The Voynich Ninja

The text which is readable above the  image is interpreted:

malher althae= Mallow or althea officinalis- it is explanation for somebody, who obviously does not understand the text below, since there also is the name of the plant.

malher comes from Greek μαλάχη malákhē= malva (Lat) = mallow

The rest has meaning  in Czech  Language and is explained in my thread "f17r the text above".

(01-08-2025, 01:52 PM)Koen G Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.[..]something like lutz, kutz or butz.

[..]
luntz, kuntz, buntz, lut-n-z, kut-n-z, but-n-z, kutzen, butzen, lutzen...

Good luck with finding any generally accepted meanings for those "german" words: they are just comedy material, not more (Hurtz!).

It is a bit stretched to set c3 as always being a "cz" = German z.
Better try other languages.

Well in German manuscripts it is like that. In Latin it is something else. Do you have examples of manuscripts in other languages where the form takes on a different meaning?

(01-08-2025, 08:53 PM)Koen G Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Well in German manuscripts it is like that. In Latin it is something else. Do you have examples of manuscripts in other languages where the form takes on a different meaning?

I do not quite get what you mean here or are asking from me?

So here are just some search results combined (Berner Chronik 2x and something from Vienna, 1367)

[attachment=11101]

In green circles is "kec3er", but this is "Ketzer" (=heretic), letter combination is tz here.

In red circles: "3" = stand-alone letter "z"  (probably "Zuerich", clearly "zalt" = "zahlt" / pays)  and "ze eren" = "zu ehren" / to honor; another "ze" and a real "zu". 
All Z are used stand-alone here.

Next is Konstanzer Chronik, Christherre and a Chronica from 16th century:

[attachment=11102]

in red circles again the stand-alone "Z"s,
in blue circle, just to show:
"daryn auffs kürtzest..." = "Darin auf's kürzest(e)" / therein at shortest   <--- it can also be written here as "kürrzest", you find several doubled consonants here, which are not usual in German anymore: auffs, namhafftigsten, fünff, ynn etc. are reduced to single letters meanwhile, and the R seems to be doubled here, and maybe in earlier times as well.

Let's just turn the tables and show me the use of  a real "cz" with meaning of clearly and only Z; I never saw that before.

Quite more common is the use of sz = ß (sharp S), which was solved differently during medieval (in Chronica alone you find "biss" and "dreyssigst" being different. Sorry, have not the font for this here).

I think there's a misunderstanding here. What I meant to say is that "cz" in German manuscripts always (as far as I'm aware) stands for the sound "tz". Sometimes scribes write only "z", but the sound is the same. For example, in medieval documents you can find both czehn and zehn. 

I still transcribe it as "cz", because this appears to be the custom: in professional transcriptions, they write "cz" for the ligature, in the understanding that the sound is actually "tz". As an example, here are all the spelling variations of (moder German) Gewürz, as transcribed in CoReMa, a collection of cooking manuscripts I use a lot because of the excellent transcriptions:

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In summary: when the cz ligature is used in Medieval German texts, it stands for the sound "tz". But it is not the exclusive way to represent this sound.

In Latin, the ligature has a different function alltogether.

What I asked you is the following: since you think we should look at other languages, do you know how the ligature functioned in medieval texts in those languages?

[attachment=11118]

The ‘ez / cz’ is rare. Example: ‘dez and ez’.
Mostly found in words such as Gruess, Fuess, süess.
The best known is probably ‘Grüezi’. As mentioned, it is rare but does occur.

(01-08-2025, 01:52 PM)Koen G Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Ignoring the macron, we would then read something like lutz, kutz or butz. A lot depends on how we treat the macron though:

• we could pretend it's not there, in which case we'd need to read "?utz"
  
• we could read it as a standard "omission of n" macron -> but where does the "n" go then? 
  
• we could read it as a more general abbreviation line, which presumes the reader's familiarity with the commonly abbreviated word
  

Maybe the second option is most likely. But we could get a lot of words from this, depending on where we want the omitted "n" to go:
luntz, kuntz, buntz, lut-n-z, kut-n-z, but-n-z, kutzen, butzen, lutzen...

Well, on my view, ignoring of the macron is not good idea. I agree that the end of the word is rather just "z". Is it possible that the whole word is "Luchz" as another spelling of the word "Luchs"? Is it possible the macron to stand for a missing "h"?
I understand that we are inclined to the most classical/frequent versions, but as I understand these classical versions don't have much sense in translation / interpretation. Doesn't it?

The most likely would be ‘kuez-en’ "kurz/kurzen" short/short.

(Yesterday, 09:22 PM)Aga Tentakulus Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.The most likely would be ‘kuez-en’ "kurz/kurzen" short/short.

When I was looking into it, forms of "kurz" were also the closest things I could find. Have you ever seen it written without the "r"?

I can't remember reading anything ‘kurz’. I'm sure there was something. But without the ‘r’, I can't say, but it's a dialect form.

But I'll keep an eye out for it.