# Need help with document--Russian Greek, something else? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [December 5, 2015, 7:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/need-help-with-document-russian-greek-something-else/739536 "2015-12-05T19:00:14Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 15\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![bardos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bardos/32/1069_2.png) [@bardos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bardos)\ **Post date:** [December 5, 2015, 7:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/need-help-with-document-russian-greek-something-else/739536/1 "2015-12-05T19:00:14Z")
A lady friend of mine has tasked me with helping her translate a document. Language unknown, meaning unknown. Looking for help in the translation. It’s here. [http://i447.photobucket.com/albums/qq191/Paco\_Tilla/2015-12-05-0001\_zpszpqpefdf.jpg](http://i447.photobucket.com/albums/qq191/Paco_Tilla/2015-12-05-0001_zpszpqpefdf.jpg) ---
**Author:** ![Giles](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/giles/32/60_2.png) [@Giles](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Giles)\ **Post date:** [December 5, 2015, 7:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/need-help-with-document-russian-greek-something-else/739536/2 "2015-12-05T19:24:33Z")
It’s in the Cyrillic alphabet, so is most likely Russian (but could be Bulgarian, Serbian, Ukrainian, or something else). ---
**Author:** ![jayjay](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jayjay/32/6765_2.png) [@jayjay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jayjay)\ **Post date:** [December 5, 2015, 7:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/need-help-with-document-russian-greek-something-else/739536/3 "2015-12-05T19:24:49Z")
Can’t say if it’s Russian or not, but it’s definitely either in manuscript Cyrillic or a variant. You can see the handwritten version of Щ in the second word of the second row in the first column. That still doesn’t narrow it down completely, but it narrows it down to a Slavic language. ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [December 5, 2015, 7:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/need-help-with-document-russian-greek-something-else/739536/4 "2015-12-05T19:55:48Z")
> [@jayjay](#): > > Can’t say if it’s Russian or not, but it’s definitely either in manuscript Cyrillic or a variant. You can see the handwritten version of Щ in the second word of the second row in the first column. That still doesn’t narrow it down completely, but it narrows it down to a Slavic language. Some Slavic languages are written in Roman script. It generally depends on whether the country was historically Catholic (Poland, Croatia) or Orthodox (Serbia, Ukraine). Moldovan, a Romance Language, switched back and forth, depending on who was running things (Cyrillic during it’s time in the USSR). ---
**Author:** ![jayjay](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jayjay/32/6765_2.png) [@jayjay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jayjay)\ **Post date:** [December 5, 2015, 7:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/need-help-with-document-russian-greek-something-else/739536/5 "2015-12-05T19:58:17Z")
> [@John\_Mace](#): > > Some Slavic languages are written in Roman script. It generally depends on whether the country was historically Catholic (Poland, Croatia) or Orthodox (Serbia, Ukraine). I understand that. I was saying only Slavic languages generally use Cyrillic, not ALL Slavic languages use Cyrillic. ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [December 5, 2015, 8:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/need-help-with-document-russian-greek-something-else/739536/6 "2015-12-05T20:01:27Z")
Missed the edit window… Cyrillic is also used for some Turkic and Uralic languages spoken in Russia and parts of the former USSR. ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [December 5, 2015, 8:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/need-help-with-document-russian-greek-something-else/739536/7 "2015-12-05T20:03:24Z")
> [@jayjay](#): > > I understand that. I was saying only Slavic languages generally use Cyrillic, not ALL Slavic languages use Cyrillic. And not all languages using Cyrillic are Slavic. 😉 A minor nit pick since most Cyrillic users are also Slavic speakers. But not all… ---
**Author:** ![Dr.Drake](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/ad7895/32.png) [@Dr.Drake](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr.Drake)\ **Post date:** [December 5, 2015, 8:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/need-help-with-document-russian-greek-something-else/739536/8 "2015-12-05T20:09:41Z")
Words 2 and 3 are Боже наш (bozhe nash), “our God,” in a Slavic language, so not Turkic or Uralic. In Russian, in my limited recall, Боже is only used as a vocative (a case Russian doesn’t normally have). I can’t really read anything, though. At a slightly informed guess, I’d say “Slavic but not Russian.” I put the phrase твоята боля (tvoyata bolya) into Google Translate, because the first word is clearly (1) “your” and (2) not Russian, and it said Bulgarian. So, South Slavic anyway. ---
**Author:** ![hibernicus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hibernicus/32/2802_2.png) [@hibernicus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/hibernicus)\ **Post date:** [December 5, 2015, 8:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/need-help-with-document-russian-greek-something-else/739536/9 "2015-12-05T20:24:44Z")
My guess is Bulgarian or closely-related South Slavic. The bottom of the left-hand page has words like “Kingdom” “Power” and “Glory” and ends with Аминь “Amen”, so it looks like a prayer. Specifically, it’s reminiscent of the doxology of the Lord’s Prayer. The third page (or first page? - the one that’s only half-filled with writing) is definitely the Lord’s Prayer as it begins Отче наш. ---
**Author:** ![Ispolkom](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/e47774/32.png) [@Ispolkom](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ispolkom)\ **Post date:** [December 5, 2015, 10:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/need-help-with-document-russian-greek-something-else/739536/10 "2015-12-05T22:38:07Z")
> [@hibernicus](#): > > My guess is Bulgarian or closely-related South Slavic. > > The bottom of the left-hand page has words like “Kingdom” “Power” and “Glory” and ends with Аминь “Amen”, so it looks like a prayer. Specifically, it’s reminiscent of the doxology of the Lord’s Prayer. > > The third page (or first page? - the one that’s only half-filled with writing) is definitely the Lord’s Prayer as it begins Отче наш. I think you’re correct. I found [this page](http://ls78.sweb.cz/otcenas.htm) when I googled “Lord’s Prayer in Slavic” and the Bulgarian version (transliterated) seems dead on. ---
**Author:** ![bardos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bardos/32/1069_2.png) [@bardos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bardos)\ **Post date:** [December 6, 2015, 2:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/need-help-with-document-russian-greek-something-else/739536/11 "2015-12-06T14:41:10Z")
I thought there was more to it than the Lord’s Prayer. I was hoping that a member of the forum would actually be able to translate this paper. ---
**Author:** ![Dr.Drake](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/ad7895/32.png) [@Dr.Drake](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr.Drake)\ **Post date:** [December 6, 2015, 3:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/need-help-with-document-russian-greek-something-else/739536/12 "2015-12-06T15:04:17Z")
It isn’t just the Lord’s Prayer, but I think the whole thing is religious. Here’s Google Translate on #4 on the right: с перата си ще те покрива и подкрилата му ще имаш приде жище. Неговата истина е щит и всеоръжие. with feathers will cover you, and under his wings you will lent seekers. His truth is a shield and armor. Googling the shorter sentence, it’s [Psalm 91](http://www.bratstvoto.net/vehadi/dni_molitvi/nedelia.html). (Typed Bulgarian if you want to compare.) ---
**Author:** ![robert\_columbia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e79b87/32.png) [@robert\_columbia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/robert_columbia)\ **Post date:** [December 6, 2015, 6:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/need-help-with-document-russian-greek-something-else/739536/13 "2015-12-06T18:22:12Z")
> [@John\_Mace](#): > > Some Slavic languages are written in Roman script. It generally depends on whether the country was historically Catholic (Poland, Croatia) or Orthodox (Serbia, Ukraine). > > Moldovan, a Romance Language, switched back and forth, depending on who was running things (Cyrillic during it’s time in the USSR). Scripts, more often than not, spread with religion because clergy have typically been the guardians of and teachers of literacy (that is, until the spread of public school systems in the late 19th/early 20th centuries). If you wanted to learn to read and write, you learned it from religious officials, who taught the manner of reading and writing that they themselves were taught, which was typically the script of the official language of the religion. This is why the Latin/Roman script is used for languages from so many different language families. Celtic languages (e.g. Irish, Welsh), most Germanic languages (e.g. Dutch, English, German, Danish), a few Slavic languages (Polish, Croatian, Czech, Slovak), and many Uralic languages (Hungarian and Finnish) are written in Latin letters because the people who spoke those languages were influenced strongly by the Roman Catholic Church which spoke Latin. You also see languages from the same family written in different scripts due to religious differences. Yiddish is a Germanic language that is close to German but that is written in Hebrew characters because literacy in it was standardized by insular Jewish communities that spoke it. Maltese is a Semitic language close to Arabic and more distantly related to Hebrew that is written in Latin characters due to the influence of Catholicism in Malta. ---
**Author:** ![dougie\_monty](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/439d5e/32.png) [@dougie\_monty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dougie_monty)\ **Post date:** [December 6, 2015, 7:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/need-help-with-document-russian-greek-something-else/739536/14 "2015-12-06T19:22:31Z")
> [@John\_Mace](#): > > Missed the edit window… Cyrillic is also used for some Turkic and Uralic languages spoken in Russia and parts of the former USSR. The short-lived country Tannu Tuva also used Cyrillic, on its postage stamps. ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [December 6, 2015, 9:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/need-help-with-document-russian-greek-something-else/739536/15 "2015-12-06T21:32:25Z")
> [@Ispolkom](#): > > I think you’re correct. I found [this page](http://ls78.sweb.cz/otcenas.htm) when I googled “Lord’s Prayer in Slavic” and the Bulgarian version (transliterated) seems dead on. Interesting how Serbian/Croatian and a few others are almost exactly identical. I know Serbo-Croatian is essentially one language, but I wonder if the Lord’s Prayer preserves archaic forms making languages (like Bulgarian and Serbo-Croatian) look more similar than they actually are.