The Impossibility of Double Gallows

[ChenZheChina]

I'm pretty sure this is qef with a long tail on f. There is a pen skip on the descender for the q just as there is a pen skip in some of the other glyphs around it.

Yes, this one, among all “possible double gallows”, is the most uncertain one for me. The loop on top-right is not so obvious as the others, so maybe it is indeed qef.

The q is not always followed by "o", it can be followed by quite a few glyphs, including e.

Thanks for the information.

[VViews]

Hi ChenZheChina,
Anton and WladimirD both mentioned these unusual small gallows over You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view..
There appear to be two of these small gallow characters in the Voynich, the z character and the double-loop one you mention, but both are extremely rare.
I don't know what to make of them.
I wonder if they might be mistakes, or result from extreme abbreviation, or hint towards words borrowed from another language than the rest of the text, or if they are just very rare characters in the plaintext language. Or...?

[DONJCH]

Hi ChenZheChina,
Anton and WladimirD both mentioned these unusual small gallows over You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view..
There appear to be two of these small gallow characters in the Voynich, the z character and the double-loop one you mention, but both are extremely rare.
I don't know what to make of them.
I wonder if they might be mistakes, or result from extreme abbreviation, or hint towards words borrowed from another language than the rest of the text, or if they are just very rare characters in the plaintext language. Or...?

Some say the first one (tis) is quite common. others say these unusual ones are all rare and probably errors.
Without actual figures or a benchmark definition for rarity, it is impossible to judge.

[VViews]

Hi DONJCH,
according to voynichese.com, there are only two occurrences of z.
The double loop version apparently occurs only three times (four if we count the somewhat dubious one noted by ChenZheChina on f31r).
I'd say that definitely puts them in the "rare" or unusual category, or possibly in the "error" category.

[ReneZ]

This depends on which transcription was used in voynichese.com .
The fact that it has its own 'basic Eva' code means that there must be at least 10 occurrences.
This is still not a lot of course.

[nablator]

Hi DONJCH,
according to voynichese.com, there are only two occurrences of z.

There may be a few more in:
69v.outer_ring
70v1.outer_ring
70v1.2nd_ring
85r2.quad_4_3

The double loop version apparently occurs only three times (four if we count the somewhat dubious one noted by ChenZheChina on f31r).

Maybe this one too beginning of f103r.43:

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[nablator]

This depends on which transcription was used in voynichese.com .

It uses the Takeshi Takahashi transcription (TT_ivtff_v0a.txt on your website) converted to XML, with coordinates added and question marks removed.

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[-JKP-]

...

I wonder if they might be mistakes, or result from extreme abbreviation, or hint towards words borrowed from another language than the rest of the text, or if they are just very rare characters in the plaintext language. Or...?

Or a  way to make a double gallows look less like a double gallows.

[VViews]

This depends on which transcription was used in voynichese.com .
The fact that it has its own 'basic Eva' code means that there must be at least 10 occurrences.
This is still not a lot of course.

Thanks ReneZ, I didn't know 10 was the minimum requirement for the basic EVA characters.


And as often, more information only leads to more questions.

In some of the examples nablator points out, the character looks like a z. In others, it looks more like an m.
For example, the 69v one and the 70v outer ring one don't feature the descending long tail that m has, so I was inclined to think they could indeed be z. Later, on f70v, the other z that nablator points out is (to me) clearly an m.
m is a common character, with 1105 occurrences.

Interestingly, it appears that double m is also rare but possible; voynichese.com (and therefore takahashi) records two occurrences of double m:
daimm on 3r (that one I agree is definitely a double m) and damamm (which actually looks to me more like dazazm ) on 67v1.

So now I wonder: Is z merely a malformed m? Is m a small gallows?

[-JKP-]

This depends on which transcription was used in voynichese.com .
The fact that it has its own 'basic Eva' code means that there must be at least 10 occurrences.
This is still not a lot of course.

...


So now I wonder: Is z merely a malformed m? Is m a small gallows?

I don't know what the glyph means in Voynichese, but if it were Latin, they would be two different characters. The difference in the slant is meaningful. In Latin and Greek, the loop on the right is an abbreviation symbol.