The Voynich Ninja

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@helmut
I don't agree with you at all about the gas and milk.
2x misspelled and not together, and wrong sentence order and makes no sense.

It is not a "g" and is used correctly after the example.

In the end, I don't feel like arguing about it any more. I think my reading is correct.

(05-05-2023, 02:00 PM)Aga Tentakulus Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I also still see this sign as a clue.

Hi, Aga,  you are right. The y was Slovenian for 'and'. It is still used in the Southern Slovenian, but mostly in Croatian and Srbian and other Slavic languages. Even if the letter was v, would be meaningful in Slovenian, because v means 'in'.

VEN is Slovenian word for 'out', however an old Slovenian word 'van' meant 'heavan'. The word 'mus' is Slovenian word for 'a man'. Such shape of S is very common in German manuscripts of that time.

The last word is somewhat smudged due to corrections. The last part looks like 'jel' which in Slovenian means 'he ate'. I cannot figure out what the first letter is.

As you know, before the Ladin was official language, Slovenian dialect was spoken in that region.

@ Koen

1) I have used a software with a large zoom (Foxit PDF Readr, it is free software and everybody can do it for himself) on 116v and I am convinced that there is written 'geis' and not 'gas', the middle letters look different from the severak a's, it is a pity there is no other ei-combination. But it really is a job for someone with access to the original ms. and a strong magnifying glass (by the way, I think there is written anchiton). Gas meaning a geiss has a long a, Gas meaning oxygen has a short a, as you correctly remark, I would say gaas for Ziege is more or less South German, Ober- und Mitteldeutsch

2) When I say scribal mistake, I mean that the scribe has written mich instead of milch. The l in Milch is usually barely audible, it is a mistake someone who was used to writing Latin and had learned writing in Latinand was not used to writing German would easily make, even if he was a native German speaker.

3) Mixing up b and p and d and tmis a very common feature of some German dialects, for example my own Franconian dialect I easily say der Putter insstead of die Butter in colloquial speech. But I don't seemixing up Pox and box, box came into German as Lehnwort from English in the 19th c. Our pox seems to be a Genitive of Bock, which can mean several male animals, a Karnickelbock for example eis a male rabbit, to think of a billy goat is influenced by the cotext, e.g. the drawing in the margin

4) It is diffiult to decide on an area, bu I would say it is South German,   the ms. looks Italian in some places, which would fit nicely

(05-05-2023, 03:10 PM)Helmut Winkler Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.1) I have used a software with a large zoom (Foxit PDF Readr, it is free software and everybody can do it for himself) on 116v and I am convinced that there is written 'geis' and not 'gas', the middle letters look different from the severak a's, it is a pity there is no other ei-combination. But it really is a job for someone with access to the original ms. and a strong magnifying glass (by the way, I think there is written anchiton). 

The only difference I see with most other 'a's is that this one is crossed by the horizontal dash of the preceding 'g'.

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To clarify my point of view once again.
Suppose the two characters above are a "t".
If a "z" is written into a "t", it looks the same as the "g". The "tz" can be seen everywhere in other books.
Therefore for me "tz" and not "g".

'g' vs 'tz' from 7r You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. mentioned by Rene You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.. I don't remember seing a 'z' with a righward horizontal dash connecting to the next character, but in general 'g' and 'tz' look quite different in all scripts.

(05-05-2023, 03:10 PM)Helmut Winkler Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Gas meaning a geiss has a long a, Gas meaning oxygen has a short a

"Gas" as in the state of matter, like oxygen, is a surprisingly new word, You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.. So there was not yet a short "Gas" from which "Gaas" should be differentiated in writing. I also wonder if medieval writers would always differentiate between long and short vowels when writing? Or might "Gas" actually be written even though it is pronounced "gaas"? In modern Dutch we write "a" for short and "aa" for long, but it is different in medieval German.

As for the "ei" reading of the word, I agree with Marco that it is simply an "a" crossed by the bar of the character to its left. It is too similar to the other examples of "a" on the page, and too narrow to represent two characters. 

(05-05-2023, 03:10 PM)Helmut Winkler Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.2) When I say scribal mistake, I mean that the scribe has written mich instead of milch. The l in Milch is usually barely audible, it is a mistake someone who was used to writing Latin and had learned writing in Latinand was not used to writing German would easily make, even if he was a native German speaker.

Yeah this could be the case, but perhaps a mistake more easily made by someone whose dialect no longer had a clear "L" in "milch". It is exactly these kinds of things that can show us where a writer is from. (Unfortunately this doesn't work very well here because we only have so little text!)

(05-05-2023, 03:10 PM)Helmut Winkler Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.3) Mixing up b and p and d and tmis a very common feature of some German dialects

I was getting this impression that p-b mixing is a widespread phenomenon, it is good that you can confirm this.

(05-05-2023, 03:10 PM)Helmut Winkler Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.4) It is diffiult to decide on an area, bu I would say it is South German,   the ms. looks Italian in some places, which would fit nicely

If we assume "gas" for goat in addition to difficulties with the "L" in milch, I think the case for somewhere in modern day Austria thickens. 

It is also worth keeping in mind that Lisa Fagin Davis considers the You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. inscription to be a bit later than the manuscript itself, although she expresses this with uncertainty. She wrote (pers. comm.):

"I think it's a bit later than the manuscript itself; perhaps late 15th-c., although it's a fairly small sample with unusual letterforms, so it's difficult to say with real certainty."

If this is true, then it means that the possibly-Austrian-dialect inscription was made by a somewhat later owner of the manuscript. Thereby it is interesting to note that the linguistic area in question lies between the most likely areas of origin and the area where the manuscript eventually comes to the surface (Prague).

Examples of P/B shifting can be found in some early heraldic chronicles where place names now ending in -burg were written as -purg.

What about the other end of 'pox',  -  the 'X' sound? Besides just -x, aren't there several other possibilities like -cks or -ckx that were used?

Those all sound the same though, so it has little to do with dialect. Although maybe there are variations in spelling conventions? How "normal" was it to replace cks by x?

(05-05-2023, 09:46 PM)R. Sale Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Examples of P/B shifting can be found in some early heraldic chronicles where place names now ending in -burg were written as -purg.

What about the other end of 'pox',  -  the 'X' sound? Besides just -x, aren't there several other possibilities like -cks or -ckx that were used?

It is really  '(eines) Bockes Leber', which is spoken 'Bocks' which is the same sound as an x