Celtic Footsteps across Germany- the Undarkening Ages
Medieval Irish and Scottish influences still felt in Germany and beyond.
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Pamela Israel
- Mar 6
- 1 min
Milestone Favorites: Language, History & Tips
Unlock Your History launched in 2017! Check out some favorite posts about language history & translating old German, Danish, Swedish.
53 views
Stefan Israel
- Jun 15, 2021
- 4 min
How to Spot the Dot
What language belongs to those accents? From German to Norwegian Hungarian or French, see different accents that some languages use.
711 views
Stefan Israel
- Apr 2, 2021
- 3 min
Brahms’ Lullaby, the Wiegenlied
Genealogy is family, and family is parent and child, and what binds parent and child like a Wiegenlied? A Wiege is a cradle, a lied is a...
1,236 views
Stefan Israel
- Jan 28, 2021
- 4 min
Why Couldn’t My Ancestor Spell Their Name the Same?
You’re tracing your family back, and the spellings sometimes just go crazy.
569 views
Stefan Israel
- Jun 24, 2020
- 2 min
Kaffeeklatsch
Kaffeeklatsch, a very gemütlich, cozy gathering. It translates as ‘coffee chit-chat’
416 views
Stefan Israel
- Apr 13, 2020
- 3 min
DUTCH, not DEUTSCH: English, Dutch and German
English, Dutch and German are all related languages - the languages diverged - you can see it in how the same original words now differ.-
1,236 views
Stefan Israel
- Mar 2, 2020
- 4 min
Understanding -Sen and -Son in a Name: Johnson, Janson and Jansen
Why do some family names end in -son and some in -sen?
7,014 views
Stefan Israel
- Feb 10, 2020
- 2 min
Dutch and Deutsch: so similar, so dissimilar
We’d talked about how much the German dialects vary, looking at dialect forms of the Lord’s Prayer. Let’s compare High German and Dutch.
597 views
Stefan Israel
- Jan 29, 2020
- 2 min
AUGH! From German to English
AUGH! It’s not just a cry of distress, it’s an anglicization. Why do we see lots of names ending in -augh? Baugh, Grumbaugh, Brumbaugh?
601 views
Pamela Israel
- Dec 13, 2019
- 3 min
1960 Christmas Card Mystery
Why were there piles of Christmas cards from 1960 sent from around the world to a young girl in Virginia?
174 views
Pamela Israel
- Sep 19, 2019
- 3 min
Washing & Sewing: A Diary & Tins
Sewing, in addition to laundry, used to be a responsibility that almost every woman had. And yet it can be tough to get insights into this p
74 views
Stefan Israel
- Aug 5, 2019
- 3 min
Dutchland? Germany?
The tribes that coalesced into Germans spoke 'the people’s/ popular language’ as opposed to Latin
5,111 views
Pamela Israel
- May 22, 2019
- 3 min
Old German Writing Tips
Here are a couple tricks to help decipher old German handwriting, Kurrent or Suetterlin, especially important with old family letters.
1,602 views
Stefan Israel
- May 8, 2019
- 3 min
H- huh? Making Sense of German
German and English both mostly use h the same, as that puff of air at the start of a word:
hello/hallo, here/hier, horn
But what’s that h do
442 views
Pamela Israel
- May 1, 2019
- 2 min
Tips for Finding the Day of the Week
Figuring out the day of the week that something happened can be important in genealogy. Here are a couple approaches.
130 views
Pamela Israel
- Apr 18, 2019
- 2 min
Postcard Clues 100 Years On - Clues to Olof !
It's amazing how curious you can get about people in no way related to you. I've written before about Olof Harrison, a Swede who mov
58 views
Pamela Israel
- Apr 5, 2019
- 2 min
German Wedding Invitation Details
Our family has a photo of the framed wedding invitation of my 2nd great aunt and uncle. It's a charmingly simple one. When I first came
206 views
Stefan Israel
- Mar 14, 2019
- 4 min
We're from Germany but Where?
When you’re tracing an ancestor to Central Europe from a century or more ago, you need to find out which state they were from. Here are some
689 views
Pamela Israel
- Mar 1, 2019
- 2 min
Postcard Pals - Old Swedish Cards in Translation
A series of correspondence to and from the same people opens up a whole new understanding about them. Old Swedish postcards from greater
100 views
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