(11-03-2016, 03:17 AM)ReneZ wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.The biggest 'problem' with the Voynich alphabet, in my opinion, is the funny behaviour of Eva 'ch', I could imagine many things, for example in case the text is a phonetic rendition of some language foreign to the author/scribe:
Eva-'ch' could just be aspiration, like the 'h' in English. 'ch' and 'sh' could be different types (real or perceived) like the two different sipritus symbols in Greek.
ckh and cth could be aspirated versions of unaspirated consonants k and t. (all Eva)
I think something like this is probably correct. My only question here is whether this particular interpretation makes phonological sense given that we also see <chk> and <kch> in addition to <ckh>. I'm not sure whether it does or not, but it seems important that whoever devised the script wanted to be able to distinguish between these three forms. In fact it seems that the reason why the scribe chose tall shapes for the gallows letters is so that they could be combined with <ch> in a way such that neither precedes the other.
Quote:I'm not saying that any of these last points has a direct bearing on the Voynich MS text, of course. Just examples in the good old spirit of Jacques Guy, about the many, many unexpected things that may occur.
Speaking of that, do you know whatever happened to Jacques Guy?
(11-03-2016, 12:21 AM)-JKP- wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.(10-03-2016, 11:53 PM)Sam G wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.You could do the same thing with English or any other language. Try it with that script. That doesn't mean that the consonant-vowel distinction in English or other languages is not meaningful.
The vowel-consonant distinction is meaningful in English and other languages.
That does not mean glyphs that look like vowels in the VMS are vowels and yet I see a very high proportion of people assuming they are. It could be an abjad, with some of the consonants shaped like vowels. It could be digits, with some of them shaped like vowels. The vowel shapes could be nulls or modifiers rather than vowels.
It's very important, in analyzing the text, to get away from the idea that vowel shapes are vowels until there is other evidence to confirm that they are.
I went over the reasons for thinking that the vowels are actually vowels in the other thread. Not gonna repeat it all here, but saying that the shapes of those letters resemble vowels was not my entire argument at all.