+- The Voynich Ninja (https://www.voynich.ninja)
+-- Forum: Voynich Research (https://www.voynich.ninja/forum-27.html)
+--- Forum: Analysis of the text (https://www.voynich.ninja/forum-41.html)
+--- Thread: Discussing the VM text orally (/thread-3824.html)
Pages:
1
2
Discussing the VM text orally - pfeaster - 27-06-2022
As the International Conference on the Voynich Manuscript draws nearer, I suddenly find myself wondering what an oral conversation about research into the text would (or could, or should) sound like.
EVA is often described as "pronounceable," and I see that there's been some discussion of this point, mainly here --
You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
-- but many of its distinctions would be difficult to pronounce unambiguously, other than by uttering the names of the individual letters. So, for example, I imagine most speakers would tend to pronounce [qo] and [ko] identically, or [dain] and [daiin]. Likewise, [qokedy] and [qokeedy] might sound the same depending on what point of reference one uses for [e] and [ee]. And then there are rare sequences such as [iy], which I think I'd personally tend to pronounce the same as [i] or [y]. Plus, if I say something that sounds like "dee" in English, should I be understood as meaning [d] or [dy]?
By planning ahead, I suppose a presenter could show a word onscreen and indicate it while saying "THIS word" or "THAT word," but that option wouldn't be available to someone in a Q&A session.
Meanwhile, even using the names of EVA letters might be assuming too much about the status of EVA as a standard scheme:
"Notice that both of these words end with 'why' [y]....."
"No, that's a 'nine' [9]!"
"You mean 'gee' [g], don't you?"
"Excuse me, but that's actually *two* glyphs...."
So how have people handled this kind of situation in the past, either in formal presentations or just in informal conversation over coffee or phone?
I could imagine devising a reasonably unambiguous pronunciation of EVA, for example by inserting a glottal stop between adjacent vowels, assigning [q] to /kw/, and so on, but I'm afraid that any unilateral move like that could cause more confusion than it would avert.
Of course EVA doesn't equal Voynichese, and all that. I'm only wondering whether there's any prospect of communicating orally about the text among ourselves as efficiently as EVA lets us communicate about it in writing (no more, no less).
RE: Discussing the VM text orally - MarcoP - 27-06-2022
Fascinating subject! I just want to say that inside my head 'qo' sounds like 'quo' , which I guess is equivalent to 'q' as 'kw'?
RE: Discussing the VM text orally - tavie - 27-06-2022
Quite thought-provoking! I never considered how much we all might have different mental pronunciations of the words we discuss in written form so much. I hear dai* as rhyming with the ay in day, and daii* with the ie in die. And the e in chedy is like "eh" , while the ee in cheedy is "ee". But this has made me realize that, very weirdly, I hear the *dy at the end of qokedy as "dee", but when it is separate on its own, I mentally hear it as "die".
RE: Discussing the VM text orally - Ruby Novacna - 27-06-2022
Try by the way to count the feet, maybe it's hexameter?
RE: Discussing the VM text orally - Koen G - 27-06-2022
The fact that our lingua franca underwent the Great Vowel Shift does not make this matter any easier. Ideally, any spoken conversation that really goes in depth about the text should be accompanied by writing.
When there are just a few mentions of characters in a conversation, in my experience it goes pretty smoothly. Usually people will add something along the lines of "you know, the one that looks like nine".
RE: Discussing the VM text orally - ReneZ - 30-06-2022
Interesting question!
Having been involved in quite a few online discussions on this topic, my personal experience is that one cannot really pronounce Voynichese words by using Eva. Anytime this happened, the speaker tended to have to spell the word.
It also doesn't help that English is highly inconsistent when mapping written symbols to sounds.
Now Eva was designed by a native Spanish speaker and a native Dutch speaker, so this problem hindered us much less. For example, neither of us ever (mentally) saw "ai" (as in "dain") to be pronounced as English "I", but always as a diphthong.
Still, none of the languages mentioned above have a proper way of pronouncing "qo" or "ii".
Having the word written down in the presentation seems inevitable.
For Q&A I think improvisation is the way forward, just in case there would be such a detailed question.
Without knowing how the sessions are organised, use of the/a chat would help greatly, as experienced in Zoom/Teams/Webex meetings.
RE: Discussing the VM text orally - Emma May Smith - 30-06-2022
(30-06-2022, 12:48 PM)ReneZ Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view....
Now Eva was designed by a native Spanish speaker and a native Dutch speaker, so this problem hindered us much less. For example, neither of us ever (mentally) saw "ai" (as in "dain") to be pronounced as English "I", but always as a diphthong.
...
? English "I" is the diphthong /ai/ in most major dialects. Or is that not what you meant?
RE: Discussing the VM text orally - ReneZ - 30-06-2022
Dear Emma,
you're right. I did not express it correctly.
It is not "I" that I should have written, but "ay", as in "say".
This is "é" in French or Dutch, "e" (context-dependent) in German, Italian, Spanish and a few others, and "ee" also in Dutch.
RE: Discussing the VM text orally - MarcoP - 01-07-2022
What about benched gallows? These are bits for which I don't think of sound when reading EVA....
RE: Discussing the VM text orally - ReneZ - 01-07-2022
Indeed, in all online meetings I attended in which these were disussed, they were called:
"Cee Pee Aych" , "Cee Tee Aych" , etc.
(As a Dutchman I don't have a huge problem with strings of consonants, but of course I bow my head to the speakers of Slavic languages).