The Voynich Ninja

Googling "septembre octembre" "manuscrit" led to You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. and You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view., made in Paris(?) probably around 1348-49.
In parenthesis, Voynich months as transcribed by You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view..

januier
feurier
mars [mars]
auril [aberil]
may [may]
juing [jong] but I agree with Yulia: it looks like yong
juignet [iollet]
aoust [augst]
septembre [septe(m)b(r )]
octembre [octe(m)bre]
nouembre [nove(m)bre]
decembre [decebre]

(13-06-2025, 05:05 PM)MarcoP Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.In parenthesis, Voynich months as transcribed by You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view..

It looks like the only month name completely unaccounted for in the french language of the late 14th century is "iollet" with the i.

(13-06-2025, 05:21 PM)davidma Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

(13-06-2025, 05:05 PM)MarcoP Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.In parenthesis, Voynich months as transcribed by You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view..

It looks like the only month name completely unaccounted for in the french language of the late 14th century is "iollet" with the i.

Interestingly though, Thomas Sauvaget posits that it could be "jollet", as the scribe didn't have a lot of space to write out the j. It would be amazing to have a better quality image of that page, as it looks like there is an extremely faint line under the i as if it were a faded j, but perhaps I'm seeing things that aren't there. 

Anyway, "jollet" is a valid spelling and, interestingly enough, was used in an English inventory book from 1433. It can be found here in the Anglo-Norman dictionary: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

(13-06-2025, 05:21 PM)davidma Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

(13-06-2025, 05:05 PM)MarcoP Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.In parenthesis, Voynich months as transcribed by You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view..

It looks like the only month name completely unaccounted for in the french language of the late 14th century is "iollet" with the i.

The "i" is not really a problem, but "u" instead of "o" is much more common.

Jung, Jullet on the French 1305 astrolabe found by Thomas Sauvaget: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

Initial J is actually I, written like what looks like J to us: "j" was not much in use, as in Latin (except for the last "i" of a sequence of "i"), and i/y were more or less equivalent. You could find different spellings of the same word with "i" or "y" until the orthography was standardized centuries later.

(13-06-2025, 05:55 PM)nablator Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Initial J is actually I, it's written like uppercase J: j/i/y were more or less equivalent and you could find different spellings of the same word until the orthography was standardized centuries later.

Would consonant usage always imply a sound like in English "yes"?

(13-06-2025, 06:05 PM)Koen G Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Would consonant usage always imply a sound like in English "yes"?

In some cases but not only. You see some random "y" in French and Latin texts, maybe some of them were thought of as long vowels, I'm not sure.

For example the "y" in medieval "luy" = modern "lui" and medieval "iceluy" = modern "celui-ci" were certainly never a consonant.

For what it's worth, I think the difficult part in deriving 'Aberil' from 'Aprilis' is the change p->b, rather than the intervening 'e' (we have seen various examples in various languages of an 'e' inserted between a consonant and 'r'). If this is true, Portuguese 'Abril' should be the modern form nearest to 'Aberil'.

(08-06-2025, 09:10 PM)oshfdk Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Probably this has been settled a long time ago, but still I'd like to understand why the third letter is read as "e" and not something else. This looks to me more like an i with some strange mark over it (something like ĩ or ǐ of sorts). But this is certainly not my area of expertise.

In the starting calendar pages in You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. there is an intensive use of that symbol 
after kl and st, where an e is expected.

The labels of zodiacs:



The second version of "April" seems more like a later inserted small "u" above the link between "b" and "r".
Would read (and write) the VMS later added months' names as:
mars
aburil
may^ / may
jonj    (EDIT: it is a jonj instead of „junj“)
iollet
augst
sebte'b~
octe'bre
noue'bre

This here comes close to that, this image is much younger:

(Thoinot Arbeau’s 1582 volume of practical astronomy)


Seems like a version of french to me.
"Apuril" comes close to Aburil, Aberil.

Septe~bre, Oc´tobre, Noue~bre are some specials, pretty near to the "VMS months".

So the questions are:
is the "b" of "Aberil" and "Sebte'bre" really a "b", or is it meant or used used as a "p"....?

All months' names are partially cursive, several letters are linked with their neighbors. This detail alone takes them out of the 'normal' original VMS script.

Being printed rather similar in a book of 16th century, ~150 years younger than VMS: what proves the assumption that those month names even belong to original VMS script or are a written language of 15th century at all?

The most strange thing is: the consistency.

The two versions of April are different (specially the punctuation); Even "May" has only 3 letters and it is still different (one has an extra punctuation.)

----------Detective Schematics----------
1. They are different:
  a)Intentional:
    I) Hard to understand. To hide the words.
    II) They are different "states" of the same month....
    III) They are different months or configuration we are confusing as months.
    IV) Corrections. After writing bad a word, another scribe corrected it. And sometimes it did not (time constrains, tiredness, etc...)
    V) ????

  b)Unintentional:
    I) Mistakes:
      Ia) Scribe 1 was the Expert on the Language they were copying from, except it was not very good at it and made mistakes.
          Scribe 2 had to copy exactly what Scribe 1 wrote, so he/she copied the mistakes within the word itself.
      Ib) Scribe 1 copied once, as the best of her/his abilities, the words of the months in a language he/she was not used to read/write.
          Then, when had to write it again; he/she had to reread his interpretation and made it worst.
      Ic) They were dictated the words without knowing the grammar, and the spelling was off each time.
      Id) They were copying from different sources that had already grammar mistakes.
      Ie)???

2. They are the same:
  a) Because the variations, like the extra punctuations are redundant.
  b) Because they represent the vocal and the writing part of the same word.
  c) Because they are synonymous of different writing but similar languages.
  d) ???
----------
(Ironically. I tend to use grammar correction frequently to check for spelling mistakes.)