The first steps are the most difficult ones. As with every writing, you might want to learn the alphabet at first. But even if you know all the letters, you might find it difficult to identify them in a given scripture. Especially with Kurrent it’s necessary to practice to read texts to get used to different styles of handwritings and the various peculiarities dependent on the specific writer or the time of writing.
At the beginning it might be difficult to read a text without knowing about its content (or context), but there are lots of resources online. Both already transcribed texts and, nowadays, even interactive exercises.
To get started you might want to have a look at the following resources. Please note that this list is neither ordered nor comprehensive.
Introduction
- Übung Kurrentschrift (theory + exercises, german)
- Ad fontes (theory + interactive exercises, english)
- A guide to Writing the old German “Kurrent” Script by Margarete Mücke (english)
- Altdeutsche Schrift (Kurrent, Sütterlin) lernen, kompletter Online-Kurs (video guide, german)
Further reading
Tools
If you know any other resources, that might be interesting, please share them here.
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Unbelievable, a Kurrent community here on Lemmy…
OK, so, resources… A 3 hours long video in german, but I think everyone should be able to follow it even without the language knowledge:
Thank you, I added it to the resources. Didn’t know that one before! That’s a very detailed and extensive introduction.
Of course there needs to be a Kurrent community here on Lemmy, although it’s still very small currently. The topic is quite niche, but I hope that it may gain some attention through genealogy or maybe findings in the estates of relatives. Or maybe just people interested in calligraphy and handwriting.
However, feel free to spread the word and thanks again for your contribution! It’s much appreciated.
