Sample Alphabet Letters

When trying to puzzle out a particularly tricky word, sometimes it helps to see several different examples of how certain Gothic letters were written.  I decided to compile a list of sample letters -- most of these samples came from online matriky books (vital records) on the Czech archive websites, and a few of them came from some of our old family letters.  I placed each letter in relationship to the line as it was written in the original source.

You are welcome to print these sample alphabet letter pages to use as a research help only, please do not use for any other purpose without permission.  Thank you!

J vs. I

I've been teaching my 10 year old niece how to read our ancestors' old Bohemian records, and we came across an excellent example of how the capitol letters I and J were written identically by many German scribes.  In these cases, the only way to differentiate between these two capitol letters is to keep reading: if the letter is followed by a vowel it is a J, or if it is followed by a consonant it is an I.  

Here we see the given names Joseph and Ignaz
written with the same initial letter.

Abbreviations

In your research you may have come across a symbol that sometimes resembles a large, loopy 'L,' and then a colon (:).  This 'L:' is a symbol that we've come across in many old Bohemian records meaning that the remainder of the word has been abbreviated.  We have found this symbol used in both German and Latin words.  Sometimes this symbol will follow just one letter and abbreviate the rest of the word, and other times it will follow one or more syllables of a word and replace just one or more letter(s).  I do not know why a priest would sometimes use this 'L:' symbol to indicate that he was abbreviating the end of a word, while at other times the same priest may have chosen to just use a colon (:) to indicate the same thing.

Although it can sometimes prove difficult to learn what the abbreviated word was (especially when there is only one letter followed by this abbreviation symbol), a search of the preceding and following pages in the book will likely reveal that the same word was used again, and often if you search through several pages you may find that the priest sometimes included the word without abbreviating it. 

Abbreviation for 'Promulgation' meaning 'proclamation' (as in the proclamation of marriage banns).

Abbreviation for 'September.'  (Notice that the record directly above this one uses the full word for 'September' without the abbreviation).

Two instances of the abbreviation for 'Hochloeblich' meaning 'highly commendable.'

Two instances of the use of this symbol, in the abbreviation for 'Eheweib' meaning 'wife' & for 'Töchterlein' meaning 'little daughter.'