Judaeo-Greek reading of first three lines of f67r 1

[geoffreycaveney]

Example: in casual informal writing such as is common on social media or in text messages today, there are many ways that American English speakers write and/or abbreviate the word "because". We don't always feel like writing out such a long word to express such a simple basic concept in a function word. In one post or comment or message or text, a person might write it "because", but in another he or she might write it "becos", and in other places the same person might write it "cos" or "cuz" or "coz" or " 'cause" or " 'cos". There is not necessarily an explicit rule that we can state to determine how this person will "convert" the word "because" into any one of these many forms in any given place in the text or at any given moment. So therefore we cannot determine an explicit rule to apply in order to take any given one of these forms that we find and "convert the text back" into "because".

Let's spell out the phonological and orthographic variety of just these half dozen or so informal forms of the word "because":

* The first syllable can be written or omitted entirely, or the writer can put an apostrophe in its place.

* The vowel in the second syllable can be written as "au" or "o" or "u".

* The last consonant can be written as "s" or "z".

* The silent final "e" can be written or omitted.

When I read such text, I don't use any set of rules to "convert the text back" to the word "because". I use my vast knowledge and experience as an English speaker and reader and writer to figure it out with my intuition.

I can elaborate on this example, in a way that I believe may in fact be relevant to the interpretation of the Voynich MS:

These exact same abbreviations for "because", can also be used in colloquial American English as abbreviations for "cousin"!!

Both words share the stressed syllable [kʌz], so in colloquial abbreviated speech and informal writing, the speaker or writer may drop the other, unstressed, syllable entirely.

For example, a succinct social media comment might be "just cuz, cuz". It means "Just because, cousin", or spelling out the full contextual meaning more formally, "Just because that's the way it is, my friend."

If the same half dozen different abbreviated forms for "because" can also be abbreviated forms for "cousin", how does an American English speaker and reader like me manage to distinguish between them? It's simple: Context! I know where in a statement "because" is expected to be, and where in a statement "cousin" is expected to be. And I interpret the given written form in whichever way makes the most sense in that particular context.

I am actually doing a similar thing in my Greek interpretation of the Voynich MS. The Voynich word [sar] in You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. 1, 2nd line, could have various possible interpretations in Greek according to my system of correspondences. I identify it as Modern Greek "tora", meaning "now", based on the context of the rest of the words that I have identified and interpreted in the sentence. Just as I can determine whether "cuz" means "because" or "cousin" in a current social media post based on context, so I can determine whether [sar] means "tora" or something else in my Greek interpretation of the Voynich MS based on context.

There is no explicit rule you can establish to determine when to convert "cuz" into "because", as opposed to when to convert "cuz" into "cousin". The decision must be based on the overall linguistic context of the statement and the conversation. 

It is likely that the interpretation of the Voynich MS will need to proceed in a similar manner.