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Just What Does *&@#(^%[} Mean?

© Mark W. Swarthout

One of the challenges of doing a genealogy in North America is the fact that, other than the small number of natives remaining in the population, we all came from some place over the oceans to this continent. At some point in time, our ancestors entered this relatively new country having been born and raised in another country and culture. Chances are pretty high that English was not their native language before they arrived!

Some of their original letters and documents that may contain valuable information about our families and their stories are going to be in the language of another country. The language may be one that doesn't even use the same characters that you are reading on the screen now!

What better way to connect to these ancestors, to really get a feel for their lives, then to learn about the cities and countries that they were born in, to learn more about the language and culture. In many cases, the new immigrants were so excited and proud of their new country that they wouldn't allow their native tongue to be spoken in their new home. Other than hearing their parents talk most of their children never had the opportunity to learn the language of the country their parents, and perhaps even them, were born in. You may have even tried to visit one of the sites for a city or country and gotten a lot of gibberish and square boxes on the screen, with a tantalizing picture that makes you want more! So here are a few tools to help you with bridging the gap and allowing you to learn from these sites, as well as getting information from those documents.

Web Browsers

Your web browser probably came with a choice of many different fonts. Select the Help function of your browser and see what it has to say about languages. Netscape and MS Internet Explorer both provide a wide choice of fonts, character sets and languages.

Fonts

Fonts are a set of instructions for interpreting computer coding into a graphical element that shows up on your screen. Most programs will try to match the original font that was used to create the document. If there is not an exact match in its files, the computer will attempt to get one as close as possible. By insuring that your computer has the appropriate fonts loaded, you may be able to eliminate the gibberish and see the characters that you are supposed to see!

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