(10-10-2023, 05:30 PM)Koen G Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Do you think this is the same for all scribes?
When I take into account all scribes it seems to me that the majority of the 8's are actually rather seamless. At the same time, I wouldn't say it's a
vast majority. One can find lots of examples of 8's for every scribe that make it seem as if he "slips up" and doesn't connect the two strokes properly.
Sometimes, the 8 will appear seamless but only if we ignore how dark the ink is. In a lot of cases, the portion of the 8 that is much darker corresponds to the shape of
the loop,
not the
e. Example from You are not allowed to view links.
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![[Image: FlFN2RQ.jpg]](https://i.imgur.com/FlFN2RQ.jpg)
(10-10-2023, 05:30 PM)Koen G Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I'm also wondering now.. would scribes in regular manuscripts write the numeral 8 in the same 2-stroke fashion?
It's an excellent question. It'd definitely require insight into the manuscripts. If an effort in this direction was already made I'm unaware of it.
(10-10-2023, 05:30 PM)Koen G Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.If c+loop is a common method, this probably means that it's convenient to write 8 like this with a quill on parchment (which does not behave like pen on paper).
Definitely a question that needs a follow-up.
(10-10-2023, 05:30 PM)Koen G Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.However, if it turns out that 8 was rarely written like this, the implication would be that all Voynich scribes (re)-learned how to write it in a way that was more consistent with the apparent philosophy behind the glyph set.
A super long shot hypothesis I came up with is that a scribe would start their writing session, paying more attention to the structure of the script at first (which they might've known about), but they eventually slipped back to pure convenience. Maybe they weren't paid enough for their work done in the workshop to care enough to stick to the vision of the author?
(09-10-2023, 11:12 PM)Koen G Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.What it the tail of EVA-n but an empty flourish though?
That is also a very interesting question, as it seems to me that the extremely common word-final
i with a flourish over it,
n, also known as EVA-n looks like it's written in one single stroke the vast majority of time. The flourish being there just for decoration purposes? Possibly. Or maybe the single stroke being just a time saver? Perhaps.
Independently, some time ago the same question made me wonder whether the word-initial
q vertical bar's extension into "the bottom lane" is just another embellishment. Example:
![[Image: CHFB30x.jpg]](https://i.imgur.com/CHFB30x.jpg)
To me it seems that the "important" parts of this
q glyph are the short vertical bar in the "regular lane" (also highlighted by the scribe(s) thanks to the obvious darker ink) and the zigzag going from the top of the bar to the left and then to the right. I'd argue that the part that extends further into the bottom might not be that important. There's a
ton of examples of such
q's in the text where the ink is darker in the upper-vertical-bar part.
This also made me wonder whether we could consider a
short vertical bar among the base shapes of Voynichese. So it would be then
three base shapes:
e,
i and the
short vertical bar. This would make sense because very often the gallows glyphs look like their top parts are written independently from their legs; i.e., a single long leg extending into the "top lane" consists of multiple strokes of the quill pen. Also, on the first two folios, I vividly recollect gallows glyphs that have one of their legs rest literally on an
e.
