The Voynich Ninja

(22-04-2026, 04:50 PM)RadioFM Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Exactly my thoughts. Even though modern day French (and Picard) seem to pronounce word-initial y exclusively with the "soft" /j/ sound whereas word-initial j with "harder" /ʒ/ (resp. /d͡ʒ/) sounds, I think it's certainly plausible for some medieval scribes to have abused the y=i interchangeability, extending it to word-initial positions as well, especially back then when orthography was far from standardized. Thus, /ʒo'lɛt/  /d͡ʒol'lɛt/ or some variation of that could have been rendered iollet jollet or yollet, all three pronounced the same, unlike nowadays where yollet would definitely be read  /jo'lɛt/

I don't know if the pronunciation was different than it is now, but in writing of medieval Latin and French they sometimes replaced "i" with "y" (more often the first letter) inconsistently, meaninglessly, especially in uncommon words (so they looked more exotic? IDK) like this "ydolorum": You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

They didn't write any "j" at all except as a last "i" in "ij", a very consistent writing convention, not a letter: you can't find any other "j" in manuscripts. Transcriptions often "modernize" medieval Latin and French by replacing "i" with "j" using modern conventions that didn't exist at the time. A capital "J" in manuscripts is actually a curved "I". Latin set the standard and since the alphabet didn't have anything between "i" and "k", it was not possible to write a letter "j" that didn't exist yet in French or Latin. The custom of writing "j" for a phonetic reason in French and Latin didn't really catch until centuries later. It may have started in German first, then Italian in the 16th century.

The question would be if they'd also replace a consonant "i" by "y". It feels like you'd only do it when "i" is a vowel, as in your "ydolorum" example.

(23-04-2026, 11:38 AM)Koen G Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.The question would be if they'd also replace a consonant "i" by "y". It feels like you'd only do it when "i" is a vowel, as in your "ydolorum" example.

I found a curious example yesterday of a transcript of correspondance from Gaspar Schets (born in antwerp, died in bergen/mons). I, J, and Y seem to be used in all positions. The correspondance is in french. You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view..

"je me recommande" is at the beginning of every letter, and sometimes is "ye me recommande". 

In one letter, as an example, starts with 
"ye me recommande" 
[attachment=15267]
"yai rechu par ce porteur"
[attachment=15268]
Uses y for i in "yl ny a point"
[attachment=15266]
"vous dites byen"
[attachment=15269]

Across his correspondance, month names are also slightly unusual, with "Yanuir",  both "Yuing" and "Juing", "Yulet". 

So across everything, Y was used as ʒ, and as a vowel in any position within a word. As this is a transcription, it's possible that J and y was confused, but considering that y is also found in the middle of words, and that y, j and i are all transcribed in various places I imagine that in those situations the letter looked like a y, regardless of what it really was.

(23-04-2026, 11:38 AM)Koen G Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.The question would be if they'd also replace a consonant "i" by "y". It feels like you'd only do it when "i" is a vowel, as in your "ydolorum" example.

I checked in the transcription (not "modernized" to classical Latin) of the You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.: the river Jordan is fluuius iordanis, Jesse (father of king David) is yesse, but Jesus is i(h)esu(s) and Jerusalem is ierusalem. Go figure...

Typical medieval Latin spellings. I've seen iherusalem elsewhere. They didn't like "ie", preferred "ihe" and "ye". They also didn't like "mn" so they wrote "mpn" instead: sompnus, dampnatus, ...

Many seemingly random y/i substitutions:
tytulus
hystoriis
ydola egipti
ymaginem
moyses (Moses)
symonem syrenensem (Simon of Cyrene)
...

[attachment=15293]

Just as Nablator says.
Here, for example, we have “Jesus.”

(23-04-2026, 12:38 PM)nablator Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.They also didn't like "mn" so they wrote "mpn" instead: sompnus, dampnatus, ...

To make an "mn" sound one must close the lips during the "m" then open them for the "n".  That is similar to how one forms the "p" sound. So maybe people did pronounce or hear a "p" there.

Quote:Many seemingly random y/i substitutions:
tytulus
hystoriis
ydola egipti
ymaginem
moyses (Moses)
symonem syrenensem (Simon of Cyrene)
...

In some of those the "y" seems to be marking the stressed syllable ("Idola" rather than "idOla").

In others (like "ymaginem", "Moyses" and "Symon") the "y" was used perhaps because those are "foreign" words that came into Latin from or through Greek.  I gather that "y" (like "k") was used in Roman times only for words of Greek origin; is that so?

All the best, --stolfi

Absolutely, in many cases the use of "y" is associated with the Greekness of the word. It's called "Greek i" in many languages. This might also be at play in spellings like "yezuz". 

This usage feels different from whatever may have caused "yong" though.

Over the last week or so, I have found and added many examples to the spreadsheet that I found on archive.org, munchener library, oxford library, and cambridge library. As I was doing so, I had some thoughts and questions.

The "standard" set for french

From the late 14th century to the early 16th century france, there appears to have been a "standard" set of non-latin month names that were most common: mars, auril, may, juing, juillet, aoust, septembre, octobre, nouembre, decembre: a 5/10 score. These now make up a large block in the spreadsheet. 

So for a higher score, either auril, juing, juillet, aoust or octobre have to change. This is seen in NE france and belgium the most. 

Here is a rough map showing the general regions where scores of 6.5+ are found (You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. / You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.): 

[attachment=15538]

The cities Metz, Tournai, and Arras are the most common other than Paris and might be worth investigating further. 

The reason that these areas produce higher scores seems to be:

auril -> apuril / aueril
juing -> jung
juillet -> jullet
octobre -> octembre

Each of these individual changes appear to be more common in these areas compared to others, explaining the higher scores. 

In fact, non-latin names in general appear to be more common in these areas, is there a known reason for this? The vast majority of entries in the spreadsheet found by everyone are in N/NE france and belgium. At least on my part, the search shouldn't have been biased towards that area specifically; I simply searched for books of hours and almanacs in various libraries and languages without a filter for location. In some libraries, I simply searched for all possible variants within OCR metadata, including many potential misspellings of various month names. 

Finding many paris entries was expected, but where are all the non-latin books of hours in southern france? I found month lists in the netherlands, germany, italy, belgium and northern france, but barely any from southern france.

It's possible that scholars outside of northern france overwhelmingly used latin names in writing, which means we may be missing the common names for those areas almost entirely.

However, one thing that is (already) abundantly clear is that wherever these month names were from, they are not standard. They are also decidedly not the traditional german or dutch vernacular names either (other than perhaps augst/oogst). Both the german and dutch sets are found in reasonable abundance alongside latin examples, and neither match the VMS. Neither do the danish or welsh, for that matter. 

Not to mention that they also do not appear to be italian either, or anywhere near to an italian area, which raises all sorts of questions.

Thanks, Eggyk. Like I said, padding out the document with more instances of the standard sequence is helpful as well, because it highlights what the deviations are. Whatever the answer to this conundrum may be, it will be nuanced.

First things first: for all we know, these marginalia were written when the manuscript was already a few decades old. Since manuscripts and scribes may move, all possibilities are equal. No connection to any of the suspected places of origin of the MS? No problem: someone from a different region may have written in the MS years after its completion.

So what we're really looking at is the way (or a way) this individual wrote the months. This is my personal assessment so far:

• Mars is easy. It's standard in French. German prefers Mertz.
  
• Aberil is difficult. The form itself is exceedingly rare. Vowel-insertion has been mostly found in French, while the consonant spelled as "b" is more readily found in German. I'd be inclined to give the advantage to neither language group here, but others may disagree.
  
• May is near-universal.
  
• Yong is absent, but we can separate it into three sub-issues:
  - initial "y" is absent from our sample. We have ignored this mostly, but it may be relevant.
  - a single vowel (not followed by "i") is often "u". The form "iung" is often found in northern dialects of French.
  - "o" instead of "u" is very incidental, found once each in Picardy, Belgium and Norman-French. Again northern dialects of French.
  
• iollet is basically the same story as Yong, but the non-digraph form "u" is more common. Another half point for a broad range of northern dialects of French.
  
• Augst is the only month where, considered in isolation, one would conclude a Germanic language.
  
• All the other months are French, and Octembre is readily found, most often in northern dialects of French.
  

Everything considered, I'd say that this writer was most familiar with the month names in a northern dialect of French. With what we know, I would consider the months Mars, May, and all the -embre months as non-issues. For Augst, I would almost certainly consider English, Flemish or German influence. Our current, limited examples would suggest Normandy and thus an English (maybe Flemish?) influence. But more data would help.

Yong and Iollet are still the most puzzling to me, since these both should have changed their vowel quality from Latin "u" to "o". I can't think of any dialectical influence that would have caused this.

(13-05-2026, 01:01 PM)Koen G Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

• Yong is absent
  

But why do you read it as "yong"?  Coudn't it be yonij or yony or yonyus or...

If it was a "g", I would expect a rounder "head"...

There is no other occurrence of "g" for us to compare to, is there?

All the best, --stolfi