The Voynich Ninja

(17-03-2026, 11:42 AM)Koen G Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.My confusion came from how you presented all the "gas" attestations as evidence, while they are not all the same word... The occurrence and spelling of some form of "gehen" as "gas" is not relevant for the argument that it could be a contraction of "gahes".

It was actually a response to your claim that "gasmich" is most likely one word and my argument was: Since "gâs" appears with both long-s and short-s in medieval German texts, the form of the s on You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. cannot be used as an argument for reading "gasmich" as a single word.

As far as I see, these are the two suggested readings for the last line of You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. in this thread:

1) Volkhard Huth's reading: "so nim gâs mich" — two words, the adverb "gâs" (swiftly, at once) and the pronoun "mich" (me). This reading requires accepting that the long-s can be word-final on this page.

2) Richard Salomon's reading from the 1950s: "so nim gaismilch" — one word, a dialectal form of "Gaismilch" (goat's milk). This reading requires three assumptions: monophthongization of "gais" to "gas," an unattested omission of L in "milch," and reading the long-s as word-medial.

My goal was to present some evidence for Huth's reading. I believe I have done that.

Correct me if I'm wrong.
Richard Salomons made his decision based on black-and-white photos that Polofsky brought him.
Since I don’t know what the photos were like (in terms of quality), his decision is irrelevant.
Nothing prior to the high-resolution scans is relevant.
When were the first good scans available online? Certainly not before 1992. (The Internet was developed in 1989 and made publicly available in 1991.)

(17-03-2026, 12:37 PM)Torsten Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.and reading the long-s as word-medial.

Short-s as final and long-s elsewhere is the standard for 15th century handwriting, and supported by the VM marginalia themselves. If we cannot agree on this, I see no point in continuing this discussion.

Der Deutschlehrer:
Ver- und vor-, ich weiss genau, schreibt man steht's mit einem V.
Schüler:
OK, aber jetzt ist vertig mit der Grammatik. 


The German teacher:
“Ver-” and “vor-,” I know for sure, are always spelled with a “V.”
Student:
“OK, but now I'm dizzy from all this grammar.” 

Doesn't work in English

vertig wird mit f geschrieben (fertig)

I’d like to add this:

I had asked the Bavarian State Library two questions (translated in English):

Dear Sir or Madam,

I would be interested to know whether you are aware of any instances in medieval manuscripts from around the 15th century – for example, in a charm or magical text – where the word ‘Gott’ or ‘Got’ is abbreviated with a lower-case ‘g’ followed or surmounted by a macron?

Is there such a thing?

And also, whether the long ‘s’ (f) was occasionally written at the end of a word; I know it is unusual. But did it happen more frequently nonetheless?

Thank you very much for your trouble and for taking the time to read my message.

Best regards

Jojo Jost



------

Dear Jost

Thank you very much for your interesting enquiry.

Do you perhaps have a photo of an example so that I can see what you are looking for? As far as I can imagine, I have not seen this before. Colleagues I have consulted are also unfamiliar with such a ‘g’ for ‘God’. But a picture might shed some light on the matter.

Regarding your second question: a long ‘s’ used as a final ‘s’ is not common, but does occur occasionally.

Kind regards,

(I’ve removed the name for privacy reasons, but the email is genuine – which does disprove my theory at least somewhat; otherwise I wouldn’t have written this. If anyone wants the name, he should send me a private message.)

Bavarian State Library
Department of Manuscripts and Early Printed Books
Manuscripts and Access Section
Research Enquiries


I’ll send that VMS line to the Bavarian State Library..., let’s see what happens. I find it exciting...

Den muſ del?
portaſ ?
oladabaſ ?

Jesuſ Christ...

Most of the recognizable "a" characters in those non-voynichese sequences of 116 show a clear angle in writing:



How did Huth read anything like â from this last letter?
How did he even "prove" that? He can't.

This sequence is g-a-? , not g-â-?...

So all theories about some extra meaning / abbreviation of "â" collapse immediately to some unfounded assumptions.
What is this discussion all about?

This was shown earlier here:



An extended "g" followed by "a" is still the best explanation.

All the “a's you've marked have something in common: they either stand alone, with no connection to the next letter, or they're linked in a curved line. Except for the first one, which isn't an 'a” at all, but the start of an “m”... see the other 'm's... but what ever - diedelideli, we've all got a theory

why is the first ‘m’ so strangely curved? Because it’s harder to press the quill against the parchment...

(19-03-2026, 07:55 PM)JoJo_Jost Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.[..] Except for the first one, which isn't an 'a” at all, but the start of an “m”... see the other 'm's... but what ever - diedelideli, we've all got a theory

why is the first ‘m’ so strangely curved? Because it’s harder to press the quill against the parchment...

I have made a comment about  the endless "anchiton/michiton" discussion already her before:  You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

What you announce here as an "m" is as different from all other m's as an "a" from an "â"...
Unfortunately, there is no other "g" here, which would be the only relevant comparison at this point.

For "theories": I don't have a specific one, especially not a full-blown one with origin, name-of-author, background story and some goodies. 
But about f 116, I am quite sure that these lines are just an irritating sideshow, (apart from 2 Vords) written very much later by somebody who had nothing to do with original VMS, it's main text, region and language. Only some scribbles by a foreigner, never helpful for anything on f1-115 and just a riddle within a riddle, more of a hobby and waste of time.