The Voynich Ninja

JKP: I was hoping to get specific replies with specific reasons for those perspectives. For example, Anton was presenting an argument that it isn't a "4" shape, which I was planning to address, but I have been sidetracked by this discussion with you. I have heard your perspective. A poll without specific reasons would not be very helpful I think.

Well I suppose it is better to be "sidetracked" by someone who is actually taking the time to read and respond to your posts.


The short answer is "yes", I think the left side of the t and the q have similar shapes. (Do they have similar meaning? I don't know, and you apparently don't want to discuss meaning in this thread.)

(16-05-2019, 12:39 AM)-JKP- Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Well I suppose it is better to be "sidetracked" by someone who is actually taking the time to read and respond to your posts.

Well, I wouldn't bet on it.

-JKP- Wrote:The short answer is "yes", I think the left side of the t and the q have similar shapes. (Do they have similar meaning? I don't know, and you apparently don't want to discuss meaning in this thread.)

I would go further than saying that they have similar shapes to saying that they have the same "4" shape.

I don't think, personally, that they have any commonality of meaning, however, as you say, I don't want to discuss meaning in this thread, as I want to keep this discussion within a more specific and narrower area.

Okay so what is this thread about?

Koen: It is about whether the left hand-side of gallows characters like the t shape is visually a "4".

My interest in this is that it has implications for the origins of the Voynich script. So if the Voynichese t symbol is visually a "4p" or a "qp", makes a difference to the more or less likely origins of the script. For example we see shapes like "qp" in the Glagolitic alphabet, but not "4p", in the diplomatic cipher scripts that I am particularly interested in we do see shapes like "4p".

So the question I am interested in is the visual appearance or simply how the left side of gallows characters looks. I believe it is possible to answer this question more precisely or rigourously and I have ideas to how we can do this, which I begun to discuss in this thread. However I really wanted to hear what other people have to say regarding whether they think the left side of some gallows is visually a "4".

Without having read the thread (I got confused after half a page) I would say that the best approach is a direct visual comparison between the VM forms and anything you want to compare it to. Why pin yourself down to a specific abstraction while this may or may not turn out to be the correct one?

What you are describing as 4p is not a "p", Mark. It's the Latin "-is" symbol. It's a loop with an ascender.

If you look closely at the Diplomatic ciphers, you will see that many of the letters have the "-is" symbol attached on the right-hand side. It looks vaguely like a "p" but not really once you get used to it.


The "-is" symbol can be attached to any letter, but only on the right-hand side. In manuscripts, it is never attached on the left.

In Latin, this is an "r" or an "i" with the "-is" symbol attached: m
And this is a "c" with an "-is" symbol attached: g

The loop + descender is the "-is" part.

So, if you want to search for that shape when it is attached to a q symbol, keep in mind that it is not a "p".

JKP: I wasn't saying it was p, but I was referring to visually how it looks.

Visually it doesn't look like "p", it looks like an "-is" symbol. It's not shaped like "p" except for a very rare style of "p" that was used in the 17th century for a short while.

Mark,

the 8 could be an s as well as a d as well as a an 8. The problem with the Vscript is that it is, unlike a book script, very variable, it is the script of an individual, that is why some people think there were different scribes at work. I think thw way to a soluruin would be to find out what the scribe meant by bis abbreviations