The Voynich Ninja

I have some questions for those amongst the community who have studied the text. 
Or those that maybe are just aware of past studies which touched on these topics.

What are your thoughts on benched gallows/benches which end with;

1. the gallows glyph (missing "h")?
   
2. "o". "h" is looped to complete an "o" shape?
   
3. "i". Do you think "cXi" is a valid bench formation, or even "ci" rather than "ch" or "ih"?
   

I am assuming "ih" "iXh" is accepted. It seems clear to me, but maybe others do not think so? 
(I am using X to represent p,f,t,k)

The reason I ask is that I am wondering what I should include in a writing system proposal. 

For example. 
Is point 2 too niche to include and better considered a mistake, or an oddity outside a normal building blocks. If not, is it a normal "o" joined on, or a new thing to considered all together with the whole, such as a variation of "h". Maybe it is somehow linked to "qo"? I do not know, just thoughts. 

I know there are no sure answers, but a compelling theory would be interesting to hear.

Both when making a complete transliteration just before the year 2000, and while setting up the Eva and STA transliteration alphabets, I had to deal with these questions a lot.

Now it is important that decisions depend on the context. When making a transliteration (and the alphabet to use for it) one can make two types of mistakes:

1. to ignore certain variations in characters that are relevant (but of course we don't know)
2. to maintain variations in characters that are irrelevant (but again we don't know)

The first mistake is a much more serious one, because once the mistake has been made, one cannot undo it just by analysing the transliteration. One has to redo it.
When one has too many different characters, one may still decide later to consider several of them to be effectively the same.

Therefore, the safe way is to try to maintain the more 'obvious' differences.
It is clear that this is very subjective.

Some examples:
when making the v101 transliteration, GC decided that the various different forms of the curl on top of Sh is significant, so he distinguished them all.
Your third question is another example. Are bench characters beginning or ending with "i" significantly different from the ones with "c"?
We don't know.
One guideline might be to see to what extent the scribe seems to have made an effort to distinguish them.
This has not really been done consistently, and what we see may be misleading.

Effectively, the distinction between i and c shapes isn't always that clear. This is also true for r vs. s .
Other examples of relatively careless writing are a overlapping with o and even n overlapping with r .

Since we don't know the answer, one approach could be to state an assumption, and see where it leads.
This can create a lot of work, of course.

On your point 2, the o can appear at the start but also at the end, and so can a or y.

I have one hypothesis, unproven and very hard to prove except perhaps only by solving the entire text.
I included that in my music presentation of the last Voynich MS day,

This is that the gallows are ligatured variations of o+X+e.
Example:  CKh  is a ligatured variant of  oke .

This is quite elegant as it 'explains' ALL possible pedestalled gallows.

OKe would also be oke  but  CKo would be oko
CK would be ok
etc...

Thank you very much for the response Rene,
 
I think I'm going to follow your lead and document bench variations rather than try lump them together. Luckily I have restricted myself to Q1 herbal pages, and (currently) my system only cares about framework. If we considered a bench to be ( ) the system doesn't care what you write in it, "ckhh" etc. As a later step it might be interesting to look at each non-conforming bench and see if there are any patterns such as "Sh" variations. 

I will note some examples on "ci" when I tackle Currier B, I have a feeling it is a "B thing" but I don't know/have any work on it currently. Here's a somewhat suspicious "ch" from 77r

I have noticed in the past some examples where the \ stroke looks to be corrected to \ from ( (or maybe made more obvious), but it doesn't look like I noted the pages.

It is interesting that your hypothesis would solve a problem I have with my system, and also better explain something I already had in place... 

I call a,o,y, "switch" (>) which generally means "the next thing is line based", but in Pfeasters work (You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.) he notes "In building further on this model, Stolfi treats the glyphs a, o, and y as modifiers of the glyphs to their right, or as separate glyphs when they appear at the ends of words" which is better way of putting it in general. 

I have been stating that my system doesn't care what is in the middle to simplify things, but to fully note what is happening in a benched gallows glyph I would have to imply "a,o,y" (switch) as we have a curve and a line in "ck" touching. So I would note "ckh" as "c>kc" (curve.switch.line-curve.curve) rather than "ckc" (otherwise every benched gallows would not conform).

Sequences of "hc" are common (644 matches), but so are "hoc" (154 matches) comparatively. "chch" only makes up 18 of 644, and "choch" 14 of 154, so this is mostly interactions regarding benched gallows. 
Generally I have found things that use "o,a,y" are not also found without it in any great number. sr - 4, sor 94, sl - 5, sol 148.. and so on. Bench to benched gallows is strange in this way. 

A specific example.
chcth - 143
chocth - 38


My system would gain it's missing "switch" for "cth" and so change the sequence in the middle of chocth - chocth 

from "a curve switching to a curve (non-conforming) followed by an implied switch to a line based glyph" Messy.
to "a curve switching to a line based glyph" Which is how I see line based glyphs working.


Obviously my system could end up being nonsense, but it is just interesting that it also very elegantly solves every benched gallows problem I have, in that the start of the framework would now be "switch" rather than "curve".

(14-02-2025, 11:40 PM)Bluetoes101 Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I have some questions for those amongst the community who have studied the text. 
Or those that maybe are just aware of past studies which touched on these topics.

What are your thoughts on benched gallows/benches which end with;

1. the gallows glyph (missing "h")?
   
2. "o". "h" is looped to complete an "o" shape?
   
3. "i". Do you think "cXi" is a valid bench formation, or even "ci" rather than "ch" or "ih"?
   

I am assuming "ih" "iXh" is accepted. It seems clear to me, but maybe others do not think so? 
(I am using X to represent p,f,t,k)

 To be honest I do not understand your questions.
 All these rows of characters do not tell anything to me.
 Could you somehow use the real symbols from the script, so that everybody can be on the same page?
thnx: Vessy

(16-02-2025, 05:03 AM)BessAgritianin Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.All these rows of characters do not tell anything to me.
Could you somehow use the real symbols from the script, so that everybody can be on the same page?

Indeed. Many of us who prefer to use the v101 transliteration or others who have not gone deeply into the analysis of the text have difficulty understanding which of the VMS characters letters such as 'cholekairsy' represent. The reply box does allow characters to be presented in the Voynich EVA font. Please could more people use this font. Instead of 'cholekairsy' many people would be more happy to see this as  cholekairsy

(16-02-2025, 10:21 AM)dashstofsk Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. 
... Instead of 'cholekairsy' many people would be more happy to see this as  cholekairsy

To see, perhaps, to use - no, since the transcriptions are in Latin letters.
Besides, this word appears on which page, I have not found it.

(16-02-2025, 10:56 AM)Ruby Novacna Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.This word appears on which page, I have not found it.

No word. It was just a collection of letters to illustrate use of the font.