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+--- Thread: characters pointing east (/thread-1399.html)
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characters pointing east - Davidsch - 04-01-2017
Did you notice that there are no characters that end in pointing to the East, except the character 4, and c and e.
Other characters point / end towards the West / South / North
If it has any significance, what could it mean?
a c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t v y z
RE: characters pointing east - Anton - 04-01-2017
What do you mean by "pointing to the East/West etc"?
RE: characters pointing east - Davidsch - 04-01-2017
?
pointing = the endpoint of a stroke used by penning down any letter
for example this character is pointing East: ->
this character is pointing south: V
and this character is pointing north: A
this character is pointing nowhere: o
look at any other alphabet (use omniglot for example) and you will see that characters in a common alphabet is often "pointing in all directions"
RE: characters pointing east - stellar - 04-01-2017
The Author was Right handed maybe David.
RE: characters pointing east - Davidsch - 04-01-2017
Quote:The Author was Right handed maybe David.
Of course he was right handed.
But what does that have to do with the strokes of the characters, which are in a consistent font.
RE: characters pointing east - stellar - 04-01-2017
It is unique to his hand and probably the type of enciphered letters he chose.
RE: characters pointing east - davidjackson - 04-01-2017
I see what you mean - you are calling the top of the page "north" and then the associated edges are their cardinal directions.
You then look at the end-stroke of the glyph to see in which direction it points.
So...
a c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t v y z
e e e e w w s s w e s s o etc....
But there are quite a few glyphs whose end-strokes go off to the right (east) - c, the gallows, a, i, and 4 come to mind.
RE: characters pointing east - Anton - 04-01-2017
OK now I understand. But that's really not East or West, because East has no reason to be on the right, unless one turns the top of the page to the North. East is on the right only if Sun is there behind your back at noon (and this if you happen to be in the northern hemisphere).
I think there is no significance, and the difference from the Latin alphabet may be well explained by the assumption that, unlike the former, where the shape of the characters has been defined by a historic process of development of writing, Voynichese glyphs are artificially designed, probably by a single person, with the sole purpose of encryption of plain text. As it has been quite thoroughly discussed by now, most conventional Voynich characters can be decomposed into the "base shape+tail modifier" scheme. Now, since the writing goes from left to right (and not vice versa), the base shape is to the left, and the modifier is on the right, which, given the shape of modifiers, pre-determines the direction of pointing.
RE: characters pointing east - davidjackson - 04-01-2017
Worth pointing out that North had no specific significance in those times- the most important Cardinal point was East, towards Jerusalem and the raising sun.
But I can't see any immediate significance, even if the observation is correct - unless we're postulating a religious significance, in which case we'd most probably looking at a Mohammedan cult.
RE: characters pointing east - Koen G - 04-01-2017
I think you should really use left and right like Anton says. Some of the Voynich text is arranged in a circular band so calling it east or west makes no sense.
Did you compare it to a number of other non-cursive scripts? I guess in cursives we'd expect a large number of right-pointers since you want to be avle to keep writing right away.
Hmmm hmm. One of my pet theories about the script is that it is a Latinized transcription of a cursive that may have been written from right to left. That may explain a bit.