Apostrophe is the easiest term to use when trying to explain them to English speakers. They are symbols that stand for left-out letters and they are extremly prevalent in medieval Latin.
They have many different apostrophes in Latin. Macrons, squiggle shapes (er/re/ir/ri), tails, etc. Very very common in Gothic script especially.
(25-02-2020, 06:09 PM)-JKP- Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Apostrophe is the easiest term to use when trying to explain them to English speakers. They are symbols that stand for left-out letters and they are extremly prevalent in medieval Latin.
They have many different apostrophes in Latin. Macrons, squiggle shapes (er/re/ir/ri), tails, etc. Very very common in Gothic script especially.
All right, thanks, I didn't know that all types were called apostrophes.
Curved macrons are common, but the systematically
very curved cap (when it is not the "er/.../ri" variant drawn as a simple curve shape) is much less common.
RENE / Example 15v I interpret e + “ ’ ”+ ך.
In example 113v, the reverse order of strokes with respect to eva-o is ך + e.
The term apostrophe is the best analogy I can think of for modern English speakers who aren't familiar with medieval Latin scribal conventions. I often use the term "macron" as well but I always worry some readers might not know it.
They do actually use the word "apostrophe" in some of the palaeography glossaries, but to my mind, the modern word doesn't really convey the great variety of shapes and uses that existed in medieval script. To really get the concept across, it helps to include examples.
Rene, I don't think I had seen these things before. One's general impression of the MS is that the system is followed rigorously, so why these deviations?
I agree that they look deliberately formed. But what are they? Just rare characters, like a text in Dutch might contain only one "x"?
Scribal slip?
And if so, influence from Voynichese or from his "native" writing system?
(25-02-2020, 06:41 AM)ReneZ Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.When I wrote elsewhere:
Quote:In fact I have other things to do that I consider more interesting, and I want to finish first.
no mystery was implied. I am having some 'fun' with the existing transliterations of the Voynich MS. All sorts of interesting things are coming out of that, and they will be written down somewhere soon.
One example is that my own transliteration ('ZL'), which was done in Eva, is much closer to the v101 transliteration which was done in GC's alphabet than to Takeshi Takahashi's transliteration which was again in Eva. I will be able to quantify this at some point.
Another interesting thing lies in the 'rare characters'. We are all used to seeing the examples of what appear to be badly-formed characters, or apparent corrections, in the many posts from Wladimir. But there are other cases as well. Just to give one example... (and referring to this page: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. )
The extended Eva table has a character with code 203, which is also found in the v101 table with code 169.
This is a character that appears exactly once in the entire text, and it is in a clearly 'legible' part, namely the 8th line of f22r.
This is not an isolated case, and it is of interest to try to imagine what the existence of such characters tells us.
The clear execution shows that it was meant to look like this, and it is sufficiently different from other characters to
be sure it is not a 'mistaken identity'.
Just a quick mention to think about. If the Voynich is written phonetically
these anomalies as you see them, are the vocalization of the specific letter in the word. so let's say the letter is a 'T' it would have a 'Teee' or possible 'Tha' sound or if it is an 'M' it would have an 'mmm' sound, or an 'A' it would be an 'Ahhhh' sound.
(25-02-2020, 06:56 PM)Koen G Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Rene, I don't think I had seen these things before. One's general impression of the MS is that the system is followed rigorously, so why these deviations?
I agree that they look deliberately formed. But what are they? Just rare characters, like a text in Dutch might contain only one "x"?
Scribal slip?
And if so, influence from Voynichese or from his "native" writing system?
These are exactly the questions I am asking myself.
If the text were meaningless or some kind of a 'fake', I would not expect these things to happen, but that hardly qualifies as evidence. Just a hint or a suggestion.
W.r.t. the 'x' in Dutch, I guess that in a text of 160,000 characters we might expect a few more.
By the way, in my earlier post, the word 'mechanism' was intended in a very general manner. Just whatever was used to compose the text.
(25-02-2020, 08:49 PM)ReneZ Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. (25-02-2020, 06:56 PM)Koen G Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Rene, I don't think I had seen these things before. One's general impression of the MS is that the system is followed rigorously, so why these deviations?
I agree that they look deliberately formed. But what are they? Just rare characters, like a text in Dutch might contain only one "x"?
Scribal slip?
And if so, influence from Voynichese or from his "native" writing system?
These are exactly the questions I am asking myself.
If the text were meaningless or some kind of a 'fake', I would not expect these things to happen, but that hardly qualifies as evidence. Just a hint or a suggestion.
Actually, I would expect these things to happen if it were a meaningless fake, because despite all appearances of one, we're not really dealing with a (strictly controlled) alphabet but something meant to look like one. But then again, my expectation hardly qualifies as evidence.
Well it is strictly controlled for the most part but there are clearly deviations. They are potentially interesting if we understand what they are.
If they are interference from another writing system, they may teach us something about phonetic expectations.
If they are interference from within Voynichese, we might learn more about the formation of glyphs.
If they are intentional and thus apparently deemed necessary, this would mean that they actually wanted to express something, enough to warrant the introduction of special characters.
Only the last option requires the text to mean something, the others are possible in both cases. I just don't see how we can decide which is the case.
The deviations are found in many places in the VMS, but the second set that René posted, and another one that resembles a footed-r with a bend, are often found at the beginnings of lines.