Which other manuscript contain the most Voynichese glyphs?

[DONJCH]

On another scan throiugh Capelli, I found another possible precursor for EVA-t.
(Really just honing my image handling here!)
   
This is assuming that lower case analogues for gallows are acceptable, but why would an otherwise knowledgeable scribe suddenly start writing suffixes in uppercase? Does this give us some insight into his mind? Or was he a bonehead blindly copying from a text where upper and lowercase were similar, like the Oresme text? (I do not believe the latter for a minute)

[-JKP-]

Don, the "is" abbreviation at the end of regis (the loop with the stem) can be added to anything, to lowercase, to an ascender, to uppercase. It doesn't matter.

[Koen G]

So... might I paraphrase that close familiarity with "is"-abbreviations could have created the mindset required for a scribe to play around with (meaningful?) loops added in a systematic way, thus giving rise to the gallows? As well ad some of the more fanciful/decorative loopy shapes added to some initials maybe.

[Common_Man]

In indic languages, from a long time back, loops have been used to denote vowels in any position other than word beginings, and they look like a tall diacritical mark with a loop before or after the consonant letter.. From that point of view  it seems to me like

a consonant+a vowel = a gallows letter. (Modern letters sure have them, let me check if I can find any old Indian manuscript online to support this)

But still a lot of combinations seem to exist, and many are so rare, plus they dont involve any characters seen elsewere. So if it had to be true, the sound that denotes such a combination might have a letter that looks nothing like the consonant involved in making it..

So them being abbreviations look possible too.. #Confused

[DONJCH]

Don, the "is" abbreviation at the end of regis (the loop with the stem) can be added to anything, to lowercase, to an ascender, to uppercase. It doesn't matter.

Yes, I know, but actual wild 100% accurate 3 and a half storey high VMS gallows characters seem to be a bit thin on the ground so far. If you have one, trot it out and this slightly recalcitrant skeptic is happy to be convinced.

My point remains though, why put a capital in the middle of a word, as happens throughout the VMS?

[DONJCH]

So... might I paraphrase that close familiarity with "is"-abbreviations could have created the mindset required for a scribe to play around with (meaningful?) loops added in a systematic way, thus giving rise to the gallows? As well ad some of the more fanciful/decorative loopy shapes added to some initials maybe.

I agree with JKP in general up to the final step where I am wanting to know exactly which form was bound to exactly which letter.

The best shape examples seem to come from Oresme but are in lower case. "Item" was almost convincing but the symbols failed to join up. JKP says he has better examples though.

If the scribe was systematic, then the capitalisation of the gallows could be for a very good reason other than aesthetics.

TLDR Yes.

[DONJCH]

In indic languages, from a long time back, loops have been used to denote vowels in any position other than word beginings, and they look like a tall diacritical mark with a loop before or after the consonant letter.. From that point of view  it seems to me like

a consonant+a vowel = a gallows letter. (Modern letters sure have them, let me check if I can find any old Indian manuscript online to support this)

But still a lot of combinations seem to exist, and many are so rare, plus they dont involve any characters seen elsewere. So if it had to be true, the sound that denotes such a combination might have a letter that looks nothing like the consonant involved in making it..

So them being abbreviations look possible too.. #Confused

Hello and welcome! I am new here too. I am sure we all look forward to your more Eastern perspective and eagerly await your posted examples.

[Davidsch]

Yes Emma, the JKP chart looks very nice. But the counts on these anomalies are very low overall.


Also, based on my thorough (unpublished) analysis these (and other not gallow related anomalies) are errors, read: mistakes by the scribe.

Thus following these exceptions as entities is a waste of time, in my view.  But hey, it's just my opinion. Time will tell.

[-JKP-]

So... might I paraphrase that close familiarity with "is"-abbreviations could have created the mindset required for a scribe to play around with (meaningful?) loops added in a systematic way, thus giving rise to the gallows? As well ad some of the more fanciful/decorative loopy shapes added to some initials maybe.

Yes. Exactly, although I suspect a few of the loopy shapes are embellishments (which were also relatively common, especially in legal documents).

[-JKP-]

Don, the "is" abbreviation at the end of regis (the loop with the stem) can be added to anything, to lowercase, to an ascender, to uppercase. It doesn't matter.

Yes, I know, but actual wild 100% accurate 3 and a half storey high VMS gallows characters seem to be a bit thin on the ground so far. If you have one, trot it out and this slightly recalcitrant skeptic is happy to be convinced.

Many examples of litterae elongatae have been posted to the thread and "Item" which is the "is" abbreviation added to capital-I and t have also been posted numerous times.

My point remains though, why put a capital in the middle of a word, as happens throughout the VMS?

• We don't know if it's the middle of a word; we only know that they occur within tokens.
  
• Lowercase letters are not always short. In western languages, the letters b, l, h, d, f, s, and others, all have ascenders and they are not considered capital letters.
  
• Why assume the gallows are capital letters? They are glyphs, or possibly combinations of glyphs. They aren't even necessarily letters—they might be numbers.
  

If we knew for certain that the VMS was a cipher (we don't know whether it is, but let's say for a moment that it is) then a good cryptanalyst would never assume that a space is a word boundary.