non-siouan inquiry

[Billy Maxwell]

I forwarded this to my group of 735 people.
A good number of them are eastern European, so 
we will have an answer very quickly.
I know they will want to see an image of the
mocs. Seeing the image will also answer what group or area
quiet quickly. We deals with thousands of pairs every year.


Billy Maxwell
VISIT mcppp.org
bmaxwell at mt.net
187 Woodland Est. Road
Great Falls, MT 59404

On Oct 27, 2010, at 11:02 AM, Catherine Rudin wrote:

> OK, here's my best shot. 
>  
> It's not Bulgarian, or at least if it is it's written by someone semi-literate.
>  
> It IS, however, a Slavic language, written in Cyrillic alphabet (mostly -- a couple of Roman letters mixed in, specifically one "R", one "S", and one "i", so definitely eastern Europe/Russian empire.  Are the shoes by chance from Alaska??  The Ukrainian version of cyrillic uses an "i".  Maybe this is Ukrainian. Or Russian, written by someone who was bilingual, not terrifically literate and tended to use some Roman letters interchangeably with cyrillic; I know Turks who do this when writing in Bulgarian and I've done it myself in English when going back and forth between writing systems. 
>  
> In any case, it appears to be two names.  Perhaps the owners of the shoes?? 
>  
> Here's a transliteration: 
> First line:  OA Evaoriia Uvunova
> Second line:  SA Georgiva Vasileva
> And the smaller words not in all caps:  edno sjirze sae (or fae???)
>  
> I don't know what "OA" and "SA" are.  "Evaoriia Uvunova" and "Georgiva Vasilieva" look like women's names:  feminine patronymic + last name (though Evaoriia is a weird enough name that I wonder if it was mis-copied).  "edno" means "one" or "a", but I don't recognize "sjirze sae". 
>  
> Catherine
>  
> >>> Mark J Awakuni-Swetland <mawakuni-swetland2 at unlnotes.unl.edu> 10/27/2010 11:21 AM >>>
> Aloha all, 
> 
> Knowing that many of the List folkshave expertise in non-Siouan languages, I thought you all might find this of interest. 
> 
> 
> The Department of Anthropology received the attached letter requesting translation assistance on a paper tag attached to a pair of moccasins/shoes. 
> 
> I am attaching a pdf of the letter for your consideration. 
> 
> Any suggestions are welcome. 
> 
> Thanks 
> 
> Mark 
> 
> 
> Mark Awakuni-Swetland, Ph.D.
> Associate Professor of Anthropology
> and Ethnic Studies (Native American Studies)
> University of Nebraska
> Lincoln, NE 68588-0368
> 
> http://omahalanguage.unl.edu
> http://omahaponca.unl.edu
> Phone 402-472-3455
> FAX: 402-472-9642

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