Hola! …that’s about the extent of my knowledge of Spanish, which is my whole problem here.
For some reason I thought it would be cool to buy an old one page, double-sided manuscript off of eBay. The seller’s story was that he had no idea where it was from or what it said. So I turn to you, linguistically-talented Dopers, to tell me if I have a handwritten work of Cervantes himself (somewhat unlikely) or a rather dull title/deed (quite likely, since that’s what most of the single-page manuscripts being sold on eBay tend to be).
HERE BE SCANS: Side 1(331kb), Side 2(332kb). If the images resize after loading, just click on them to make them go full-size again.
I guess it could also be Portugese? I see a few 'Los’s in there, and at least one ‘quatro’, so I just assumed it was Spanish. It’s on medium-weight laid paper, and appears to have been ripped out of a notebook. You might not be able to tell from the scans, but the last five lines of the second side are in slightly blacker ink, and possibly were written by a different person (probably Juan whoever, since that first signature seems to be in the same ink).
Any help would be greatly appreciated. I don’t expect a full translation or anything, just enough to get the gist of what it’s about.
At least it was dirt cheap, so if its content turns out to be dead boring I can just put it back up on eBay as an “AMAZING Mystery Manuscript! (possibly haunted!!)” and make my money back on it from some curious, clueless person…just like me! Hmm…haunted, you say…
I can decipher enough of it to where I’d go on the assumption that it is Spanish, but I’m afraid my knowledge of older Spanish doesn’t extend far though. (And, well, the handwriting’s a little difficult to decipher also, but that could be my lack of knowledge of 17th cen. Spanish.)
I think I see something towards the end of the second page that I think says something to the effect of “…the fourth day of October of 16…” (where 16__ is referring to a year I can’t make out).
Yes, I am skeptical of the authenticity of this thing.
Please make sure to take my WAG for its value, which is absolutely none.
I don’t know Spanish or Portuguese well enough to translate it, but it looks about right for that date range-- I’ve dealt with a bunch of Belgian MSS from that time period that have a very similar handwriting. I don’t doubt its authenticity-- not like a page like this would be worth much. It does look like Spanish to me, though, from what words I can make out (some letters during this time period are very wonky, and don’t expect spelling to look like modern Spanish).
I can’t read the handwriting, but I think I saw several "ue"s, which would certainly indicate Spanish as opposed to any other Romance language (even at that time, Spanish had lots of "ie"s and "ue"s and Portuguese didn’t.)
I checked a Spanish MS from 1739, and at that time the word was spelled “quatro” in Spanish, rather than “cuatro” (or at least it is in this manuscript).
Wow…I haven’t done much work with manuscripts, and the handwriting is really tough to decipher… I think I can I can see a few words:
‘gregorio pero’ in 3;
‘leer… medio’ in 4
‘fe’ in 7
‘quando quiero’ in 9
‘me refiero… poder’ in 11
‘llego’ ?’ in 12
and something about “leyes de Lanon…?”)
‘…Generoso e gregario pero…’ maybe? Also, the second line seems to start ‘Juan de Quiros esta…’, and ‘Juan di Quiros’ seems to be one of the signatures. And I just noticed that next to the marginal ‘400p’, it seems to be saying something like ‘quatro pesos de la oro’, which would sort of make sense I guess.
Actually, the longer I stare at it, the more I can make out. I’m definately leaning towards it being some sort of boring legal document at this point. Last week on eBay I saw a complete bound book of legal letters from the 1500s, and the overall style was quite similar to this leaf - short, quickly scrawled out, with at least a couple of different signatures at the end. So I wouldn’t be surprised if someone just broke a book like that at some point, to sell the pages individually.
Necesito leer un poco Espanol para me trabajo but I can’t make anything out of that at all - it looks a little kid’s loop drawings. Was it written by a doctor?
