geoffreycaveney's Judaeo-Greek theory

[geoffreycaveney]

Benched characters? I can't remember if you covered them in your previous posts.

I take it you are referring to the Voynich characters which in EVA transcription are written as [ckh], [cth], [cph], [cfh], the apparent ligatures of [k, t, p, f] with [ch].

At this stage, I am interpreting them simply as [k]+[ch], [t]+[ch], [p]+[ch], [f]+[ch].

Now it would be plausible that these characters would be more likely to represent the Greek fricatives theta, chi, and phi. That would be a logical use of [ch] as the "h" character.

However, I also find plenty of examples of Greek theta and chi represented simply as [k] and [t] respectively. For example, in the first line of the last paragraph of You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. , [qokar] = καθαρ', [okar-] = εθελ-, and [oteey] = εχεις.

Moreover, the one example of one of these ligatures in this line, in [sh1cphhy], is not a Greek fricative but rather Greek pi in τι'-[ο]ποιες. Here the extended [c_hh] part of the ligature simply represents the consecutive syllabic front vowels iota and epsilon in this Greek word. (Recall that as a result of the iotacism sound change, Greek "οι" is simply pronounced /i/ like iota.)

At the same time, in this same line [k] also represents Greek delta in [oqokain] = ουκ-ουδεν, and Greek tau in [okey] = αυτες. The characters are ambiguous; they may represent the voiceless stop, the voiced stop, or the fricative. That is an inherent feature of the system, for better or worse. We have to deal with it. 

[Note: the Greek "voiced stop" letters beta, gamma, and delta are actually pronounced as voiced fricatives, or in the case of gamma also as a "y" glide, in medieval and modern Greek.]

Geoffrey