The Voynich Ninja

(15-04-2026, 08:17 PM)RadioFM Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Modern day Picard/Rouchi language (northern french dialect) seems to spell it tière to this day, too?

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1911 dictionary has "Engletier", as well as "Apvril".

Interesting finds! If the Picard spelling is correct, this would line up the astrolabe with the "octembre" hotspot in northern France.

The only remaining mystery in the top tier is then the supposed "Anglo-Norman poem" Sauvaget found, but can only be seen as a transcribed snippet in Google books (if it can be seen at all).

(16-04-2026, 03:47 AM)Koen G Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Interesting finds! If the Picard spelling is correct, this would line up the astrolabe with the "octembre" hotspot in northern France.

The only remaining mystery in the top tier is then the supposed "Anglo-Norman poem" Sauvaget found, but can only be seen as a transcribed snippet in Google books (if it can be seen at all).

If the poem is from "Art de Kalender" as it seems to be, it can be seen on p21-p38 of You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. from cambridge university library.

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Mar:  Mars,
Apr:   Averil,
May:  May, Maẏ, Mai
June: iong, mostly ioing
July:  joingnet, ioignet, iognet, ioinet, ioignete
Aug:  aust, august
Sep:  sepembre,
Oct:   octobre,
Nov:  novembre,
Dec:  decembre

Interestingly, we're down an "augst", but up a "iong", "maẏ", and "mars" compared to the spreadsheet. Perhaps a different source of the same poem. I did look all the way through to p38 to check for variants but it's possible I missed one, i'll keep adding if I find any. 

According to the library, this collation of texts is from: 

Cambridge University Wrote:Origin: First half of 14th century, after 1307 C.E.England Basing their arguments primarily on dialectal features of the Middle English texts, Thiolier proposes an origin in the West Midlands (Thiolier 1989) while McIntosh suggests a possible Irish provenance (McIntosh et al. 1986).

Edit: 
Okay, what I posted is from one of 3 known copies of the original text. Sauvaget's month names are based on those found in "Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Bodley 399", which is the text used to transcribe the work You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view..

That website uses the Oxford version to transcribe the text because "this MS transmits the best text of Ralph of Lenham's Kalender, and is thus reproduced here."
I'm not 100% sure I agree, as whole lines appear to be missing in this version. For the section I posted an image of above, this version is completely missing the lines for march, july and august. 

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These are perhaps the source for the month names in the spreadsheet. I cannot find a digital version of that manuscript.

My link is to a different copy in the cambridge library, so it's a different source and different scribe that transferred and wrote the month names.

Well found! I'm on my last day on vacation, flying home tomorrow. By the weekend I will have a better chance to look into this as well. If I recall correctly, the spreadsheet is simply based on what Sauvaget wrote on his blog.

Did some more digging and happened across the archived version of the document about astrolabes that was actually linked to with "Astrolabe of Berselius". 

That document, as alluded to in Stephan Bax's post, mentions another astrolabe containing "jong". Well, turns out that it's the Sauvaget Astrolabe! Theres actually another side to that astrolabe that isn't included in the JSTOR image set which has another set of the months, and a "Hollande" to go along with our "Engletiere". 

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They actually work out the rough provenance You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.:

Quote:The inscriptions on the plates of the geared astrolabe (#198), the front and back of which are shown in Fig. K.6. Although the plates are clearly intended for use in South-East England and Holland, he horary quadrant on the back is for a latitude which would serve Picardy. Where the instrument was actually made remains a mystery.

...


The geared astrolabe in the Science Museum (#198) has a plate serving engletiere on one side and hollande on the other (Fig. L.6). The double horary quadrant on the back, however, serves a latitude of ca. 49;30°, which seems to localize the provenance to somewhere between Southern Picardy (Amiens) and Eastern Normandy (Rouen), but it could also be, say, Reims.

So this source claims that it is likely from northern france (Picardy/Normandy), and would have been used in south east england and holland. They also state that "It has been dated as late as ca. 1500 (by Robert Gunther) and as early as ca. 1300 (by Derek Price). I would date both the Picard astrolabe and this geared astrolabe to the 14th century, early or late I am not sure"

Thanks!

I added your latest updates to the thread: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

I also streamlined the two location columns, they were a bit of a mess.

So far, almost everything rated 6 or higher is from French dialects north of Paris.

In terms of what we should be looking for for "jong". Which spelling variants should we be considering as valid variants? For example, we consider mai and may to be effectively the same. What about "jong", "jung","joing", juing"? I've been pronouncing them like an english speaker, with them sounding completely different to eachother. 

However, if we take the (modern) french pronunciation of oi and ui, how would these variants sound?

Joing would be "ʒ -oi -ng" /  "ʒ-wuh-ng"     (oi as in moi)
Juing would be "ʒ -ui -ng" /  "ʒ-oo-ee-ng"   (ui as in nuit)

However, modern juin does not pronounce ui as "oo-ee" like it does in juillet. According to the audio on the You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view., juin is actually pronounced more like:

"ʒ-oo-uh-(n)" in paris.
"ʒ - oi -(n)"   in Vosges (eastern france). 

So, for some dialects that still exist, "joing" and "juing" would be pronounced the same way with oi. This makes sense, if you take "i" to have the sound from the french word You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. in both cases, you simply have the difference between o-i and u-i, which really can have some overlap depending on somebody's accent. Sound out both o-i and u-i  (o-uh/u-uh) quickly, so quickly that you do not stress the w sound, they morph very easily into "o" and "u". 

It's also possible that jong is a misspelling of joing (which I consider more likely now, as the only non-astrolabe finding of jong is a single jong in an ocean of joings). If jong is a misspelt joing, and joing may be pronounced the same as juing, we may already have found it everywhere. 


I understand that we're supposed to be discussing 700 year old french, not modern, but perhaps it's a useful tool.

If I had to make a guess, it'd be some concatenation(s) of:

( ʒ | d͡ʒ)  ( ʷ |   )  ( œ̃ | ɔ̃ | ɛ̃ ) ( g |   )

with /ʷ/ and /g/ possibly elided?
Skimming through the Picard dictionary I linked before, there's 'gingler' as an alternative spelling to 'jongler', which caught my eye, and Wikipedia mentions something about initial j/g possibly being pronounced d͡ʒ ?

So something somewhat close to modern French jungle (You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.) without the last 'gle' or 'le' sound, possibly a stronger initial j sound (like English j in jam, instead of  s in pleasure), and maybe with a quick /w/ sound right after the j? Also, nasalized vowel may be different, even modern French has this sound changed depending on the regional accent

Take this with a teaspoon of salt, I've yet to properly look into actual phonology and spelling of these variants, plus I'm no native speaker ofc

I think "mai" and "may" are phonetically equivalent in most Romance and Germanic languages. But spelling preferences can still be localized, so even this difference is worth looking out for. All we know is that the month name writer wrote "yong", not how they pronounced it.

I agree though, that if this is an occasional misspelling, it might be valuable for us to also track the most likely standard form.

What stops me from doing this, is that the sequence as a whole is nonstandard. Once you start allowing that yong = jong = joing =... , you might do the same for different month names as well. Maybe "augst" is a misspelling of "august" and so on...

(21-04-2026, 10:41 AM)eggyk Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view."ʒ-oo-uh-(n)" in Paris.

As a Parisian (born there, lived there, now I'm in the suburbs), I see what you mean, but...

"juin" is either \ʒɥɛ̃\ or \ʒy.ɛ̃\
"join" is \ʒwɛ̃\