28-09-2018, 05:26 PM
(28-09-2018, 05:52 AM)-JKP- wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Quote:Well, I've seen u. as an abbreviation for under and unt. as an abbreviation for unter, ...
They did not abbreviate those words without apostrophes/macrons. They did not use a period at the end of a word to abbreviate (in fact, in many manuscripts, periods were absent altogether even if other symbols were common). There was always a tail, or a line over them, or a curved cap, or an apostrophe that looks like a modern apostrophe (these symbols/shapes are found in the VMS main text).
They were quite fond of apostrophe symbols in the middle ages. They had half a dozen different kinds. Not only are there apostrophe-shaped glyphs in the VMS main text, but the labels under the zodiac symbols are full of apostrophes. Why would the marginalia writer of the last page leave them out, when they they show up in many other parts of the manuscript, and when there is a word with a macron in the same marginalia handwriting on the top of folio 17r?
You're proposing a system of abbreviation that not only is not indicated on this page, but which was foreign to medieval scribes.
As an expert in handwriting, you can only defeat my seahorse storyline by claiming that I misread one or more of the letters, for example, by saying that the r of umer is really an n. Since you did not do that, and since you are not providing an alternative suggestion for the meaning of umer untpher, I'm sticking with my lovely story about the seahorse.
As you apparently have not read my essay, you would be unaware that I am claiming that the VMS marginalia was written by a great poet laureate, to which I can add that such poet laureate, in his other writings, did in fact use the letter u (without apostrophes / macrons) as an abbreviation, which was the first known use of this common abbreviation.
