Quote:From the authors' talk (posted by Gioynich)
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- Stephen Bax started coming up with the sounds. Here are the sounds we propose based on his.
This is nonsense. There have been MANY proposed sound substitutions before Bax and his substitutions were not Latin, they were Arabic.
Quote:- Plants are usually represented as flowering, as they are easier to recognize, but belladonna (1v) is represented at the end of its life cycle, it's yellowing, that's because it's when its extract(?) is more powerful
Many of the VMS plants appear to be in seed. I haven't done an actual count, but there's definitely a mixture of flowers and seed.
But more importantly, how do the researchers know it's belladonna?
What if it is Hypericum? Belladonna doesn't have red and green leaves. Hypericum does. The leaf shape and color matches Hypericum better than Belladonna and several species of Hypericum have berry-like fruits. There are other candidates, as well. It's possible it is Belladonna, but the researchers haven't substantiated or proved this via their translation.
Quote:- EVA:y has a sound (n) but it's also used as punctuation (virgula suspensiva)
Bax's choice of the "n" sound value for y was based on Arabic. Word endings in Latin are quite different from Arabic.
Quote:- Proposed translation of 1v. EVA:daiin is translated as hardship. the page talks about expelling the hardships (e.g. kidney stones?)
If daiin turns out to mean "hardship", I will take the authors to a fancy restaurant and pay the bill.
Quote:- Paper was expensive, so people would use shorthands. Tironian system took years to learn
- Some Tironian symbols (just the consonants) were adapted (e.g. rotated, added serifs)
1) Tironian notes go back a long way. Central Europe didn't regularly use paper for writing until later in the 14th century and the 15th century. Paper production wasn't up to speed until the late 15th century. Parchment was expensive and shorthand saved time and space. Yet even though parchment was expensive, there are proportionally very few manuscripts written in Tironian notes compared to those written with Latin script.
2) The shapes of r ch s m y g are standard Latin abbreviation symbol shapes derived from Greek scribal conventions, not specifically from Tironian notes.
Quote:- EVA:y is seen as abbreviation in many other manuscripts. It's used as a "marker", maybe since it sounds like 'n' it's use as punctuation derives from what we called hesitant(?) in linguistic, like when we say "hmm" when thinking...
It is correct that the Latin y abbreviation was, so common that they sometimes added it to the end of the alphabet in pen tests.
But are you saying it is used as a marker in Latin or in the VMS? It is not a marker in Latin so I'll assume you mean in the VMS. If it's a marker, why has it been used in this paper to represent numerous sounds?
Quote:- Stephen Bax was the first to assign sounds
Completely wrong. Substitution solutions have been around since long before 2014. In fact, the most common way the VMS is "solved" is with substitutions.
Quote:- We are the first ones to show how the characters evolved and were combined. Our work is an extension of his work
Well, I have to admit, a dozen words in four years is definitely in need of extension.
If you do a search on this forum, look at the Latin translation paper by Julia May, which is a good effort to try to translate the VMS into Latin. It predates your work by several years. There have been many attempts to translate VMS text into Latin.
Bax's work was based on Arabic. The authors' work is closer to "solutions" based on Latin in the way some of the glyphs are interpreted (e.g., r).
Quote:- Shows a picture of a castle from the VM. Shows that there are 'merli ghibellini'. We looked at a lot of photos of castles from the area we think the manuscript is from (Veneto) to identify the ones that match
It's quite possible that the VMS is from the Veneto. A high proportion of manuscripts with drawings of plants were from the Lombardy/Veneto region (in the mid-medieval period Lombardy stretched farther south to include Rome and Florence). It goes without saying that the Veneto (and nearby region) should be considered as possible origins.
Quote:- There are just two castles with merli ghibellini, on a hill, with walls: Castello Scaligero di Soave and Castello di Marostica
There were numerous castles, towers, and castle walls with Ghibelline merlons. Some have been destroyed or rebuilt, but you can occasionally find the merlons on old maps, and in manuscript illuminations (including herbal manuscripts). Since Ghibelline had a strong political connotation at the time, it is unlikely that these drawings were frivolous inventions.
Quote:- There are a lot of hotsprings in the Verona/Vicenza area. Alessandra has been translating a full manuscript talking about the Terme di Giunone. The book says that their water are good for pregnant women, etc.
I spent about 3 years researching hot springs and various natural spas that were in operation in the medieval period, and there are literally hundreds of them. I was stunned at how common they are. Eastern Europe also has many also that have been turned into modern spas. The spas in Naples were destroyed in in a post-VMS eruption.
Quote:He was right and he was first...
Bax said the text was Arabic. You are saying the text is Latin. Many people have offered Latin translations.
Bax was not the first to propose a substitution system. Numerous people did so before him and some of the systems were similar to his. There are certain patterns that show up time-after-time, regardless of the language chosen, for example making various vowel substitutions for c, a, and o shapes that are essentially the same as those proposed by the authors.