Quote:MarcoP: "At 15:20, the Ardic video says something I don't remember hearing before. If I understand correctly, the idea is that the text is an acrostic. It sounds like an interesting explanation for line-initial LAAFU effects and it has the merit of being compatible with XV century culture."
I was surprised to hear it. You are right that acrostics were compatible with XV century culture. They were popular, both as encoded text and as illuminations, but...
the reason I was surprised the Ardics made this claim about the VMS text is because I tried to work out acrostics (beginning of line acrostics, beginning of word acrostics, end of word acrostics, alternate-line acrostics, and every other combination I could think of) years and years ago and I couldn't find any acrostic patterns. I did the same with anagrams.
But... I wasn't thinking "Turkish?" at the time, I was thinking the more common western languages (this was back in 2008/2009). I didn't seriously start investigating eastern and African languages until around 2010 or so, and by that time I wasn't looking for acrostics any more—I had grown tired of them because they didn't seem to work.
So... when I saw the claim in the video, I thought, "Hmmm, maybe I should have tried it in some of those other languages... maybe I missed something." I am happy you are looking into it.
The Ardics did specifically say beginnings of lines. If there are acrostics in the VMS and they are not in this position, then it is different from what they claim.
You chose a clear way of illustrating some of these patterns and they don't look very hopeful in terms of being acrostics (in any languages). Thank you for the informative post.