My friend found this book in his late father’s things. His father was a Freemason in Brazil in the 1960s.
It appears to be (but I’m not sure) Cyrillic, Faux Russian, Serbo-Croatian, Ya, or a mixture or code. The title makes me think that it is a book of wisdom, based on the Russian root word for “wise”.
His dad wrote in Portuguese “religious friendship to all” for the sentence “Ka3aB, Ta He 3aB ’ Я 3aB.”
There’s also a phrase “Komy-Komy”. “Komy” is pronoun in Russian, Bulgarian, and Serbo-Croatian which means “To whom”. Not sure why it would be repeated with a dash, though.
I was wondering if anyone here recognized the language, and if so, knows the way for me to make my keyboard type the weird characters easily it so I could type the sentences in a good translator online.
Definitely Ukrainian. One of the images looks like a list of other books for sale by the same publisher: I think Коп. stands for “kopeks.” мудрість народна is going to be something like “folk wisdom” or “popular wisdom,” and one of the other pages looks like a list of proverbs.
Edit: that means that the proverbs might be in dialect or a poetic register, and are going to be really difficult to translate for someone who isn’t expert.
I don’t speak any of those languages but, as a Freemason, the asterisks imply that it’s an old encoded copy of our Rituals. These are around in many jurisdictions to help the initiated Brothers to learn their “Catechism” (challenge and response questions/answers), and the overall ritual. The text is rendered in a way that would make it difficult for a “cowan or eavesdropper” to read, and thus be able to impersonate one of us.
I don’t know Ukrainian, but I do know a little Russian and i have googled a few of the phrases. The title appears to be “Folk wisdom - Ukrainian proverbs and sayings”. Printed in Kiev in 1951. The snippet of text from the middle of the book says “Prerevolutionary proverbs and sayings//the people against their oppressors” and then goes on to qoute a number of proverbs. I found the same proverbs quoted here if anyone wants to translate for themselves.
So, apparently it is based on old folk traditions from long before the sixties, and it has nothing to do with freemasons. Neither is it written in some sort of code. The language appears to be ordinary Ukrainian, possibly slightly archaic.
Very interesting. I mentioned the 1960s because of handwritten dates in the book, and Freemasonry because my friend’s dad was a member, and my friend I guess had assumed it was part of it.
There is also a note referenced Tet Offensive, so I guess I could assume that he was a pro-Communist back then, and used the folk book for ideas.
Do you know if he spoke Ukrainian? It seems really odd, if you have a single book in Ukrainian, to have a collection of proverbs—sounds more like a gift from someone than a subject he was truly interested in.