The Voynich Ninja

This is something Wladimir D brought up on the You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. letter-forms similar to the marginalia, so I thought I would post an illustration of the discrepancy between most of the "a" characters and the last "a" in oladaba8, which he rightly notes is shaped differently from the others.

It might just be pen variation or a slip of the hand, but because the oddball "a" is similar to the main text "a" (which has a more slanted stem), it might be worth noting it here:



Since there seems to be a Voynichese "i" in Vix and two Voynichese tokens bottom left, is it possible this character is a Voynichese "a" and perhaps is meant to be pronounced differently (or understood differently in some other way)? Or had the writer been writing Voynichese and gotten used to writing the letters differently and slipped and wrote it that way unconsciously?

Cham noticed this back when we were writing the cls theory. But I don't think we came to any firm conclusion over it.
Ci is not a valid digraph in Voynichese. Or maybe it is - but it's always written as a 

Olcidcibas?

On the topic of individual glyph shapes, the various 8-shapes are puzzling as well. If we assume the word is oladabas, shouldn't the other ones all be read as "s"?

There are many places in the main text where the shape that looks like "a" is drawn in between "a" and EVA-ch. In some cases, it's hard to tell which one it is.

(08-07-2018, 10:54 PM)Koen Gh. Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.On the topic of individual glyph shapes, the various 8-shapes are puzzling as well. If we assume the word is oladabas, shouldn't the other ones all be read as "s"?

Are you referring to the other 8-shapes in the Latin-alphabet marginalia, or to EVA:d d in the main body of Voynichese text?

Yes I mean all within the marginalia. For example the middle one in "oladabas" is clearly incomplete, which might mean that this is the "d", right? But shouldn't that mean that the others are "s", if this is the same hand?

(09-07-2018, 09:10 AM)Koen Gh. Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Yes I mean all within the marginalia. For example the middle one in "oladabas" is clearly incomplete, which might mean that this is the "d", right? But shouldn't that mean that the others are "s", if this is the same hand?

I am still not sure I understand correctly. I would answer "yes" to both your questions. "oladabas" has an uncial "d" and an 8-shaped final -s.

As far as I know, the 8-shapes in the marginalia are read as "s" by most people, for instance You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. (see pg.35 for a summary view) and Johannes Albus (see You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.). I believe this is one of those things on which there is a fair amount of consensus, even if I am sure that, as always, there will also be different opinions.

Marco: for example, in the other thread, Helmut proposes a reading as "palden". So this either means that the "d" in "oladabas" must be something else, or that "d" can be shaped both like "d" and "8". Or does that mean we could read "oladabas" as "olasabad"?

(09-07-2018, 09:13 PM)Koen Gh. Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Marco: for example, in the other thread, Helmut proposes a reading as "palden". So this either means that the "d" in "oladabas" must be something else, or that "d" can be shaped both like "d" and "8". Or does that mean we could read "oladabas" as "olasabad"?

My opinion is that a word-final 8-shape is  -s, but of course it is impossible to be certain, since the text is unreadable, or at least  mostly incomprehensible.

Paris posted You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. a 1473 example with 8-shaped Ds at line 1, a 9-shaped D (dilection) at line 2, and a d-shaped D at line 3 (commandons): different shapes for the same letter are not surprising. An identical shape corresponding to s and d  seems more unusual, but I really wouldn't exclude anything.

The French manuscripts have many examples of "d" that look like figure-8, especially in French book hands of the late 15th century.