+- 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: "rdy" is weird. (/thread-6155.html)
"rdy" is weird. - Bluetoes101 - 03-10-2026
I think rdy is weird because of the apparent rules around where it is allowed to be used on a page / within text.
rdy (and to a lesser extent ldy) are almost only ever found ending lines, next to images, as labels or first word of page.
More simply, it does not seem to hardly ever exist in bulk text.
"So what?"
I have been wondering for a couple of days if all these cases are, or are part of, a label. Also how did the writer know this rdy containing word would land where it did? - Was it written first? Careful planning? - Random chance?
And also if this marker could be relatively reliable at finding where text starts/ends in unclear circular writing. If so, are there more that could aid in this.
Of 23 matches for rdy (Some of these could be in 2 category's),
2 are the first word of a page
9 are in very close proximity to an image
5 are the last word of a line
4 are labels
1 could be "bulk text" or a "long label(?)"
1 could be "bulk text" or "line end" or "first word of a page", there's no indication on where the text starts/ends on this page.
It is found at "12 o'clock" on the page, so it's possible it's where the text starts or ends.
1 is certainly "bulk text"
So which ever way we slice the cake certainly 80%+ of cases are not in bulk text with 90%+ being possible.
RE: "rdy" is weird. - nablator - 03-10-2026
A missing space between r and d is more likely where space is severely constrained. Also scribes were careless or had some reason to skip spaces sometime even when there was enough space.
RE: "rdy" is weird. - Bluetoes101 - 03-10-2026
(03-10-2026, 03:38 PM)nablator Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.A missing space between r and d is more likely where space is severely constrained. Also scribes were careless or had some reason to skip spaces sometime even when there was enough space.
Do you think a lot of ldy and rdy may be down to "unsure spaces" or space constraints?
I do wish we could search including spaces on Voynichese.com, I know we can look in transliterations but with things like this its very helpful to actually see where they are on the page.
RE: "rdy" is weird. - DG97EEB - 03-10-2026
You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
Go to the word trace option..there's also an n-gram explorer.
RE: "rdy" is weird. - nablator - 03-10-2026
(03-10-2026, 04:01 PM)Bluetoes101 Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Do you think a lot of ldy and rdy may be down to "unsure spaces" or space constraints?
If you look closely, in many instances, there is a small space. When there isn't it's impossible to tell if a space was skipped intentionally or because of carelessness, cluelessness... in Latin manuscripts medieval scribes skipped spaces very often after short words.
RE: "rdy" is weird. - rikforto - 03-10-2026
It's speculative, but given the extreme ordering of the letters, I have strong intuition that spaces are essentially part and parcel of the "suffixes", and I recall some statistical analysis that uncertain spaces in the manuscript were much more common at predicted word breaks than elsewhere. Of course, like a great many plausible Voynich ideas with some backing, it just kicks the can down the road---why those "suffixes"? At any rate, taking that as a given, that would mean a space is never really "skipped" because it should be entirely recoverable from the stream of glyphs, and that is arguably what we're seeing here. Voynichese.com gives 271 instances of stand-alone <dy>, so it is reasonable that it might be moved closer to <r> if <r> is an unambiguous break without it
RE: "rdy" is weird. - Bluetoes101 - 03-10-2026
If we are, for discusions sake, calling dy a stand alone word, its not as profound as the rdy examples however I think we can still see a lot of the tendancies I highlighted in the origional post
You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
If I just do a lazy example and take a chunk of 10 examples starting from the first page, standalone dy follows the drawings or is the last word of the line in all examples on the page in 7/11 pages
Not really sure what the takeaway is from this, but it is a bit strange. Like how on You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. 3/5 lines end dy and it is possible the last line also does, I'd class this (underlined) word as having an unsure space anyway.