19-07-2016, 01:46 AM
Assuming spelling freedom for the scribe, which I do, valsen could definitely be a form of the 'false'-root. It could mean something like 'the false one'.
Also: the malicious one.
Also: the malicious one.
19-07-2016, 01:46 AM
19-07-2016, 07:10 AM
19-07-2016, 09:26 AM
19-07-2016, 09:57 AM
(19-07-2016, 07:10 AM)Helmut Winkler Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I am glad I have finally found some people who can teach me the finer points of my own language, but I would like to point out several things.
1) The text really looks like 'geis mich', which really lsuggests geismilch, goat milk
3) I think one should remember that at the beginning of the page there is talk about poxleber, and that pox is the Gen. to pock, a male goat (not to mention the drawings, which go into the same direction)
I can't agree with these points.
1) The text simply does not look like "geis mich". What it looks like is "gasmich" or, at most, "gafmich" (if we provide for that parchment bending allegedly hiding the "f"'s stroke from view, as -JKP- suggests).
It is not "ei", but "a" crossed by the prolonged horizontal stroke of "g". This can be seen if one zooms the image.
And there is simply no "l". It is not there
. Now, when "mich" is a valid German word, what foundations are there to state that it is not "mich" but "milch"? I think there are no solid foundations for that. Imagine, for example, that a text in English contains the word "lie". Now, what arguments would there be to state that it is not meant to be "lie", but instead "life"? Are there any examples when milk is represented by "mich", not "milch"?3) "pox leber" is, at the same time, a typical medieval idiom, referring actually to God, not to a goat. The depicted animal does not look like a certain goat. Rather, it looks like a lamb (this was discussed above in this thread). Last, but not least, male goat does not go in the same direction as female goat.
I'm afraid that all the goat discourse is ultimately caused by holding to the "goat" interpretation of "pox", which is not certain.
Quote:On my opinion, 8-shaped glyph here is just the Voynich cipher character "d". So, I consider it as a little hint.
Yes it looks very much like d. But what could "aror sheey val d en ubren" mean? Assuming that two portions of the phrase are encrypted, could any meaning be guessed?
"val" would mean "pale, discoloured" or be a word form of "valen" ("valwen") - to discoulour
"en ubren" = in upper parts?
19-07-2016, 10:44 AM
(19-07-2016, 09:57 AM)Anton Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Quote:On my opinion, 8-shaped glyph here is just the Voynich cipher character "d". So, I consider it as a little hint.
Yes it looks very much like d. But what could "aror sheey val d en ubren" mean? Assuming that two portions of the phrase are encrypted, could any meaning be guessed?
"val" would mean "pale, discoloured" or be a word form of "valen" ("valwen") - to discoulour
"en ubren" = in upper parts?
I assume that valden is a possible varia lectio of walden.
Quote:Quote of myself:
If my deciphering is even a little correct, the last line of the notes is:
"Retornare ineam walten ubr'en so nim gaf mich." = "May I enter (begin) to return. Rule over me (this). So take. I gave myself." Or, maybe: "May I enter (begin) to return to rule over this. So take, I gave myself." I don't mean "I gave to myself"
Another possibility, if I'm mistaken with the "sh" character, therefore - with the second cipher word in full, it is an accusative of a noun (to return something). So we get such sentences: "To return something, (to) rule over this. So take. I gave myself." But I prefer the first variant. I know, it sounds strange, but it has a sense in the whole context of the manuscript.
And, of course, likely (my view), the rest of words containing this cipher character are dabat, miltost and portat as the cipher "d" (8) substitutes t and d.
You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. - Middle High German, mildest (Old English - mildost), the letter "o" before the "8" has 2 little tails, suppose it is the cipher "l" (loop).
19-07-2016, 01:36 PM
(19-07-2016, 07:10 AM)Helmut Winkler Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I am glad I have finally found some people who can teach me the finer points of my own language, but I would like to point out several things.
1) The text really looks like 'geis mich', which really lsuggests geismilch, goat milk
2) If there is written 'gas', one should mention that in some of the South German dialects, including my own, gas (spoken with a long a) has the same meaning as geis, i.e. a female goat
3) I think one should remember that at the beginning of the page there is talk about poxleber, and that pox is the Gen. to pock, a male goat (not to mention the drawings, which go into the same direction)
4) Finally, the language IS German
Ich stimme dir zu. Es ist mir ganz klar, dass die Sprache Deutsch ist. Und ich hoffe, ich habe nicht versucht, dir Deutsch beizubringen. Das war nicht mein Vorhaben!
Anton Wrote:And there is simply no "l". It is not there. Now, when "mich" is a valid German word, what foundations are there to state that it is not "mich" but "milch"? I think there are no solid foundations for that. Imagine, for example, that a text in English contains the word "lie". Now, what arguments would there be to state that it is not meant to be "lie", but instead "life"? Are there any examples when milk is represented by "mich", not "milch"?
Just a few thoughts:
1) There is a linguistic explanation for missing "L": it is called You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. (here is the You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. also). It is the same reason why we do not pronounce the "L" in the English "walk" anymore. It is well documented in German history, and to me it is a completely possible explanation.
2) The bigger problem, though, is that "gaf/s mich" must be one word. There is no space when we add the missing stroke in the middle. So what is the only logical solution? Gasmi[l]ch - no other 1-word vocabulary makes sense, and gasmi[l]ch also fits grammatically.
What do you think, Helmut? Have you heard Germans say "milch" with a light or non-existant L?
19-07-2016, 07:35 PM
I see your point, but one thing is spoken speech, another one is written. Here we deal with written text. So in the absence of examples argumentation towards "gasmi(l)ch" is weak. It is more probable that the scribe would omit a space accidentally (the pen just slipped, I don't know) that that he would omit a meaningful letter.
Your discourse can be developed (as I believe) in a slightly different way though. If a letter (or letters) were omitted, they were most probably omitted in the end of the word, which might have been natural for word forms (after "so nim" we expect accusative) or for variants.
Luckily, woerterbuchnetz.de supports wildcards. So for mich* we find:
You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
One immediate match is "miche" = "Mittwoch".
Goat's Wednesday?
I don't know.
Anything else worth looking at in this list?
Your discourse can be developed (as I believe) in a slightly different way though. If a letter (or letters) were omitted, they were most probably omitted in the end of the word, which might have been natural for word forms (after "so nim" we expect accusative) or for variants.
Luckily, woerterbuchnetz.de supports wildcards. So for mich* we find:
You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
One immediate match is "miche" = "Mittwoch".
Goat's Wednesday?
I don't know.Anything else worth looking at in this list?
20-07-2016, 02:28 AM
(19-07-2016, 07:35 PM)Anton Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I see your point, but one thing is spoken speech, another one is written. Here we deal with written text. So in the absence of examples argumentation towards "gasmi(l)ch" is weak. It is more probable that the scribe would omit a space accidentally (the pen just slipped, I don't know) that that he would omit a meaningful letter.
Your discourse can be developed (as I believe) in a slightly different way though. If a letter (or letters) were omitted, they were most probably omitted in the end of the word, which might have been natural for word forms (after "so nim" we expect accusative) or for variants.
Luckily, woerterbuchnetz.de supports wildcards. So for mich* we find:
You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
One immediate match is "miche" = "Mittwoch".
Goat's Wednesday?
Anything else worth looking at in this list?
I see your point about the spoken/written distinction. In Middle High German, however, words were written exactly as you spoke them. If your dialect says "gas" instead of "Geis" or "Pock" instead of "Bock", then you write those forms. If your dialect says "mich" then you write "mich". I know this because I've looked at hours of Middle High German texts - a standard written language only begins after the Luther Bible.
Also, something that may be important: the Gas/Pock variants are both southern German: the Bavaria/Austria area. They may be low-central Germany but are definitely not northern German dialects.
20-07-2016, 07:28 AM
20-07-2016, 05:38 PM
Quote:.I see your point about the spoken/written distinction. In Middle High German, however, words were written exactly as you spoke them. If your dialect says "gas" instead of "Geis" or "Pock" instead of "Bock", then you write those forms. If your dialect says "mich" then you write "mich".
OK, that's important. But anyway written examples would be confirmative, without them "mi(l)ch" is just a working hypothesis.
In the meantime I reviewed the "gasmich" in the light of the suggestion (which I share) that there is no space, as well as your and Helmut's approach to look for a single fitting word. Indeed, a single fitting word would be better than assuming the non-existing space.
And I think I have breaking news!
Let me first explain how I came to the "so nim gas mich" interpretation described in my "To Crack the Spell" blog post.
Actually, being in a certain degree familiar with the German language (although I am not able to speak or write coherently), when I first considered the last line of f116v, I immediately recognized "mich" as the word form of "ich" (just because this word "mich" is so common). The faded ascender of "m" is not clearly seen at the first glance - I noted it only later, so the first interpretation was "gas_mich", with "mich" = "me". "So nim" with "me" formed a nice combination meaning "so take me", so what was left was to discover the meaning of "gas", which I found in Lexer. After that I noted the ascender of "m", was thus forced to acknowledge that there is actually no space between "s" and "m", and added appropriate notes (and even some recommedations therefrom) to my paper.
Of course, I considered the possibility that "gasmich" might be a single word. But "gasmich" was not found in dictionaries.
Now, the idea that "gasmich" might be a composite word was raised in this thread. Dolokhov pointed that "gas" is a variant of "Gans" (goose). And indeed, the extensive article for "Gans" in You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. expressly states that. Interestingly, (if I understood the article correctly), "geis" is yet another Swiss variant of "Gans".
Next, Helmut pointed that "gas" = "geis" = "female goat". You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. has an entry for Geiss (or Geis), describing it as a "Hausziege" (domestic goat). It's a bit amuzing that in some dialects "geis" is a goose, in others it's a goat.
So "gas" can be "goose", or it can be a domestic goat. My vote is for goose: first, because this seems to be a more widespread option, second because we already have "pox" in You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. (no matter if it relates to goat or to God, it ultimately comes from the goat), so why use "gas" to designate a goat instead of "pox" (unless one wants to get some milk from it, of course)? But let's not touch the choice between the two. For now, it's sufficient to understand that "gas" is a domestic animal.
What is "mich" though? In the context of "gasmich" it could only be some attribute of "gas". Let's overcome the distractor of "mich" as the word form of "ich" and look (with the help of woerterbuchnetz.de) what are the possible meanings of "mich".
DISCLAIMER:The below part of the post contains obscene language as a necessary instrument of research. Please stop reading if you have reasonable expectations that you may be insulted by that language.
Beside the accusative of "ich", which is quite common for all dialects, "Mich" is found in the You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. as a variant of "Misch". In turn, You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. (beside the human name) is a synonym for "Aasch", while "Aasch" You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. "Arsch" which in German means (I beg your pardon) "ass". Interestingly, the article for "Aasch" says that "Misch" is the child's language variant of "Aasch".
So "gasmich" in the regions somewhere in Luxembourg would ultimately mean "goose's ass" (or "goat's ass"), and the whole expression: "So take goose's ass" or "so take goat's ass".
If we search for other possible meanings of "Misch", we will stumble upon something like "mix" - which, I guess, is the meaning "Misch" takes in modern German (Mischbrot, Mischerei, Mischer etc.). Although, that is not in the specifically Luxembourgish context (not found in the dictionary). If one knows some special meaning of "goose mix" or "goat mix", that would be very interesting to consider.
Meanwhile let's return to the Arsch. Why would one wish to take goose's (or goat's) Arsch, especially in the consequence of what is written before that in Line 3 (the "so" must be there for a reason!). I supposed that that was used not in the direct meaning, but as an idiom - much like the "pox leber" was likely used. Therefore I googled in order to discover whether "Gans" and "Arsch" tend to be used in a common context. Not many results. First, I found what seems to be a proverb: "Einer fetten Gans muss nicht der Arsch geschmiert werden". Second, Google returned me to woerterbuchnetz.de, this time to the You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.. As far as I understand the highly abbreviated system of writing of German dictionaries, this article provides some examples of contexts in which "Gans Arsch" is used. Like:
Quote:Der waggelt met der Maul wie en Gans-arsch
I can't interpret the meaning, but I guess this is some folk-lore by-word.
I then repeated the Google search for "goat's ass", using "Geiss" for goat, but found nothing interesting.
Now, if we consider the vulgar "pox leber" in Line 0, it would not be surprising to meet with another vulgar expression in the same folio. This would lead to the dissolution of my "spell block" hypothesis though. Lines 1 and 2 would now appear totally unrelated to Line 3.
Why goose's ass, after all? The last page of manuscripts was often used to dedications. Maybe Line 3 is some sort of those - addressed, for example, to certain foes. Its first part (partly enciphered and still not understood) formulates a certain circumstance, and "so take goose's ass" is a "kind request" related to that circumstance. For a purely formal example: "I have enciphered this book well, so you may drop attempts to read it". In Russian, when we wish to say that a person will get nothing, we can express it in the way that he will get "dead donkey's ears". Maybe "to take goose's ass" is of the same rank?
Could our German users recall if goose's (and goat's) asses take any part in the German language and folk-lore?
One argument against the ass is that "Misch" for "ass" is Northern, while, as I understand, "gas" for "goose" is Southern?!