The Voynich Ninja

"An You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. [...] is the geographic boundary of a certain linguistic feature, such as the pronunciation of a vowel..."

In the You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. marginalia, we have at least three proposed "marking" dialectical features:

* box -> pox
* geis -> gas
* milch -> mich

I don't know if all of these words are actually in the marginalia and if their interpretation as dialectical forms is correct. But if this is the case, then they point to a certain region. Now the interesting thing for us is that not every feature will correspond to the exact same region. One village may say "pox" and "gas", while another may say "box" and "gas" and yet another "box" and "geis". So the idea is that by finding out in which areas these three proposed features occur, we might end up with a very specific region, much more specific than "it's Alemannic" or "Switzerland". 

Alternatively, we may found out that we cannot demonstrate any geographical proximity between these features, which would also be of relevance for our assessment of the marginalia. 

Now the question is if we will be able to gather enough data to make this work. One strategy might be to start with the rarest feature, which may be writing "mich" for "milch" (?) and see if we can find out where its attestations were written. Since I don't have much experience with this kind of research yet, I wonder if it is feasable to begin with.

It is not only "Alemannic" and Swiss.
It's also the other dialects.
What you want to describe is Upper German.
What can be seen in the VM goes linguistically to the east. "Bavarian

And the one who suggested "gas" as Geiss or  "mich" as Milch had no idea about German and these dialects.

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(03-05-2023, 10:29 AM)Koen G Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view."An You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. [...] is the geographic boundary of a certain linguistic feature, such as the pronunciation of a vowel..."

Hi, Koen:

I have been able to do this with decoded plant names having unusual spellings in ciphered recipes.  In one particular case I was able to pinpoint the use of a Swiss-German dialect, around Zurich (best documented in a small town Northwest of Zurich), which fit with the rough known history of the manuscript's ownership in the Switzerland area.  As you know, recipes are often added by later owners and the use of ciphers for sensitive aspects is relatively common.

The biggest issue I had was the lack of scholarly record of actual plant names used in the timeframe of the recipe writing.  However, using the unusual spelling I was able to use Google to turn up rare examples and which led me to an academic that had actually researched particular general spelling variations in dialects.  In particular, the use of "syni" as a female ending that I had found in the spelling of a plant as "antiffiasyni."

You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. is a link to a short paper by Nancy Thuleen documenting this in relation to prior work on this in the 1960s.

Ultimately, other research (specifically using the Zedler Lexicon, a German encyclopedia during the 1700s) revealed that antiffien was a word for endive so "antiffiasyni" is medieval free-spelled Swiss-German dialect version of endive. 

[I had a screenshot of the Zedler Lexicon page showing this but it goes into the forum posting gigantic, so I pulled it]

Yes, I did learn this backwards, with the ending coming to light prior to the "base" word but ultimately it all came together.

However, I caution that the unusual spelling was the reason why this was even possible and it took a lot of digging.  The words you are proposing unfortunately are not so unique. 

For example, "mich" as a variant spelling for "milch" will include an enormous amount of false positives because "mich" means "me."  It may be impossible because of the need to see context in order to catch those rare unusual uses.   On the other hand, it is possible that someone has documented spelling variations for "milch" since it is a common word that maybe someone documenting a dialect would capture (particularly if it was unusual).

I don't want to stop you and if I think of a strategy that could help, I will certainly be back.

Michelle

(03-05-2023, 12:38 PM)Aga Tentakulus Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.What you want to describe is Upper German.
What can be seen in the VM goes linguistically to the east. "Bavarian

Well yes, that is what I would like to get some more clarity about. Are gas and mich even regionally compatible? Would this be compatible with "pox leber"? We will be stuck in an endless exchange of proclamations like these, unless we gather some data to back things up.

Michelle: yeah, mich is a big problem, and I don't think this investigation will be easy. That is why I bring it up first before going on a wild gas chase

One possible strategy would be to focus on cook books and skim the uses of "mich" in those.

Another strategy is if we'd find similar words. A change like geis -> gas is rarely limited to a single word, and other words can be expected to have undergone the same sound shift. The shift from "milch" to "mich" sounds so unusual to me, however, that I can't even think of a parallel case. It would presuppose other words ending in "ilch".

@Michelle
Perhaps the list of Alemannic plant names will help you in your work.
German-Alemannic.

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One should ask the question.
What is a smallpox liver supposed to be, and what does he want with it.
It is a contagious disease that is actually visible on the skin.
Since it is highly contagious, it is better to burn it quickly than to try to treat it. I think the people of that time already knew that.

With "so nim xxx mich o", so I have an action before "so nim" and then a reaction follows.

When I read the text as it is written it doesn't say much to me. But when I hear the text, it tells me even more. It is actually written correctly, it was just separated incorrectly. According to today's spelling.
And so it also agrees with what comes before and the curse.

(03-05-2023, 10:29 AM)Koen G Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.* geis -> gas
* milch -> mich

In my opinion, it could also be the bread name "gred mich" ( dialect ).The text on You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. is written rather indistinctly. However, this spelling would make sense in the overall context ( illustration paschal lamb ?).

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Try it like this.
Take what you see as "g" away from "as".
And now read it again.
"so nim g as mich o"
And now ask someone who also knows the dialect.

(03-05-2023, 12:38 PM)Aga Tentakulus Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.What can be seen in the VM goes linguistically to the east. "Bavarian

We have to be able to be more specific than that though. For example, "Ziege" in the Bavarian wikipedia is called "Goas" You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
So in which area do they say "Gas"?

(I was googling a bit for modern attestations and apparently a daily glass of "gasmilch" keeps Covid away: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. )

What is the goat doing with you?
Was soll den auch die Ziege mit Dir ?