Read old Ukrainian letters
Ukrainian handwriting from the 19th and early 20th centuries shares roots with Cyrillic cursive while using distinct Ukrainian orthography and letterforms. Upload a photo of an old Ukrainian letter. FamilyLore transcribes the cursive line by line, translates it into English, and marks uncertain words.
Your first three pages need no account and no card.
A Ukrainian letter from our shelf, as read
A dotted underline marks a word FamilyLore was unsure of; [?] is its own note on a doubtful reading.
Taras Shevchenko to Varfolomii Shevchenko · 22 Apr 1860
- [stamp: Ч. Г. З. МУЗЕЙ украин. древн. В.В. ТАРНОВСКАГО № 14 III]
- № 14.
- 22. Березня
- 1860.
- Сёгодня [?] я получив твоє пись-
- ма. Сёгодня у мене велике свято.
- Сёгодня 22 березня 1838 року я
- вийшов из неволі на світ
Also on the shelf: V. K. Arsenyev’s 1910 letter in pre-1918 Russian cursive · Lapatin’s 1792 Irkutsk letter in 18th-century cursive
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 Cyrillic cursive documents with human transcriptions. Results update as additional benchmark pages are evaluated. How well FamilyLore reads
Questions
- Can’t ChatGPT do this?
- A general chatbot can read some Ukrainian cursive, 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.
- Does FamilyLore support pre-Soviet Ukrainian orthography?
- Yes. Historical letters written in 19th-century Ukrainian orthography as well as modern Ukrainian cursive are supported. The transcription retains the historical spelling as written.
- 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.
- 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
- Parish registers, revision lists, and columnar administrative records. Tabular layouts are not yet measured.
- Texts written in Church Slavonic script rather than civil cursive.
- Faded pencil or water-damaged ink. Faded handwriting is measured on only a few pages 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” is already chosen. If you know roughly when it was written, pick the era.
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?