Read a Russian or Ukrainian letter from before 1918
Letters written before the 1918 spelling reform use letters that are gone today: ѣ, і, ѳ and ѵ, and a hard sign ъ at the end of many words. Take a photo of the page. FamilyLore keeps the old spelling as written, gives you an English translation, and marks each word it was unsure of.
Your first three pages need no account and no card.
A letter from our shelf, as FamilyLore read it
A dotted underline marks a word FamilyLore was unsure of; [?] is its own note on a doubtful reading.
V. K. Arsenyev to A. M. Ivanov · 20 Jul / 2 Aug 1910
- Глубокоуважаемый
- Александръ Михайловичъ!
- Не знаю, найду ли я извиненія въ глазахъ
- Юліи Александровны и въ Вашихъ за свое
- долгое молчаніе. Не объясните это худо,
- ради Бога! Одно изъ лучшихъ воспоминаній
- о Хабаровскѣ — это мое знакомство съ Ва-
- ми. Бродя по дебрямъ тайги въ централь-
- ной части Сихотэ-Алиня, я множество
- разъ вспоминалъ Васъ. Тоскливо стало
- послѣ Вашего отъѣзда. Богъ дастъ, скоро
- увидимся! — Я хлопочу о переводѣ въ Пе-
Also on the shelf: Taras Shevchenko’s letter of 1860, in Ukrainian · A letter from Irkutsk to Grigorii Shelikhov, 1792
How well it reads, measured
| Script | Pages | Characters read correctly | Names, dates and numbers right | Misread words it marked | Last run |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Russian and Ukrainian7 pages · 3 Nov 2026 | 7 | 86%Characters read correctly | 69%Names, dates and numbers right | 80%Misread words it marked | 3 Nov 2026 |
Measured on letters whose holders published a transcription made by hand, read the same way your page is. The Russian and Ukrainian row rests on very few pages so far, so treat it as a first reading; it moves as pages are added. How well FamilyLore reads
Questions
- Can’t ChatGPT do this?
- A general chatbot can read some old Russian handwriting, sometimes well, but it usually hands you clean text with no sign of which words it guessed, and its makers publish no figures for this script; FamilyLore marks the words it is unsure of and publishes how often it reads correctly, in the table above.
- What if it reads a word wrong?
- Tap a word to see the other readings FamilyLore weighed, and correct it if you know better. The translation is redone from your correction. Most misread words carry a mark, but not every one, so a name or a date that matters is worth checking against the photo.
- Will it change the spelling to modern Russian?
- No. The text is kept the way it was written, old letters and all, and the English translation sits beside it.
- Who sees my pages?
- Only you. A page becomes public only if you share it, and then only to people who have the link. Deleting your account deletes the photos you uploaded.
What FamilyLore doesn’t read well yet
- The benchmark has few Russian pages so far. Until it has more, check every marked word, and any name or date that matters, against the photo.
- Metrical books and other registers set out in columns. They aren’t measured yet, so we can’t tell you how well it reads them.
- Faded pages (measured on only a few pages so far), and letters that run across two pages.
- Documents in Latin: there’s no Latin choice on the upload yet. Documents in Polish are read, but few Polish pages are measured so far.
From photo to text in three steps
Take a photo of the page
Lay the sheet flat, in daylight and without flash. A phone photo of the whole page is enough.
Upload it
“Russian or Ukrainian, Before 1918” is already chosen.
Read it
You get the page as it was written, in modern spelling, and in English. Correct a word you know better yourself.
Rather read it yourself?