Translating weirdly written letter?

Help Requested!

This letter was included in one of my old Dansco albums. But it appears to be written in some foreign language. It is almost bordering on hieroglyphics. I think the author of the letter may have been Greek.

Has anyone seen this before? How would I go about translating this?

 

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“Congratulations on winning a set of
California Mission Medals in bronze.
Please call me or come to my office
so that I may record your name
and address and thus assure you
of receiving the remaining medals
as they are issued. We will also
replace the enclosed album with
our new and improved model,
which is now in production.”

…Spark

 

You are kidding right?
I read the message written in script in just a few seconds

 

Um, is this a late April Fool's joke? Surely the ability to read cursive script hasn't disappeared that quickly?

 

I thought that it was Klingon.

 

It's in English.

You would think, but at my work, I've had at least two young new hires that have asked me to print the names on my vital sign sheets because they couldn't read cursive. And my penmanship is quite good, so it wasn't a matter of sloppy handwriting.

 

Apparently, they don't teach cursive any more. So to a younger person, this would in fact be illegible.

 

For old script writing it was fairly easy to read. Don’t they teach English in school any longer?

 

Chime back in @Dansco_Dude , I'm really curious to get a handle on whether this was a joke or not. Not being judgmental, if a person hasn't been taught something then it should not be a surprise to anybody that they do not have the knowledge base to perform a learned task.

Born in 1976, I of course was taught cursive in elementary school. I've heard that it is not being taught anymore, and I do not feel strongly one way or the other about it. I've found that I use handwriting so infrequently in my later life (and use print when need arises) that I've lost a lot of my skill in writing cursive. I can pull it off, but it takes quite a bit of effort (How do you bridge between those two letters again?! ). If it's of that little use to me as an adult, then maybe it's not a good use of time to teach it to the younger generations.

I apparently can still read it pretty well though, as I got through the OP letter at almost normal speed (had to do a double take on a few words). But, it never occurred to me until now that cursive would look like "hieroglyphics" to somebody with no exposure. If so, then that is interesting.

 

I graduated high school in 2010. I can confirm that they don't teach cursive anymore, as the last time I was required to use it was in fifth grade.

 

Duh, I knew that.

 

Actually it has. Cursive was removed by the Federal government from K-12 common core in 2010, but it was fading long before that. As a historian I am saddened by the idea that cursive is no longer taught. How can one expect students learn to read primary sources and documents? We need look no further than the original poster's thoughts that something written in cursive was a foreign language and he needed a translation. It's not his fault but the fault of the system in which he was educated.

It is so sad to see a population of young people who are ignorant of a writing system that has existed for centuries, sadly not one of them would be able to read any document written in cursive, for example the US Constitution, the Bill of Rights, or Lincoln's Gettysburg Address. Of course transcriptions exist for all of the aforementioned but that is not the point. Being able to read primary source documents broadens one's understanding of history. It's a shame that the Federal Government considers cursive to be irrelevant.

 

What the ferk? Wow.

 

Nice medals. Didn't know about these. Must do research. Thanks for posting the pic.

 

Did the album have anything to do with the Mission Medals?

 

Fortunately, I learned cursive in school, and still write with it to this day. Many of my peers don't though, and have no idea what I'm writing. My cursive writing is sloppy, but my printing is even worse. It's really too bad that I don't have to write very often, so my notes forever look like they've been written by a twelve-year-old. I look at these old documents and wonder how long it took for them to write so uniformly.

 

@derkerlegand can you post the source of that picture (assuming it's off the internet). TIA

edit: never mind...I found it.