The Voynich Ninja

This character also occurs quite frequently:

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I don't think it's EVA-m with a short tail (although that's a possibility). If it's at all similar to the way the same shape works in Latin languages,  it's EVA-r with an extra loop. Curling the loop down like this (as an abbreviation symbol) was not uncommon. In fact, I've noticed while reading manuscripts that some scribes used a short tail to mean one thing and a long tail to mean another when it was attached to "r" (especially in the middle of a word):

For me, these are different ligatures compared to 8 and “m”.
For examples 53-60, it is necessary to include Example 17. Separately, you can look at Example 129, if the point is considered as an independent base glyph.
Particularly curious is Example 49, where the word has “m” with both a short and a long tail.
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(29-05-2020, 04:35 AM)-JKP- Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I often wonder if this is a separate character OR if it reveals what was in the scribe's mind when it was written and is perhaps a mistake (a blunder):

JKP and Wladamir,

Thanks for bringing this up again. Could I seek your opinions of the following:

When we were discussing this before in another thread

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I posted an example
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where I think the glyph has been gone over with the pen -
but without closing the gap - which to me implies that the cP form is deliberate.

Don the letter on the right would not be considered a "p" in medieval script (they used capitals less commonly than us and, as far as I have seen, they never raised a lowercase "p" above the baseline).

It would be considered an "l" (ell) with a loop. So, it conforms very closely to the "cl" ligature that was common in medieval writings.

In some instances, it can also be the "is/es" abbreviation (a loop with a descender) if it is at the end of a word.


I agree with you that some of these shapes with straight backs instead of the full figure-8 loop do look deliberate.

(30-05-2020, 04:52 AM)-JKP- Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.some of these shapes with straight backs instead of the full figure-8 loop do look deliberate

Thanks for that.
Yeah, I was only using "cP" as a kind of shorthand, I appreciate the meaning would be different. Probably. Thanks for the additional info though!

The tail hook pointing the other direction suggests that the scribe wanted to show that it's disjoint.

(30-05-2020, 05:03 PM)Anton Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.The tail hook pointing the other direction suggests that the scribe wanted to show that it's disjoint.

Yes, Wladamir showed some fine examples of that above. Rene's stats on occurrence of the 3 forms in V101 suggest that the open form is least common, so it should not be too hard to correlate with the 5 scribes.