(04-10-2018, 05:30 AM)Pelling-as-quoted-by-Diane Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Looking more closely at the first word, there's a fine horizontal bar through the (later alteration) 'a', indicating that its second letter could well have originally been 'e' - making the whole word probably "meilhor" (presumably in a Romance language, derived from the Latin melior as in 'ameliorate').
I don't think it's a horizontal bar or a later alteration. I think it's a double-chamber/double-story "a" with a slight pen skip. In the late 14th century and 15th century, many scribes used both forms, sometimes alternating randomly between them in the same word or adjacent words.
I have You are not allowed to view links.
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Quote:Diane:
[Notes - by me]. Nick is mistaken in seeing the script's 'l' as peculiarly Germanic. It's just a form of Gothic script and occurs in France and in England and elsewhere.
The script is not peculiarly Germanic. Gothic book and Gothic cursive were used all over the continent and to some extent in England (Anglicana, a variant of Gothic was widely used in England). But the words themselves, on lines 1 and 4, are peculiarly Germanic. Especially the last phrase on line 4—it is most definitely Germanic, and almost readable as German.
(04-10-2018, 05:30 AM)Diane Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view....
Medieval dialects were spoken languages, few used by the literate classes and they actually formed a continuum across the geographic areas - which is why there is debate over whether the Voynich month-names are Judeo-Catalan, or Occitan etc. and why e.g. even today, English dialects include ones where e.g. 'done' is always used where standard English demands 'did'. For all we know, the Voynich marginalia represent notes added to the manuscript from information given by non-literate persons whose dialect isn't straight 'Occitan' or 'Catalan' or 'French' according to modern classificiation..... For all we know.
I'm not sure why you are mixing comments about the 116v marginalia with comments about the zodiac-symbol labels. They are definitely not the same handwriting and could have been added decades apart.
(04-10-2018, 05:30 AM)Diane Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.In the Beinecke library scans, the fourth word (which starts with a curious letter) looks like kou, while the subsequent words fade right away (despite the apparent emendation). It seems that the whole line was therefore originally a complete Occitan sentence starting with "meilhor aller lutz (kou)..." meaning mystifyingly something like "to run light better"...
It doesn't say
lutz. It is
lucz with a very common and conventional macron over the "cz" which means it's an abbreviation. Also, that "z" is probably not really a "z". It's an abbreviation symbol for the ending (usually "em", but it could mean other things). Most scribes wrote the "m" abbreviation the same way they wrote "z" but it was usually obvious by context which one they meant.
Here's the paleographic history on the "m" abbreviation (that resembles a "z"). Imagine if you had a word like "lucrem" and you want to abbreviate the "em". If you take an "m" shape and rotate it 90 degress clockwise, it looks like a "z", so that's how they wrote it. By rotating it, it was a way of saying "this is an abbreviation, so don't forget to add the "e" if it needs one). Two letters in the space of one.
Over time, the "em" abbreviation (the rotated "m" or "z" shape) became a more general abbreviation for common endings but
most of the time, it was used for suffix "em".
I take it that no-one is so well acquainted with Occitan that my (fairly simple) question can be answered.
Just in case that question has been overlooked, it was this:
If (for argument's sake) Pelling's rendering of the marginalia is supposed correct, would 'light/sunlight' be the subject or the object of the sentence?
I was not asking for other ideas about how to read that bit of marginalia, nor for comment on whether or not Pelling's reading (as it was in 2006) is accepted by others - nor for comment on my comments added to clarify his text, but just for clarification on that single point... that is, a grammatical evaluation of the Occitan as it was posited by Nick in his book.
Still seeking an answer - all relevant contributions gratefully received.
Thanks
To me Nick's sentence makes no grammatical sense. He says:
It seems that the whole line was therefore originally a complete Occitan sentence starting with "meilhor aller lutz (kou)..." meaning mystifyingly something like "to run light better"...
Now aller is an intransitive verb, which means that it cannot take an object. The subject does the action, but not to something else.
The subject should go before the verb, not behind it. but this is further complicated by the fact that "aller" is an infinitive form. Perhaps it could be taken as an imperative, in which case no subject is required. But even then, it cannot be followed directly by a noun in the nominative case.
You could say "better go" or "better go quickly" or "better go to the doctor", but not "better go apples".
In short, interpreting the sentence as better + to go + light is grammatically problematic.
I haven't seen or read Nick's book so I cannot comment directly on what he has written about 17r, only indirectly on what has been repeated or said about it. I have a different viewpoint.
[
attachment=2424]
- My opinion is that the line over the cȝ is a macron, a normal and common abbreviation symbol. There are letters left out. The word needs to be expanded, and the expansion of abbreviations in the Middle Ages depended on the language. The "z" is probably not a "z", it is probably the abbreviation symbol [font=Arial]ȝ (which is "m" rotated 90 degrees clockwise). It often represents "m" or "em" and was used by some scribes to write "rum" instead of the more conventional 4-shaped "rum" character. It MIGHT be a z, but it is written more like ȝ so both possibilities should be considered.[/font]
- I do not believe there is an "h" in mallier. In the Middle Ages, in Gothic scripts, "h" did not have a long straight horizontal hump, it was either convex or concave. It looks to me like the same handwriting as 116v and he does not write "h" like that (look at the "h" letters on 116v, they have rounded humps on the lower part, and tails). Note the first letter in the fourth word on 17r—it's "h" with a round hump and a tail, just as on 116v and it does not resemble the second "l" in maller. He does write "l" (ell) with somewhat inconsistent angular loops here and on f116v. There are two ells in a row followed by an "i" with a long leading serif (which is also the way the "i" chars are written on f116v, with long leading serifs).
- I do not think the second letter is an "e". I think it is a double-chamber "a". The gap on the bottom is moderately common. Many scribes wrote it this way and many scribes in the late 14th century and early 15th century combined double-chamber and single-chamber "a" in the same sentence (sometimes even in the same word). It was a transitional period after which single-chamber "a" became more common.
- I don't think anyone knows for sure how to interpret the first letter in the third word. It has a crooked lower leg. It could be "l", "b", "k" or Rx or who knows?
Here's a lightly color-differentiated version:
[
attachment=2425]
Thanks Koen,
I'm re-reading Nick's comments on palaeography and script just now, and it vaguely occurred to me that the sentence as he read it might mean something like "The better way to go, by daylight, is..."
or
The better way is to go by daylight... [thus...]
A sort of direction about routes, I suppose it might be but I do not read Occitan and it was no more than a moment of speculation on my part. Appreciate your response. Thank you.
If "lucz" is a nominative case, it doesn't make any sense. Now old Occitan had an oblique case, which is similar to accusative but much wider in scope. This means that the sentence can be grammatical without preposition. If one were to follow this lead fully, it would require some knowledge about the case system. What is the oblique form of the word for "light" in occitan?
In Latin, the accusative is "lucem", in which case it could be a so-called "accusative of place to which", and would translate as "better (to) go towards the light". If we're allowed to mix Romance languages and have to stick with this vocabulary, that's what I'd make of it.
As JKP notes, however, there are some other problems with the reading of single letters. He must certainly be right about the macron and the way it should be developed, which means Occitan might be a false lead (I assume it is the supposed "z" which led Nick there).
(10-10-2018, 02:52 PM)Koen Gh. Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.What is the oblique form of the word for "light" in occitan?
In old occitan, light is translated by "lutz" (not "lucz").
I am not aware of any particular reason to assume that the writing in the margin of You are not allowed to view links.
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There was a time that the month names in the zodiac section were considered to be Occitan, but there are two problems with that:
1) the hand of the zodiac month names is quite different from that on f.17r
2) the language of the zodiac month names is much more likely to be northern French than Occitan.
For point 2: Occitan could explain the (doubtful) reading of Marc (with cedilla) for March. However, this could easily be read as Mars (i.e. ending with s).
Northern French explains several month names. I already pointed to the most convincing argumentation several times:
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