Quote:If you had asked me to guess, just from glancing at it, I would have guessed the first part was Polish written in Latin characters
Well, Polish it is, it's a document between Polish and Russians at the time of the war of 1609-1618.
Quote:JKP, I think Anton's comment was poking fun at Tucker's bold claims in his new book and shouldn't be taken too literally
Yes, indeed, but those other researchers do propose it literally, there's the rub.
Quote:I actually wonder if anyone on the forum right now would argue against the glyphs bearing most resemblance to Latin script?
Overall, it does bear that, but, as my last example shows, other scripts also can feature something not only similar, but strikingly similar. I wonder if this s shape in Cyrillic is not borrowed from Latin tradition though, especially given that the document in question is quite late (as compared with 15c century). It's better to check earlier documents of the Lithuaninan Metrica, and also to consult palaeographic sources about this symbol. Surely, there's an explanation there, I just don't have much spare time right now and thus I just drop my findings onto the forum in order not to forget them.
Quote:Can you really trace the whole set to Latin scribal habits?
That's what I also thought of yesterday - it makes sense to comprise a list of "Latin-derived" Voynichese glyphs. This may suggest the "basic" or "fundamental" characters of the Voynichese alphabet, in contrast to other ones which - being rare or altogether non-existent in Latin scripts - would appear as "additional" or "secondary". This would be in contrast to the Curve-Line System approach which tries to do the same thing but from the perspective purely visual.