Cats of Yore: Mommmmm reading is borrrrring. Photo from my collection, no date.

Mommmmm reading is borrrrring. Photo from my collection, no date.

There is writing on the back of this photo but the only word I can decipher is “Lucky”. Maybe you guys can help.

Google guesses that it’s Finnish and offers this as a translation, “Bumi pa Lucky lama is attitu Looking for Meijan” 😆

Okay, the consensus seems to be that it is Finnish and says: "Me and Lucky This was taken at our house." Thank you, everyone!

This is correct. Judging by the spelling and the fireplace I assume by a Finnish immigrant.

Crowdsourcing ftw 🙌🏼!

It’s Finnish (not very good though) but the translation is weird, I’d read it as Minä ja Lucky tämä on ottetu meijän hausissa Me and Lucky This was taken at our house Should be ”otettu” and ”meidän”, and ”hausissa” would be ”talossa” in proper Finnish.

Maybe the writer was a native Swedish or German speaker, unused to a log cabin but giving it and Finnish a go? ;) Is "hausissa" something to do with a search??

The person who wrote the letter could've been a Finnish immigrant who has adopted a local slang that mixes English and exotic ways of using Finnish words. The language reminds me of American Finns' dialect.

Hausissa probably comes from how ”house” sounds like written in Finnish > ”haus” and -ssa is ”in something” -suffix.

I have no confidence in my parsing of Finnish cursive, but I am reading “leima on attitu” from that second line, which google translates as “the stamp is stamped”. The first line looks like “Mina fa Lucky” to me, or maybe “Mimi fa Lucky”, but neither gets anything sensical from google translate…

…and I typoed and “atittu” is what translates as stamp. Anyway, if you don’t get an answer from someone sooner, I’ll ask a friend who lives in Finland if she can read it. :)

Maybe Mimi is the woman's name?

"ottitu" is "taken".

Last word looks like hausissu or hausissa but I can't make head nor tails of the rest

I'm pretty sure it's "Minä ja Lucky - Tämä on [otettu] meijän hausissa", which translates to "Me and Lucky - this was taken at our house". "Meijän" is a dialectical form of "meidän" (our) and "hausissa" is an American Finnish expression for house.

I didn't even know American Finnish was a thing before now. Interesting!

It's also often called "Finglish" or "Fingliska" since it's a sort of mish-mash between Finnish and English vocabulary and grammar. I think it was quite common among Finnish immigrants around the time that photo would've been taken, but has faded out of use since then.

Fascinating how a simple photo annotation has turned into a small discussion of something I'd never heard of before. Great social history!

I was thinking just this!

I love this thread.

It looks like Finnish to me. Let me see if I can figure it out…

First line: Mina ja Lucky "Me and Lucky"

next line: tämä on [?] "this is [?]"

I would think it means "this is taken in our house" but that would be "tämä on otettu meidän talossa" so it's something similar to that

(Apologies; not fluent)

My guess would be either a second language Finnish speaker, or early example of the capital dialect know as "stadin slangi". That particular dialect is known for mixing random foreign words (especially Swedish and English) with Finnish by giving them Finnish inflections, so it would fit.

More likely the hybrid language Finglish, spoken by 1st generation immigrants to the USA. Judging from the pic, it's from early 20th century, and "stadin slangi" back then wasn't as English-saturated as it is now.

You're probably right, I didn't look at the picture very carefully at the first glance and it's clearly older than I first thought.

It could be French.

I think I see the word on. LOL

I'm guessing Lucky is the cat's name and the rest is in another language, maybe Swedish?

And how does the picture look like? Maybe it is a description of what is going on in the picture?

It’s an old school alt tag!

Why read when can pet cat?

This is the argument my cat presents to me every time I attempt to read.

The cat is making that exact face! I sometimes also call it, "Cat can play with toy....or cat can play with ankles."

reminds me of this

Move your feet, lady, I'm practicing my break-dancing

Hard to beat cats & books for companions 🐈📚

My cat tells me this often. 😂😸

You've got to admire that generation, a book in the tiniest print, held far away from the readers eyes & in the half light. I can't even do that wearing specs!

Post