The Voynich Ninja

Regarding the tails on gallows characters...

If you look at folio 85r (this might not be the best example, but it's one I knew I could grab quickly), you will notice that p with a loop on the tail is primarily at the beginnings of paragraphs and p without the loop (with a straight tail) is primarily on the glyphs positioned within paragraphs.

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I've been looking into this for a number of years, which includes gathering statistics and looking at manuscripts with similar patterns.

My opinion, so far, is that the gallows at the beginning of paragraphs, in particular the p shapes, function more similarly to a pilcrow (paragraph marker/capitulum) than like a letter. I'm not explicitly saying they are pilcrows, but that their patterns of use are more pilcrow-like than letter-like. This is not only based on position, but on the composition of the glyphs that directly follow.

The benched gallows usually appears within tokens, but can also appear at the beginning. You can see examples here:

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I am not certain about the function of the ones within paragraphs (which generally have straight tails, but not always). They are usually placed within tokens, rather than at the beginning.

In medieval manuscripts it was common to include capitulum/pilcrow symbols within the text to mark sections or phrases, but not within words. I've collected many manuscript examples of these patterns and there are quite a number of placement styles.

So, there are a number of possibilities. IF the curl in the cross-stroke is meaningful, we might be dealing with two different kinds of glyphs—there are indications in the text that they might be different—but I am very doubtful that the p with the loop in the cross-stroke at the beginnings of paragraphs is a letter. The one without the curl might be (BUT the fact that it is within tokens is not sufficient evidence that it is a letter, because the VMS spaces might not be word breaks. No one has proved that they are).


I'll post more about this later today if I have time (busy work week).

Thanks! This is really helpful. My instinct has always been that the gallows with curls are decorative or function as paraphs as the beginning of paragraphs, as you say.

This is a snapshot of some of the p chars. Note that looped cross-strokes do sometimes occur within tokens.

[attachment=4456]

I have examples from the whole manuscript, and can sort these in a variety of ways. I have gathered quite a few statistics on these patterns but have not analyzed all of them yet.

Location is indicated bottom-left. The number in the bottom-right is the first time a particular token appears in the manuscript.

The dictionary mentioned by Hannig:
Ernest Klein, A comprehensive etymological Dictionary of the Hebrew Language for Readers of English
It is the most comprehensive dictionary I have seen so far. - The input of English terms into the search mask works.

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Back on Hannig: I don't see how this should work. When you construct sentences using a dictionary, you always end up with nonsense.

On a character level, the most common characters (by far) in Hebrew are Waw, He and Jod. His findings for Waw and Jod are far from that in VMS, He excludes He, because the "ha-" article would not have been pronounced in the dialect he proposes. But what about the other words that begin with that letter? Among those there are some of the most important and common words like those for "he" and "she".

(17-06-2020, 02:42 PM)-JKP- Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Regarding the tails on gallows characters...

JKP, You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. is interesting in this respect, in the column on the left there is a looped eva p just above a straight one, which to me seems to make it deliberate

(17-06-2020, 02:42 PM)-JKP- Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.You can see examples here:

Is space the consideration? Is vord initial more common too?

As usual, there seem to be some intermediate forms as well...

Such attempts, whether undertaken by amateurs or by seasoned scholars, typically have one thing in common - that is unawareness of results of the previous work in the field of the VMS text. At most, people would have heard of the Currier languages, but far less frequently - of the entropy characteristics of the text, of positional features of the text, and almost never - of such things as the gallows coverage or multipass.

Digging through the numerous observations already made and making oneself acquainted with the bunch of Voynich text phenomena is a prerequisite to not wasting time in vain.

I think I have mentioned the short story  by  R. Austin  Freeman, "The Moabite  Cipher", who has not read
it should do so, it is online, this is one  of the cases where Reality imitates Fiction

An English translation of the article is in progress and a conference for interested colleagues and journalists is planned for early August in the Roemer- und Pelizaeus-Museum Hildesheim.

I sent Hannig an email with the question whether a publication of the conference ( e.g. on Youtube ) is planned.