Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Miscellaneous/2016 January 25

= January 25 =

Malaysia Airlines Flight 370
Is anyone still searching for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370? It's not clear to me from the article. And who is paying for the search?--Shantavira|feed me 16:43, 25 January 2016 (UTC)
 * Yes, there are three ships looking for the aircraft, see here. There is information on who is paying for the search at the foot of this page. --Viennese Waltz 16:56, 25 January 2016 (UTC)

Language
I have a question and don't know where else to turn. Hopefully you can answer or direct me to someone/somewhere.

I googled my question and could not find an answer. And since I am retired and the kids are gone, I don' have that resource.

And since your org deals with languages I hope you can help.

I am digitizing some love letters from my grandfather/grandmother from around the turn of the 20th century. I know some of the spelling and terms have changed but one particular word keeps coming up. They keep using the word "unte" and I believe they mean "write". Reminds me of a bank back home that used "trvst" for 'trust'.

Have you seen this abbreviation for the word 'write'?

Love your web site. tks — Preceding unsigned comment added by 162.72.150.11 (talk) 18:55, 25 January 2016‎


 * Could you upload a sample of that writing? It might just be a peculiar style. As an example, I've seen handwriting from that era where there was an out-of-place lower case "f", until I realized it was a fancified lower case "p". If you count the "humps" in "wri", you'll see that it could possibly look like "un", especially if they fail to dot the "i". ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 19:09, 25 January 2016 (UTC)


 * Yes, the mere fact that handwriting looks like unte when it should mean write is not surprising. The User who asked this question geolocates to Virginia, so he should try going to the local library and asking them for direct help, or, as Bugs said, for them to help him uploading an image here so we can see it.  There have also got to be plenty of antiquarians who might help, so if the Original Poster lets us know what big city is closest to him we can probably tell him whose help to seek. μηδείς (talk) 22:10, 25 January 2016 (UTC)
 * If you look at our article about cursive handwriting then at the top there is an example of Spencerian script. The letter r is written starting high and finishing low, whereas in the other script at the time, the Palmer method, the r starts and finishes high. The more modern D'Nealian cursive seems to give yet another form for the r. Could it be something like this that makes for the appearance you are describing? Thincat (talk) 16:57, 26 January 2016 (UTC)