scripts with character variants and ambiguities

[-JKP-]

There are quite a few initial/medial/final shapes in languages that use Latin alphabet and abbreviations and many of the abbreviations resemble letters.


A few examples of initial/medial/final-character ambiguity:

• In many texts, there is a medial and final "s" Often the Greek sigma is used for final "s" but some scribes use the esszet shape (ß) for the final "s" and do not always mean it to be read as a double-ess as became the convention later. Some even used a different "s" for the beginning of words or for capital-S (similar to our modern "s"), but this is less common than long-ess or straight-ess in initial and medial positions.
  
• As mentioned by Marco, V and U are used interchangeably, but sometimes the "v" is used for initial position or for a capital (for both v and u).
  
• Also as mentioned by Marco, "r" was variable. Usually two forms were used, but sometimes three (especially if the manuscript has capitals, which many didn't).
  
• The letter "d" has two forms in many manuscripts and there isn't too much rhyme or reason in how they use them (many scribes simply alternate somewhat randomly). One is a simple "d" (like the first one in "oladabas" without a loop, and one is figure-8 shape (similar to the last glyph in "oladabas" except it's usually slightly asymmetric to distinguish it from the number 8).
  
• The n and m sometimes have final forms in which the scribe adds a tail. One might think it would be obvious that they are "n" and "m" but in many texts, when a tail is added to "n" at the end, it often looks like "y" or like the y-form of the letter thorn (the one in "hear ye" which was not pronounced like "y" but like "th" as in "thee"), so it is quite easy to mistake n-tail for a y or a thorn.
  
• In the final position, the letter "i" is often written with a long descender tail (and sometimes misinterpreted as "j" by modern viewers). When "i" is written after "i" at the end and has a long tail, some people misread it as a ÿ (y with umlaut) and it did eventually evolve into "y" but in the earlier texts, it stood for ij (which was "i" followed by another "i" with a descender).
  
• The letter "m" in the initial position was often written so it looks like "an" (witness the discussion about michiton/anchiton). Usually it is known by context whether it is "m" or "an" but USUALLY (not always, but usually) the scribe will add a tail to show that it is the letter "m" rather than "an". If the tail is short (no descender), it is USUALLY "an". This holds up about 90% of the time, but there were a few scribes who didn't lengthen the tail very much, making it hard to tell the difference.
  

A few examples of common scribal abbreviations that resemble letters:

• The most common one is "9" (at the ends and sometimes beginnings of words). I've noticed many people read it as "g" but it's not a "g", the "g" is usually drawn a little differently (although not always)—it's an abbreviation. Some scribes superscripted it to distinguish it from "g" but many did not. It stands for "con-" or "com-" at the beginnings of words and usually "-us" or "-um" at the ends of words, and occasionally for other things.
  
• The letter that looks like "z" at the ends of words is an abbreviation for "-us", "-em", "m", and occasionally "-rum" (by scribes who don't use the more flourished "rum" character that looks like a big 4).
  
• The abbreviation for "-ur" and "-tur" can look like a "2" or like EVA-r, depending on the angle it was written. The same character was sometimes used for "et" (and). Sometimes it was superscripted but most of the time it was written inline. It could stand alone as a word, or be used within words.
  
• The shape that looks like a big open-4 at the ends of words almost always stands for "-rum".
  

• The abbreviation for -ris/-tis/-cis is often mistaken for a "j" by modern viewers but it is an abbreviation that combines the r/t/c with the abbreviation for "-is" (which is a stick with a loop). It looks like EVA-m and most of the time is used at the ends of words. By itself, the abbreviation for "-is" can be used in many positions in the word but that is less common than using it for -ris/-tis/-cis.
  

Other forms of ambiguity:

• Another thing worth noting is that long-s and f are often confused by modern viewers and probably were by viewers from other medieval cultures. The older forms of long-s or straight-s sometimes had a little tick in the middle similar to the stem on the f and if the tick crossed the stem, it looks like "f". You have to be able to read the language to know whether it's "s" or "f" in cases where scribes drew them almost the same.
  
• Modern viewers (and possibly those from other cultures) often ignore the little dots and ticks above the letters in Latin texts, but you can't. These are various forms of apostrophes and the text doesn't make any sense unless they are expanded properly.
  
• Minims, of course, are easy to misinterpret. Even experts have problems working out minims in some of the early medieval texts.
  

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In terms of statistics (which is an interesting topic, misinterpretation of the shapes as different letters probably would create a few positional constraints (like a shape that only occurs in the initial or final position) but the medial forms would probably still move around more than they do in the VMS and they would probably still not be "tied" to companion glyphs as much as they are in the VMS, so sample text would have to be analyzed to determine to what extent positional patterns would be similar to VMS text.

As for the perceived character set, if a scribe were from a different culture and didn't recognize the difference between initial/medial/final forms, their perception of the size of the basic alphabet might increase, rather than decrease (they might perceive more than 30 shapes as basic characters and if they were from an African or Asian culture, this would not seem unusual), especially if some of the abbreviations that resemble letters were also misperceived as letters).