if we take, for example, the name Catalina here at the bottom, it can be the H can appear after the T, after the C, or it can even appear in both places. So just remember to be flexible when you're coming across H's or the lack of H's in Spanish records. And then also it's very common throughout. all the records of Spanish are Latin phrases, especially in notorial records they become. very, very common to put in Latin phrases as a start of a new clause or something like that. So these are the most common ones you'll find in records. And first you'll have ecclesiastical phrases. So like subconditione or conditionally. The most common of those is infacii ecclesiae in front of the church. That's very common in wedding records. Then you have explaining the authority. So like, la gentia parochi, by the license of the parish priest, right? And then again, in notarial documents, it's very common to find a notarial document that starts in de nomine amen, or in the name of God. And then most parish records will end in ut supra, or as above. So it usually will say, ut supra via messianio, or that is to say, as above. as stated above the day, the month, and the year. So these ones, it's best to just memorize what they are, or you can go into the BYU script site where we do have a list of Latin ecclesiastical phrases that will generally appear in these documents. So after Latin phrases and influences, it's important to understand that these documents are going to be full of abbreviations and conventionalisms. This is mostly due to a variety of factors. So you have, because now paper is very common, but back in these time periods, it was very precious. It was something that was not very cheap. And so they would try to preserve paper and ink by abbreviating and making it shorter as much as possible. their writing style. And these abbreviations also become very more common the older you go into time, especially the more Latin influences because you get a lot of Latin abbreviations as well. So abbreviations come in different styles. You have the first kind, which is contraction, which is where you'll take a word and they'll remove the middle of the word, leaving the outside and the front and the end intact. And usually you'll recognize it because they'll put a line over the word to show that something has been removed. So, for example, if we take the second example, we have Francisco spelled as Franco. Now, this is very important to recognize because Franco is a name. And so it can be very confusing if you're not aware that this line above the C or the NC is actually showing that it's abbreviated. So. And then another kind we have is suppositions, which are also very common. This is where they'll cut off the end of the word and they'll just take the last letter and they'll put it on top. So, for example, we have this first example is A-N-T with a superscript O. And that stands for Antonio. Also, another really, really common one is just M with a superscript A, which stands for Maria. That one you'll find all over the place. Then we also have suspensions. which is very similar to superposition, except that it doesn't have the word on top. So it's just the start of the word, and then they just cut or delete the rest of the word. And usually they'll put a period or they'll put like a small line to indicate that the word has been truncated or cut off. And so, for example, if we look at the first one, the first one's a Latin word, but this does appear in documents quite frequently. It's edem or the same. and usually it's just abbreviated as ID with a period. Then we have acronyms, and these are very common. We have, for example, NM is Nuestra Madre. We also have MNEML, which is Muy Noble y Muy Leal Provincia. And so there's all kinds. A note that's important to understand is a conventionalism with abbreviations. If you notice the bottom one, it has a double S for one word, which is Santissimo. Now, the doubling of the letter happens when the word is either plural or it's a superlative, which means like it's the most of something. So, for example, we have Santissimo, which is the holiest, and therefore it will be abbreviated with a double letter. And another place we see this, for example, if you see the abbreviation for the United States in Spanish or Los Estados Unidos. It's spelled as ee uu because it's plural so estados plural unidos plural. And then we also come into conventionalisms. And these ones, they just have to be memorized. And a lot of these come from Latin, Latin abbreviations. So, for example, if you find an X at the start of a word that usually stands in for a cross, meaning Christ. So that usually, for example, we see the first example, X tobal means Cristobal. And then we also have, for example, if you see the P down the middle, it's a P with a crossbar. That's actually a Latin abbreviation that we also find in. Spanish documents and that stands as that fills in a place for a syllable with a syllable head. So this it's also very useful to have a reference list and that's also available on ScriptSite because these conventionalisms they just have to be learned. So now that we've gone over the basics of basic understanding of things to look out for in Spanish documents, let's go ahead and look at a couple of examples real quick. to kind of see these principles in action, because I just threw a lot of information, and sometimes it's hard to let that all sink in the brain. So this first document I have here is from San Miguel Papantia, from Veracruz, Mexico. And this is a baptismal record from 1914 to 1915. So if we zoom in on a specific entry, Now, this is very important to recognize. So what you see here, we see various entries one after another. And so you don't really have to know Spanish very well to be able to extract the information you want from it. Because what happens is these kinds of documents become very systematic and formulaic. So the first thing we notice is up in the top corner, if you can see my mouse, is we have the date, which is 1914. And the first entry on the side, we have S.E.P. So that's a long S right there we were talking about. So SEP stands in for Septiembre 6. So that's a little odd because normally these registers will start with a date phrase. But in this case, we can see it. And so we'll just go ahead. So this first entry we have is it says Maria, a very common name. And then we get to this next name, which is not very clear. That first letter looks a little odd. So what I would do first is look at and see if I can find. a letter that looks similar. Now, if we jump down three entries, it says M superscript A, Margarita. So if we look at that M on Margarita, it has that little bit of a trill right there. And so that tells me that the M looks very similar to this letter right here. So I'm going to hazard a guess and say that's a letter N because it only has one hump. So if we look at his as NA, it's probably T because there's a slight cross right there. I-V-A-I-D-A-D. So it's probably going to say Maria Natividad de Jesus. So that's the name of the person being baptized. So Maria Natividad de Jesus, that would be the one you want to extract. Then we have D, the number 19. And then we have D-H-L. So the first thing, this D is probably going to stand for Diaz. So of the 19th day. And then this next one, what it stands for is hijo o hija legitima, or legal child. That tells you, in Spanish records, if you find it says legitima or legitimo, is that the child was born in a wedlock. Now, if we go down the next example, we see HN that says hijo legitima or hija natural, which tells us that the child... born naturally is actually born outside of wedlock. Now this is specifically for Spanish, because in Catalan, for example, they'll say the same thing for a child and it doesn't change anything. So here, hija legítima de Juan Cepeda y de María, so M superscript A, so that's María right there, López, and then here we have another abbreviation, we have AP, which is abuelos paternos, or the parents of the father. And so here we have A-N-T superscript, which means Antonio, Cepeda, y Verónica. And notice, so Verónica in modern Spanish is spelled with a V, but here it's spelled with a B, because B, remember, B and V linguistically have no difference in Spanish. So y Verónica Ramos. And then here we have another abbreviation, this one saying Abuelos Maternos, or the parents of the mother. It's... Hilaria, Hilaria, sorry, Hilario. López. So that's an H there. And then y Antonia Núñez. So here we have an N. So that looks just like Natividad right up there. So Núñez. And then it says, we have an abbreviation here. This is padrinos or godparents, los abuelos maternos de la criatura, or the maternal grandparents of the child. So this is a pretty simple document. It gives you a lot of good genealogical information. And if you would notice, like if you just go through it, it's pretty standard. So if you get used to the format, you can pretty much even without reading much of the document, just be able to pick out, okay, this is the name of the child being baptized. This is the name of the parents. And in this case, the scribe actually gives us the name of the grandparents, which is not always very common. So as you go with time and you get practice, you can probably get to something a little more advanced. So here. We have an example of Cortesana, which is a lot harder to read. Now this one comes from the 16th century. This one is from Donvidas, which is in Ávila, Spain, from 1558. So if we look here really quick, so if you want to just extract the information, you can you start noticing that has the same sort of style for every entry. So first we have right here, we have the date phrase. So it says, a 25 de abril, 1562 años, or in English, on the 25th day of April, 1562. So that's your date. The next word is murió, or so died. So it's telling us that this is a death register. And then here we get the name. So Martín, and then we have a long S, Saez. So Martín Saez is the name of the man that died. So the next word we have, hijo. So you have that funky H symbol. So now we're going to get the parent's name. So hijo de pedosias. So P-E-R. That looks like an X, but that's an R. Pedosias. So right there, just those two lines, we have all the information that we need. Now, if we want to go further, we can go and read through the document. And we'll learn that, for example, this man did not leave a will. We find out where he was buried, how many masses were said for him. So as you go through, like, especially with a document like this, it's very helpful to have external resources. Like the script site will have a lot of abbreviations, names you can compare that help you slowly kind of go through a document like this. So this is basic information about Spanish paleography. Thank you for sticking around. I know that's a lot of information, but with time and with practice, I'm sure you can be able to start breezing through these registers and finding about many, many men and women who have lived through the past who spoke Spanish. So thank you very much. Thank you so much for joining us today. We hope you will join us for our next webinar, which is on June 30th with Larry Jensen. He will be giving a presentation entitled German Reference and Research Tools. A recording of this webinar will be made available next week. You can view that on our YouTube channel or on our website. If you have any comments or questions, you can always email us at fhl-webinars at byu.edu or follow Facebook and Twitter. Thank you and have a wonderful week.

Hello and welcome to the BYU Family History Library webinar series. We're glad you could join us today. I'm Olivia Tuller and I'll be your host for this webinar.

If you have technical difficulties during the webinar, please use the chat box and I can address your concerns. You are welcome to use the chat box during the webinar for comments, insights, and questions. However, all questions will be addressed at the end of the presentation. We will not be having a webinar next Thursday on June 23rd.

So our next webinar is on June 30th with Larry Jensen. He will be giving a presentation entitled German Reference and Research Tools. If you would like to access a previous webinar, please visit our webinar index on our website or search on our YouTube channel.

All of our webinars are recorded and uploaded by the following Monday for your convenience. We also post links to recordings and other updates on our Facebook and Twitter accounts. For today's webinar, we are pleased to hear from Jacob A. Bedal, who will be giving a presentation on Spanish paleography.

Before we begin, here is a little bit about Jacob. Jacob A. Bedal is from Southern California in a small town called Chino, about an hour east of LA. He grew up speaking Spanish as his father's family is from the small South American country of Uruguay, where he also lived for a short while with extended family.

He then served an LDS mission in Lima Central, Peru. Returning from his mission, he began his studies at Mount San Antonio College in California, where he graduated with an associate's in English and another in global studies. In 2020, he transferred to BYU to study linguistics and history.

He hopes to eventually become a professor. He also has published his first history article in the Medellin Journal this month. He is a polyglot as he speaks and understands various languages. He speaks Spanish and Portuguese fluently. He can also read Catalan.

French, Italian, Japanese, and Latin. He has been working for the Family History Center as a paleographist on the script site, where he currently oversees the tutorials dealing with romance languages, and has thus worked with, transcribed, and translated documents from various centuries and in a wide variety of languages. This summer, he went to Spain with a group of family historians to assist in reading documents in Spanish, Catalan, and Latin. Furthermore, he spent time in Catalonia, collecting images and linguistic data of Catalan language records for a new tutorial on BYU's script site. If Jacob is ready, we will turn the time over to him.

All right, thank you very much for that introduction. So let's pull up the presentation. So thank you very much for the opportunity to present.

I'm very excited to be here and to present something that I find very fascinating and quite enjoyable. And I really hope that this presentation will affect you with that same enjoyment. Just before I begin, though, just as a heads up, this introduction will be just that, an introduction to paleography of the Spanish language. So my goal with this presentation is to be able to introduce you to the Spanish language, its history, the writing of the language, and to be able to give you an introduction into some of the general problems. and issues you'll find in registers.

However, it's best to know and to understand that to gain a fluency in these documents, there's only just one way, is bashing your head against the records and having practice. So with that, let's go ahead and get started. So to begin with, there. So to begin with, let's talk about the Spanish language.

So the Spanish language is a global language. as now it has almost over 5 million native speakers and it is the official language in over 20 countries being co-official or unofficial in many others and it is now the world's fourth most spoken language however while in english we know it as spanish it is more commonly referred to as castellano or castellan the reason being is that it is only one of a variety of iberian Iberia being the peninsula where Spain and Portugal reside. So if we look at the map, here is the Iberian Peninsula and the various languages that exist on the peninsula.

So these languages include Catalan, or Catalan, Galego, up in the north, Portuguese, Basque, or Euskara, and Castellano. which is named after the kingdom of Castile. Indeed, many of these languages, they refer back to, or they form in the ancient kingdoms that used to exist in Anas Peninsula.

So the origins of Castellano. Castellano or Spanish has a long heritage which starts with Latin. Now Latin has a long history in Spain as Spain was one of the first peninsulas, first provinces outside Italy that the Romans went to.

And they started, they started their invasion of the peninsula in 206 BC and completed the entire conquest in 180 AD. So Spain is arguably one of the most Romanized provinces outside of Italy. And without any surprise, being a Romance language, Latin comprises the majority of the language, being about 75% of the language of modern Spanish, and only has about a 20% degree of difference from the original Latin, making it the most original along with Italian and Sardinian. So after...

the fall of the Roman Empire in the 400s, we have the Visigoths that arrived. And they only last in the peninsula from about 5th, the 5th century to about the 8th century. And so they didn't leave a lot of linguistic heritage. However, the one thing that they did leave behind, which is most notable still in modern Spanish, is their surnames.

So like most German languages, you have the son of, it's like Oleson, the son of Oli. And the Visigoths had something similar, but in their case, it was Z. So as you can see here, there's a list of common last names in Spanish, and they actually derive from the Visigoth tradition of the son of.

For example, López, it means in Visigoth, the son of López. So after the Visigoths, in 711, we have the invasion of the Arabs, and they last much longer than the Visigoths. They're from 711 to 1492. And because of that, they have a large influence on not only the culture.

cuisine, the history, but also on linguistics. And so Castellano or Spanish now has over 4,000 words that are of Arabic origin, which makes up roughly 8% of the language, making it the second largest contributor to modern Spanish. And these words range from very common words like aceite, which is oil, almohada, which is pillow, or even algebra, which is algebra.

So after Arabic, when they We also have the Reconquista. So this is a period that lasts from around the 900s to well after the 1400s. And so this is after Castellano has received a lot of influences from Latin or vulgar Latin, the Visigoths and the Arabs, we start seeing Castellano really start to emerge as its own language. And so it starts emerging.

We start seeing it written down the first time in... poem called El Cantar de Mío Cid, which is written in the 12th century, which is a historical drama about a real figure, El Cid, and his conquest of the city of Valencia. And this is the first time we actually see real Castellano or real Spanish written down. And not too long after, you have the King Alfonso X, who, apart from making many progress, progresses in medicine, law, culture, music, also designates Castellano as the court language, making it less of a vulgar language and more of a courtly language. After the Reconquista and entering into the 1500s, Spain and Spanish becomes a world empire language, especially after, so you have Spanish going across to the new worlds, picking up new languages, new words for new languages from like Nahuatl and Quechua.

which is where we get the words, for example, avocado from náhuatl or chocolate. And then from Quechua, we get words like mate, which is like a tea, or pampa, which is like a field. It's also around this time that Castellano becomes the official language of Spain and where Don Cervantes writes his famous novel Don Quixote. And so...

this is the basic history of Spanish as a language, and it has a much longer history than even our own language in English. But besides, despite its long, long history, it's actually hasn't changed as much, especially after Cervantes. So while Cervantes and Shakespeare were basically contemporaries, English speakers like you and I sometimes have a hard time reading one of Shakespeare's novels. Meanwhile, Castellano or A Castellano speaker or a Spanish speaker wouldn't have the same difficulty reading something from Cervantes.

However, despite the language not having changed as much, the handwriting certainly has. And so that's why it's necessary to learn a little bit about how to read and how to decipher some of the writings that we find. So before we get into specifically Spanish paleography, here are some basic paleography techniques, which are helpful no matter where you're working, what language you're working in.

So the first one is. Whenever you have a new document, for example, in the image here, it's to study the new handwriting carefully. Just like every person has a unique and idiosyncratic handwriting, so does every scribe, every priest that writes a document down.

So sometimes it's useful before we even try to start reading a document to sit down and to look at the style, see if we notice any idiosyncratic forms of writing letters, and to go from there. After that, it's helpful to try to identify portions of the records that are familiar. So for example, if you speak Spanish and you find a word that you recognize, or if you are learning how to do Spanish palerophy, but you haven't learned Spanish yet, you can try to identify a phrase that's very common.

And from there, you'll be able to recognize how this person writes their letters, how this person structures their entries. and it will help you in deciphering other sections of the document. After that, as you start reading through the document, it's helpful when you come to a letter or a word that you're unfamiliar with to take that and then to look at the rest of the document to see if you can find a letter that is comparable that will help you decipher or to clarify the text that you're working with.

For example, if we look at the start of this document, it says E-N-E-L, N-L. So if I wasn't sure what that first letter was, I could look at the second entry or look throughout the document to see if I can find another letter E to help me figure out, okay, yes, this is an E and that first word is an L or in the. After that, it's important to remember the variety of handwriting that's found in records. So if you open up a document and you find a handwriting that you don't or you aren't familiar with.

It can be very helpful to try to identify what's the style. Once you identify what the style is, you can probably find resources to help you understand how it's written and how the words are put down in that style. Along with that, it's also very helpful to compare unknown letters with alphabet charts. For example, here is a chart of a court hand.

As you can tell, the court hand is very difficult to read. So which makes these kinds of charts invaluable in researching and deciphering old texts. Also the same goes with names and locations.

So for example here's a name list from the BYU script site. These become very helpful because there are a lot of names and sometimes we're not familiar with all of them and so if we come across the name we're not sure we can try to compare it to a name list and the same thing with a location or with numbers or with dates or with words. So it's very helpful to have lists and charts and reference materials to be able to help clarify and to make sure that you're understanding what you're reading.

So along with that, that's why it's important to consult outside sources. If you want to learn more about Spanish pedagogy or you want resources for that, one of the best places to go first is the BYU script site. So the BYU script site is...

Or... script.byu.edu is the website that the Family Center of BYU provides, and it helps new pedographers or people who want to learn how to read older handwriting, how to read Spanish or Portuguese or English documents, and it provides a variety of resources such as name charts, abbreviation charts, alphabet charts, and a lot of other things that will be very helpful as you try to go through these old documents. And then the most important thing is as you go through a document is not to spend too much time on one letter, word, or a name. It's very tempting, especially with us being used to printed materials, to want to read everything by a letter and to understand everything as we go. However, working with old documents, it's important to understand that these entries were to to look at them not as individual letters or as individual words, but to look at the text more holistically.

to look at it as the whole text as more of an entity. So if you don't understand, for example, what a letter or a word is, just mark it down, your best guess, and continue on. And very often you'll find that you'll understand or you'll see something that clarifies what you don't understand later on into the text.

Most of all, here's a really good tip from an expert in Spanish pediography, Maria Elena Ribresca. She says, Read with calmness and attention to detail, avoiding anxiety or worry. Read each specific document word by word, avoiding the trap of confiding solely on your memory and knowledge of similar texts and phrases.

Take into account all written elements, no matter how minimal they appear. Even the most insignificant mark can have transcendental importance. You should investigate what it means and why it was placed there.

Long and difficult texts. should be read several times until you have completed the transcription. So with those basic pedagogy tips down, we'll now get into more specific Spanish handwriting and record tips.

So bear in mind this won't cover the entirety of Spanish records as they're very vast and there's many things to keep in mind, but these basic things will help you start and avoid the most common pitfalls that many researchers have. So the first thing we'll be looking at are different kinds of writing styles that exist in Spanish, tricky letters and lookalikes, Latin influences, abbreviations, and conventionalisms. And then we'll go over a couple of examples to help situate all the information we've gone through.

So let's go ahead and get started. Vámonos. So the first thing when you open a document to notice is the writing style. Now, if you're doing family history, Most records that you'll be looking at will be from the 1500s up to the modern age, because that is when parish records started, which is the most common kind of records you'll find that deals with the genealogical data in Spanish. Now, sometimes in French and other languages, you'll have more civil registers, but in Spanish, it's primarily parish records, which start around the 1400s in some areas into the 1500s.

The writing styles that we first find are Redonda, Alamana, and Cortesana. So the first document you see in the upper right corner is an example of Redonda writing. And in the lower bottom, you'll have an example of Alamana. And so these handwriting styles come from much older ones. The Redonda comes up from Cartolingian writing, which was standard around the 800s or so.

And then the Alemana comes from other Germanic languages that were in Europe at the time as well. After these languages, you start getting Cortesana, which is like the new example up in the top right. This really starts developing from court writing. So as the Spanish kings start holding court, this handwriting develops to be able to write quickly and effectively all the things that are being said or the edicts that are being given out.

However, this gets really tricky because as you can see in this document, there's a lot of swirls and flourishes, and there's a lot of abbreviations to shorten the writing. And then from Cortesana, after the 1600s, we start getting Procesal, which is this document in the lower right, which is an even more abbreviated and sped up version of Cortesana. So Procesal is very difficult, even for... You're the most expert pedographer to decipher. And that usually takes a lot of practice and work to learn how to read those kinds of documents.

However, after the 16th century, when we start getting to the Renaissance, a lot of intellectuals start looking at the handwriting styles as Gothic and sort of dark. And so they start looking further back into classical styles to find a more simple and enlightened form of writing. which is where we start getting humanistic, or in Spanish it's called italica, such as these two examples here. And the majority of Spanish documents will be written in this style. And it's still the style that we use in English and in modern Spanish today.

So this one should be a little easier for the beginning pedographer or the beginning genealogist to understand. Though it is important to bear in mind that this style of writing has over 500 years of existence. So some nuances and stylistic changes have occurred.

So after writing styles, it's important to understand that there are tricky letters and letters that look alike. And it's important to understand or have awareness that these letters exist. So not to confuse you or to trip you up as you're trying to read these documents. So the first one we have are interchangeable letters. So what happens in the Spanish language is as the language change, there's sounds that actually drop out of the language.

And. the style of writing changes over time and gets refined. So that's why we find that some letters are able to be switched very easily in old documents or were used but are no longer used. So the first one we have is I and Y.

So for example, we have here an example. The first one is Ignacio and we find that Ignacio is written with a Y instead of the modern spelling which is on the right with an I. Now this is very common, especially in the 1500s and 1600s.

For example, the most famous Spanish monarch, Queen Isabella and Ferdinand, their monogram is actually Y and F instead of I and F, because she would have spelled her name with a Y. The next one, and below we also have another example, we have this picture says Las Misas or the Mass. As you can see, it's spelled as M-Y-S-Z-A compared to the modern M-I-S-A. And then another one is B, V, and U. So the reason why these three letters are interchangeable, first of all, let's take V and U, is in classical Latin, there used to only be the letter U.

And the letter V actually comes out of U. So U and V become interchangeable because of... the writing practices of Latin. And then when the letter B is added, they used to be distinguishable sounds in Spanish, but modern Spanish has dropped that difference between B and V. So if you talk to a modern Spanish speaker now, and you try to tell them the difference between B and V, they won't be able to catch it.

So even modern spot writers of Spanish sometimes will trip up and put a V or a V, and you have to be very careful. when you're trying to spell something out to them to say it's it's a grande or a bechica so that's why for example we here have this first example we have um isabel like the spanish monarch and you notice it's spelled with the y again and then we have a u instead of the modern spelling of the b and then down here we have noviembre which is spelled again with the b instead of a v So after B, V, and U, we have C, Z, S, double S, C, D, A, and X. Now, the reason why these letters are interchangeable is because there used to be many more fricative sounds, which are what these sounds are. But as Spanish evolved, they dropped a lot of those sounds, and it became much more simplified. But the writing style of writing hadn't caught up.

So that's why, for example, we see these examples. We see the first one. a ds a ds so instead of a z it's spelled with an s and then the middle one that's a little hard to make out it's said or to be it's spelled with a z instead of an s and then the bottom one it's so i received spelled with a cedia instead of a c and also it's important to recognize that on the bottom one the big r is also a symbol for a double r but we'll get into into that a little later another interchangeable pair is x j and g so the importance with these ones is that they all have the same sound though the sound has changed over time as well so for example the top one we have legitima or legal so with an x and then we have ximenez spelled with the x instead of a j and then mujer spelled with a G instead of a J.

Also, the part of the reason why X is included there is because now it's in Spanish, it's pronounced as or KX, sorry, KS. But in old Spanish and medieval Spanish, it actually had an SH sound, which is why, for example, if you look at Mexico, older writings usually spell Mexico or or also in Mexico as well, they still spell it with an X because that's the land of the Mexica. Same thing with Texas, because that was the land of the Teja.

So that's why an older Spanish still had that sound. For example, the name Ximenez actually was pronounced Ximenez in medieval Spanish. But as it changed, it merged with J and G to become the hard X sound.

And after these ones, we also didn't include it here, but it's also important to be aware that vowels. can also interchange with each other. For example, I's and E's, O's and U's. So the main thing is just be flexible. And if you see a word you're not familiar with, try to flip out some of these pairs and you may be able to find the modern equivalent and clarify what you're reading.

Also, along with that, there are sometimes confusing letters. For example, like C's can look like E's. That's why it's very important to compare the handwriting. as you're going in to make sure you avoid those complications. Also, modern Spanish doesn't have a lot of double letters.

The only double letters you find in modern Spanish is double r's and double l's because those are unique sounds. However, in older Spanish writing at least, it's very common to find double letters. Specifically, it's very common to find double pairs of f's, t's, s's, M's, R's, and X's. So in this first example, we see mil setecientos, or 1,700. The mil is spelled with two L's.

And then again, we see setecientos is spelled with the Z instead of what is supposed to be a C. And then we have also siete with an exaggerated I dot, spelled with the double T as well. And the same thing with testigos on the bottom.

So that almost looks like an H. but it's important to recognize that that's a double T. And then we also have special letters.

There are other symbols that will pop up, but these are the most important to understand, especially when starting out. And these are more common in earlier texts. So there's two that it's important to watch out for. The first one is what's called a long S.

Now a long S derives from Latin writing, and it goes clear up into the 1700s. in the 1700s it starts losing favor for the round s which is what we would normally associate an s with so if we look at this first example it looks almost like a l o n f o f o i s it's actually alfonso saez so those long exaggerated strokes are actually s's and then if we go down the next example we have the symbol for a double r so that first symbol it looks like almost an inverted a that's actually a symbol for double r's and if we also go back if we look at right here that capital r is also another symbol for that double r as well so it's important if you see this symbol not to confuse it with something else and to understand that this this word here is a responso or response So after tricky letters, it's also important to recognize that there's a lot of Latin influences. This is particularly true with older records because the thing is important to understand is that a lot of the registers that we have, especially for genealogical information, comes from parishes.

And many of these priests would have learned how to speak and to write Latin first before learning how to write in Spanish. And so... Just like if we are English speakers learning Spanish, there are some habits from writing English that will spill into the Spanish that we write.

The same thing happens with Latin scribes with writing Spanish. So the first thing that's important to recognize is that there'll be insertions of letters and what's called an impure S. So the evolution of vulgar Latin into Spanish caused a lot of letters to drop out. especially letters at the end, consonants at the end of syllables.

So, for example, and so when a scribe writes in Spanish, sometimes they'll just put those consonants back in just by habit. So the first one we have, for example, we have Sancto Domingo or Saint Domingo instead of Santo Domingo. So you see there is the inclusion of the extra C right before the T-O, and that comes from the Latin Sanctus. Which also, as a side note, Sanctus is where we get the word, the name Sanchez from. And then here again, we have baptize, which becomes bautize.

So we see that the scribe dropped the U, which is in modern Spanish, and included a P, which is closer to the Latin version of baptizar. And then again, here we have another. um, so here we have two things going, we have this SC inclusion, the S actually drops out in modern Spanish, and then we have a U instead of a B, so we have two Latin influences occurring at the same time, and so then along with that, we have what's called impure S, so Latin, the structure of Latin allowed for a consonant cluster or a group of consonants to be at the start of a word.

So for example, if we look at the last example, we have scribano. So the combination of SCR, that cluster of consonants was possible with the rules of Latin, but as Vulgar Latin became Spanish, that actually stopped becoming a possibility. So it was necessary to actually include another sound to break the syllable.

So in medieval Spanish, it was an I, and then with time, it became an E. So sometimes scribes will forget to put the E in there because in Latin, there's just, the E doesn't exist. It's the same reason why if you listen to Spanish speakers, if they're trying to say like, for example, the word stop, they say estop instead of just stop. It's because that E has to be there for the rules of Spanish.

So then also we have Latin cognates. So with time, some changes in Spanish happen along the transition from Vulgar Latin to Monolatin. But sometimes scribes would put back in the more Latin versions, either to be more sophisticated or just by force of habit.

So here are some common ones. We have H and F at the start of a word. So we have, for example, facer instead of hacer. So. The first two are archaic forms, but the bottom one, that's actually, those are both words in modern Spanish.

So we have fierro and hierro, which are both the words for steel. And same thing with cu and qu, chu and qu, we have f and ph, and we have ch and ll. The bottom one of ch and ll, so clave and llave, those are also modern coordinates.

in the language as well. So those are the most common ones you find and it's important to just be present that those can appear as well. Then we also have the letter H. Now the letter H gets a little tricky because in classical Latin the H was pronounced just like how we say the word help in English. The H is just a slight aspirated sound but as we move into Spanish the H loses its sound but in the tradition of writing, that H is still there.

So what we find happening is that it starts becoming sort of a ghost H. Like scribes will know that there's supposed to be an H there somewhere, but they can't remember where to put it, or they just add extra Hs, or they just remove Hs. So for example, here we have the example, the first one is Teresa. We see the scribe just put in an extra H right there. So instead of just Teresa with a T, it becomes Teresa with a TH.

And then the next one, we have a scribe that forgot to put the H. And so instead of being abia with an H and a B, it becomes abia with an A, a V, I, A. And the bottom one, there hasn't been any changes, but I thought I'd include this because it's important to recognize that the Spanish style of writing an H can be very particular to the language. So you get this kind of sort of weird squiggly symbol that comes to represent an H.

But. So again, because like H is a silent letter in Spanish, it can pop up anywhere. So if we take, for example, the name Catalina here at the bottom, it can be the H can appear after the T, after the C, or it can even appear in both places.

So just remember to be flexible when you're coming across H's or the lack of H's in Spanish records. And then also it's very common throughout. all the records of Spanish are Latin phrases, especially in notorial records they become. very, very common to put in Latin phrases as a start of a new clause or something like that. So these are the most common ones you'll find in records.

And first you'll have ecclesiastical phrases. So like subconditione or conditionally. The most common of those is infacii ecclesiae in front of the church. That's very common in wedding records.

Then you have explaining the authority. So like, la gentia parochi, by the license of the parish priest, right? And then again, in notarial documents, it's very common to find a notarial document that starts in de nomine amen, or in the name of God.

And then most parish records will end in ut supra, or as above. So it usually will say, ut supra via messianio, or that is to say, as above. as stated above the day, the month, and the year. So these ones, it's best to just memorize what they are, or you can go into the BYU script site where we do have a list of Latin ecclesiastical phrases that will generally appear in these documents. So after Latin phrases and influences, it's important to understand that these documents are going to be full of abbreviations and conventionalisms.

This is mostly due to a variety of factors. So you have, because now paper is very common, but back in these time periods, it was very precious. It was something that was not very cheap.

And so they would try to preserve paper and ink by abbreviating and making it shorter as much as possible. their writing style. And these abbreviations also become very more common the older you go into time, especially the more Latin influences because you get a lot of Latin abbreviations as well.

So abbreviations come in different styles. You have the first kind, which is contraction, which is where you'll take a word and they'll remove the middle of the word, leaving the outside and the front and the end intact. And usually you'll recognize it because they'll put a line over the word to show that something has been removed. So, for example, if we take the second example, we have Francisco spelled as Franco.

Now, this is very important to recognize because Franco is a name. And so it can be very confusing if you're not aware that this line above the C or the NC is actually showing that it's abbreviated. So. And then another kind we have is suppositions, which are also very common.

This is where they'll cut off the end of the word and they'll just take the last letter and they'll put it on top. So, for example, we have this first example is A-N-T with a superscript O. And that stands for Antonio.

Also, another really, really common one is just M with a superscript A, which stands for Maria. That one you'll find all over the place. Then we also have suspensions. which is very similar to superposition, except that it doesn't have the word on top.

So it's just the start of the word, and then they just cut or delete the rest of the word. And usually they'll put a period or they'll put like a small line to indicate that the word has been truncated or cut off. And so, for example, if we look at the first one, the first one's a Latin word, but this does appear in documents quite frequently.

It's edem or the same. and usually it's just abbreviated as ID with a period. Then we have acronyms, and these are very common. We have, for example, NM is Nuestra Madre.

We also have MNEML, which is Muy Noble y Muy Leal Provincia. And so there's all kinds. A note that's important to understand is a conventionalism with abbreviations. If you notice the bottom one, it has a double S for one word, which is Santissimo.

Now, the doubling of the letter happens when the word is either plural or it's a superlative, which means like it's the most of something. So, for example, we have Santissimo, which is the holiest, and therefore it will be abbreviated with a double letter. And another place we see this, for example, if you see the abbreviation for the United States in Spanish or Los Estados Unidos.

It's spelled as ee uu because it's plural so estados plural unidos plural. And then we also come into conventionalisms. And these ones, they just have to be memorized. And a lot of these come from Latin, Latin abbreviations.

So, for example, if you find an X at the start of a word that usually stands in for a cross, meaning Christ. So that usually, for example, we see the first example, X tobal means Cristobal. And then we also have, for example, if you see the P down the middle, it's a P with a crossbar.

That's actually a Latin abbreviation that we also find in. Spanish documents and that stands as that fills in a place for a syllable with a syllable head. So this it's also very useful to have a reference list and that's also available on ScriptSite because these conventionalisms they just have to be learned.

So now that we've gone over the basics of basic understanding of things to look out for in Spanish documents, let's go ahead and look at a couple of examples real quick. to kind of see these principles in action, because I just threw a lot of information, and sometimes it's hard to let that all sink in the brain. So this first document I have here is from San Miguel Papantia, from Veracruz, Mexico.

And this is a baptismal record from 1914 to 1915. So if we zoom in on a specific entry, Now, this is very important to recognize. So what you see here, we see various entries one after another. And so you don't really have to know Spanish very well to be able to extract the information you want from it. Because what happens is these kinds of documents become very systematic and formulaic. So the first thing we notice is up in the top corner, if you can see my mouse, is we have the date, which is 1914. And the first entry on the side, we have S.E.P. So that's a long S right there we were talking about.

So SEP stands in for Septiembre 6. So that's a little odd because normally these registers will start with a date phrase. But in this case, we can see it. And so we'll just go ahead.

So this first entry we have is it says Maria, a very common name. And then we get to this next name, which is not very clear. That first letter looks a little odd.

So what I would do first is look at and see if I can find. a letter that looks similar. Now, if we jump down three entries, it says M superscript A, Margarita. So if we look at that M on Margarita, it has that little bit of a trill right there.

And so that tells me that the M looks very similar to this letter right here. So I'm going to hazard a guess and say that's a letter N because it only has one hump. So if we look at his as NA, it's probably T because there's a slight cross right there.

I-V-A-I-D-A-D. So it's probably going to say Maria Natividad de Jesus. So that's the name of the person being baptized.

So Maria Natividad de Jesus, that would be the one you want to extract. Then we have D, the number 19. And then we have D-H-L. So the first thing, this D is probably going to stand for Diaz. So of the 19th day.

And then this next one, what it stands for is hijo o hija legitima, or legal child. That tells you, in Spanish records, if you find it says legitima or legitimo, is that the child was born in a wedlock. Now, if we go down the next example, we see HN that says hijo legitima or hija natural, which tells us that the child... born naturally is actually born outside of wedlock.

Now this is specifically for Spanish, because in Catalan, for example, they'll say the same thing for a child and it doesn't change anything. So here, hija legítima de Juan Cepeda y de María, so M superscript A, so that's María right there, López, and then here we have another abbreviation, we have AP, which is abuelos paternos, or the parents of the father. And so here we have A-N-T superscript, which means Antonio, Cepeda, y Verónica. And notice, so Verónica in modern Spanish is spelled with a V, but here it's spelled with a B, because B, remember, B and V linguistically have no difference in Spanish. So y Verónica Ramos.

And then here we have another abbreviation, this one saying Abuelos Maternos, or the parents of the mother. It's... Hilaria, Hilaria, sorry, Hilario. López.

So that's an H there. And then y Antonia Núñez. So here we have an N. So that looks just like Natividad right up there.

So Núñez. And then it says, we have an abbreviation here. This is padrinos or godparents, los abuelos maternos de la criatura, or the maternal grandparents of the child.

So this is a pretty simple document. It gives you a lot of good genealogical information. And if you would notice, like if you just go through it, it's pretty standard. So if you get used to the format, you can pretty much even without reading much of the document, just be able to pick out, okay, this is the name of the child being baptized. This is the name of the parents.

And in this case, the scribe actually gives us the name of the grandparents, which is not always very common. So as you go with time and you get practice, you can probably get to something a little more advanced. So here.

We have an example of Cortesana, which is a lot harder to read. Now this one comes from the 16th century. This one is from Donvidas, which is in Ávila, Spain, from 1558. So if we look here really quick, so if you want to just extract the information, you can you start noticing that has the same sort of style for every entry.

So first we have right here, we have the date phrase. So it says, a 25 de abril, 1562 años, or in English, on the 25th day of April, 1562. So that's your date. The next word is murió, or so died. So it's telling us that this is a death register. And then here we get the name.

So Martín, and then we have a long S, Saez. So Martín Saez is the name of the man that died. So the next word we have, hijo. So you have that funky H symbol.

So now we're going to get the parent's name. So hijo de pedosias. So P-E-R. That looks like an X, but that's an R.

Pedosias. So right there, just those two lines, we have all the information that we need. Now, if we want to go further, we can go and read through the document.

And we'll learn that, for example, this man did not leave a will. We find out where he was buried, how many masses were said for him. So as you go through, like, especially with a document like this, it's very helpful to have external resources.

Like the script site will have a lot of abbreviations, names you can compare that help you slowly kind of go through a document like this. So this is basic information about Spanish paleography. Thank you for sticking around. I know that's a lot of information, but with time and with practice, I'm sure you can be able to start breezing through these registers and finding about many, many men and women who have lived through the past who spoke Spanish.

So thank you very much. Thank you so much for joining us today. We hope you will join us for our next webinar, which is on June 30th with Larry Jensen.

He will be giving a presentation entitled German Reference and Research Tools. A recording of this webinar will be made available next week. You can view that on our YouTube channel or on our website. If you have any comments or questions, you can always email us at fhl-webinars at byu.edu or follow Facebook and Twitter.

Thank you and have a wonderful week.

Transcript for:Spanish Paleography Webinar Overview

Transcript for:
Spanish Paleography Webinar Overview