fixing and sorting

I’ve found a neat stream of imagery of noble dress of the North Rhine but it is locked away in a dissertation and a limited edition print of a journal. Fortunately I have a solution so *fingers crossed* as it is so very important in adding to the context of Anne of Cleves.

I’ve tried to avoid opinion pieces about Anne, which is a bit difficult, and instead have tried to find what was expected of her in her homeland and how that did or didn’t match expectations. So having as many depictions of dress of nobility of the region really is vital.

But I’ve also finally managed to tidy an OCR of a very important article in terms of written and spoken language- and it has totally validated what I thought was going on. Rising and lowering vowels, diphthongs, hardening of consonants? It’s going to make it easier to read through archives but it unfortunately makes searching more difficult.

the joys of research

Just as I start editing my “Will the Real Stickelcehn Please Stand Up?” article I find a stash of images, *and* find an archive item has been updated with a scan and I managed to hunt out the section on clothing. A suspicion I had does seem to hold up and it also fits in with what I have noticed about spelling that has also been confirmed by language studies.

It’s great, but what I suspected is also true: transcriptions often modernise the language and that unfortunately strips out what makes the original spelling so important. So while I can include the archives that haven’t be digitised I can’t add them to my list of words. I’ll figure some way around this, even if it means requesting copies of the microfilm they are on.

But that spelling is varied in ways that make it nearly impossible to do either careful or brute searches. So I need to work on both my essay and an introduction to the language.