The Origin of [sh]

[-JKP-]

I've thought a lot about ch vs sh: the key problem seems to be that the plume of sh is rendered in so many ways through the Voynich Manuscript's pages that it seems likely that you can find numerous counterexamples to just about any constructive theory you can put together about how they they were supposed to be constructed.

If you are familiar with Latin conventions, you find that they do fall into the same basic shape groups. This, however, does not necessarily mean that the shape variations are meaningful in the VMS as they are in Latin. It might be that the scribes are so familiar with writing  these forms that they habitually and unconsciously draw them. It's also possible that the shape variations are intended to make the manuscript "look" like Latin (to those who know scribal conventions) while still being something else.

At a slightly more fundamental level, I don't believe that anyone has yet done a microscopic study of the letters in the different section to work out in which precise order different hands assembled strokes into letters. My suspicion is that each of the hands has a fairly consistent way of writing Voynichese letters, but that this breaks down when they miscopy things (e.g. when they start copying sh as ch, and then have to fix it up etc), but it would be much better if we just knew this kind of thing in a codicologically definitive way.

I have been working on this for a long time. This is why I've done the painstaking work of creating four transcripts (each from a slightly different point of view). There are certain sections where specific shapes are seen more often than others and there are scribes that distinguish the shapes more clearly than others. It is, however, extremely time-consuming. I basically have to give up sleep to work on it.

The area I was pretty sure in 2006 that I caught one of the Voynich hands specifically assembling letters in different passes was on You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. (Curse pp.164-168), where  it seemed (and indeed still seems) to me that the aii- groups were written first before the -n flourish was added as a second pass (in a different ink). But that's a separate story.

I think this is an important issue, that the VMS text may have been assembled in different passes, and I believe it is something that can be studied. It's not something I've worked on, however, since there aren't enough hours in the day. I'm hoping someone will. Emma's question about when the topstroke may have been added (after the bench was drawn), I assume, indicates an interest in this.