The Voynich Ninja

Following Aga Tentakulus 's observation that the x-s might be meta-linguistic (You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.), how about we encode (x+) meta-linguistically as, say, bold font, and plain (+) as italic font. This gives us a likely two-part stanza like so:

        si mavi mori vi ahia ma ria

It also suddenly looks remarkably like a medieval romance language, especially if we read mavi as "ma vi" and ma ria as "ma via", thus:

        si ma vi mori vi ahia ma via

I am no expert, but Medieval Occitan is a very nice fit, especially as ahia is an attested variant of "aida", which means "help", and the second vi read as a known variant of the demonstrative derived from Latin ibi. ( My Occitan knowledge comes from here: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. )

A fairly straightforward interpretation follows: "If my life dies there, help me on my way", or perhaps more idiomatically:

        Wherever I should die help me on the journey

ahia ma via could still be read as ahia maria ("May Mary help!"), but the inserted extra cross above seems to me to be an after-thought to force a two-word reading.

I make no claim that any of the other lines of this marginalia are also Medieval Occitan (especially as the Germanic interpretations seem very good). I think what we probably have overall is a list of miscellaneous charms and recipes, and this little Occitan verse stands on its own as one of those items.

Unbelievable!
Because of such fantasies, even if someone reads correctly is not acknowledged.

Last year I was so much distracted by the bottom right squiggle from f116v, that I didn't spend much time looking at the top of the page. Now I noticed that MSIs show definite long upwards strokes over i's in "vix" and ~"ahia". Also the line of four dots over the bottom right "o" and a caret (^) under o in ~"to8" very quite carefully written. All of these were visible on normal scans too, but there it wasn't very clear whether these were just random marks or deliberate pen strokes, they look quite deliberately drawn here. And there is a bit more detail for some of the symbols from the first line of the "charm".

What could all these weird diacritics signify?

[attachment=9935]

If any worth, from You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

Within the text, one can detect small breaks where one section ends and another begins; the first letter of the new chapter is written in red. 

Also, you can see at the beginning of the chapter a small “+” symbol.  Often (as we see here in minuscule 9 at the third section), this “+” is accompanied by another symbol that represents the word arche, “beginning/”. This means that at this point, a daily reading begins.  Often the arche-symbols are supplements by telos-symbols, signifying the ends of the segment for the daily reading

(03-02-2025, 05:30 PM)oshfdk Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I noticed that MSIs show definite long upwards strokes over i's in "vix" and ~"ahia".

Strokes like those two are common. Years ago, Helmut Winkler wrote that those thin dashes above ‘i’s are tittles added by later hands to make reading easier.

The following example is from You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.. Compare tittles in line 2 with those in the other lines. In this case, it could be that the scribe just used two different styles for tittles.

EDIT: but maybe the two words in line 2 are abbreviated? I shouldn't have picked a text I cannot read (Czech).

[attachment=9938]

This other example is from You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.. Here the script originally had no tittles and a later hand added some for clarity (sic, carmina-tas in line 2, igne with no tittle in line 3).
[attachment=9939]

I don't know about the "caret" and "four dots".

I don't know if this has been pointed out before but the latin (?) words "anchiton oladaba8" are the only two in the spell that are not separated by the cross symbol, which I think is safe to assume separates words in this case. It could be that the scribe forgot to put it in but given how they added one at the start I doubt it. Could it be that this is a single word? or something else entirely?

(20-02-2025, 02:57 PM)davidma Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I don't know if this has been pointed out before but the latin (?) words "anchiton oladaba8" are the only two in the spell that are not separated by the cross symbol, which I think is safe to assume separates words in this case. It could be that the scribe forgot to put it in but given how they added one at the start I doubt it. Could it be that this is a single word? or something else entirely?

One use of the cross in Medieval Manuscripts was as a method to label in the incunabula questionable "forbidden" text per the Catholic Church.

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{previously noted in voynich.net and maybe as well in voynich.ninja}

(21-02-2025, 05:16 AM)Dana Scott Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.One use of the cross in Medieval Manuscripts was as a method to label in the incunabula questionable "forbidden" text per the Catholic Church.

???

(21-02-2025, 09:23 AM)nablator Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

(21-02-2025, 05:16 AM)Dana Scott Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.One use of the cross in Medieval Manuscripts was as a method to label in the incunabula questionable "forbidden" text per the Catholic Church.

???

The cross reference in this thread is to the + found on f116v, not a crucifix.