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+--- Thread: Phonology of Voynichese (/thread-2727.html)
RE: Phonology of Voynichese - Monica Yokubinas - 18-09-2019
(18-09-2019, 09:16 AM)-JKP- Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.(06-04-2019, 08:26 PM)Common_Man Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Maybe this isn't going to be very useful, but just consider this possibility..
What if the author consistently left out the first letter (or consonant) while writing to make it difficult to read for the people who didn't know the system? The idea obviously comes from Derek Vogt's findings (which I still cant get enough of, even though I believe he lost his way somewhere in the middle and ended up in no man's land), and maybe keeping this in mind might help those trying to assign sound values, and such a thing might give rise to a lot of single glyph words, which the VMS has in plenty.
I myself have tried it while trying to transcribe the MS in my own way, but it never really helped.. Maybe others trying to do the same can benefit by keeping this in mind..
Leaving out the first letter was actually a characteristic of numerous dialects and one sees it when reading labels in herbal manuscripts. Very frequently the first letter just isn't there (not just the "h", which is often dropped, but sometimes hard consonants as well).
Some of the Provençal dialects dropped many letters throughout the words. This happens in some of the small towns in Scandinavia, as well (still to this day), so it was not just true of the mid-southern areas.
So, leaving out the first letter might be a deliberate choice (and might affect every token), but it might also be a property of how a particular person learned to speak.
When translating the Bible, I'll use Psalms 17:13 for an You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.. The upper Aramaic is the actual text and the bottom is the interpretation. You can click on the definition of the word, and notice at the top, there are many letters not "interpreted". Like the glottal stop "h" at the end, equivalant to "g" in the Voynich.
Remember, the Voynich was created BEFORE the King James version of the bible, and there has been a lot of speculation on who "interpreted" it, so for fun, if you have a King James Bible, look up Psalms 46 and count 46 words down (note the word) and count 46 words up and be surprised.
RE: Phonology of Voynichese - RenegadeHealer - 18-09-2019
I seem to recall one blogger (maybe it was Emma May Smith?) talking about EVA-ai(ii)n, and reckoning that this represents some type of common vocal phenomenon for the person writing and reading the VMS, with an, ain, aiin, and aiiin perhaps being minor but meaningful variations on a similar kind of vocalization. At the time I was reading that, I was very into Stephen Bax and Derek Vogt's idea that EVA-a derived from the Semitic letter waw, and accordingly, represents either the approximant [w] or as a back vowel. Since then, I've had an easy time imagining that a(ii)in represents a series of heavily nasalized back vowels, perhaps of varying phonemic length. I imagine it sounding a bit like the drone of a didgeridoo or a Tuvan throat singer, but briefer. Or, for a less exotic example, the way Portuguese speakers pronounce "-ão" at the end of a word.
I'm going really out on a limb here, but am I the only one who imagines this Voynichese letter combination sounding this way, and thinks this idea might be plausible?
RE: Phonology of Voynichese - Monica Yokubinas - 18-09-2019
I believe the elongated letters/glyphs are representative of sounds as well, this was before Hebrew (for an example) was organized and vowell points were added. Every different sound, created a different word and definition.