14-12-2020, 09:18 PM
(13-12-2020, 04:49 PM)-JKP- wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I've written numerous blogs about shapes in the VMS that are similar to Latin scribal conventions.
First of all JKP, I wanted to credit you and your blog with opening my eyes to the fact that all Voynichese glyphs, with the possible exception of EVA=t, would have been familiar to anyone reading or writing in the Roman alphabet in XV century Europe. I'm fully sold; the VMs's writing system is anything but exotic. As is the way in this scene, I'd bet money you're not the first to come up with this idea. But I'll be damned if I could name anyone from the original Mailing List or the First Study Group who pointed it out before you. Since you've been the most passionate, articulate, and well-sourced defender of this idea during my time working with the VMs, you'll be the one I'll credit if I ever publish anything about the VMs that builds upon this idea.
If true, your Voynichese-glyphs-as-repurposed-Latin-scribal-marks idea undermines theories that the VMs is a fake foreign book, designed to swindle someone rich, or impress party guests. If this were indeed the writer's intention, using almost all glyph shapes that were familiar to literate people doesn't really help that end.
If the VMs is really a meaningless medieval hoax, I think it's more likely that the intended marks were the illiterate clientele of a quack doctor or other fake expert, and the book was designed to be carried and "pored over" by the charlatan. I digress.
JKP wrote:I want to point out another analogy, and that is that EVERY GLYPH that could (by convention) have a terminal tail in Latin has a tail in the VMS. Look at this example that I snapped from You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. in the big-plant section. There are no exceptions. Every terminal glyph that has a tail-appropriate shape has a tail.
That said, this quote of yours feels like a truism to me. Which tells me I'm probably having trouble wrapping my head around it. Here's what I think you mean; correct me if I'm wrong: The final glyph of a vord has a tail if and only if its tailless Latin-scribal-convention homolog also conventionally took a tail when it ended a word.