21-07-2024, 09:35 PM
Y, I and J words in the Voynich Manuscript
Since the question of initial and final vowels might seem problematic, it requires proper explanation. The author of the VM was using his own writing convention that would be closer to the Old Church Slavonic than to Latin and German.
Glagolitic and Cyrillic alphabets had special letterforms for semivowels, which were dropped by many early Slavic writers. This is particularly noticeble in the VM, so that Dr. Bax suggested the writing was abjad. In the VM, the initial and final i was written as y, but in contemporary Slovenian, used by VM computer analists, there is no letter y, because it was replaced by i, j,ij, ji.
In my list of unique VM suffixes, including word endings) the y predominates, while other vowels are very rare: 6 a-suffixes. 6 e-, 18 i-,
In this post, I intend to focus on suffix i and on letters i, j, y
EVA y, SLO-VA i, j
EVA i, SLO-VA i
The spelling of the i, y, g was very concussing in the 14 and 15th century as the distinction between minims resulted in various letterforms, such as i with a dot, and y with dots to indicate sound, although such distinctions were not made consistently. Besides that, the Check influence, that extended also in Alsace, created confusion between g and 9-like y because of the similarity of the letterform and different sounds – Czeck g was pronounced as j (y).
Different letters for sound j in Czeck:
gey (jej), gest (jest), geden (jeden), i izekl - i izekel, svoj - svoj
The debate whether 9-like letterform could be transcribed as Latin y is still going on, while there is no question about the single minim used inside the words for Latin i.
There was a lot of confussion about this letter in the Middle Ages.
In Latin, y was named ‘Greek I’, pronounced similar as German ü or French u, (Note that Ardic transcribed it as u and ü,), but in Europe it also became pronounced differently. In Dutch it is equivalent to IJ. The original Greek name was upsilon/ypsilon/ipsilon is used for it in many languages.
Slovenian language developed from the Old Church Slavonic, which was written with Glagolitic or with Cyrillic alphabet. Both alphabets had several distinct letters for half-sounds, most common of which were yat and yer. Yat was used for the sound ae or e (like in cat or egg)They were considered long vowels, which in Slovenian became ij or ji. Since the minim i was not used as a final, the y was used for initial and final yat.
The best grammar books on the development of Slovenian language from the OCS were written by Fran Mikloschich in various language, including German. Some of them are available on line. It explains the strings of consonants caused by unwritten Slovenian semivowels, as well the strings of vowels caused by missing consonants as well as the problems with the semivowels. (I will explain this separately with examples from the VM and Slovenian books.)
In the Voynich Manuscript, y was used for word initial and word final. However, in the 16th century, when Slovenian language became standardized, the y was replaced with i, ij, ji, and y, as well as aj and ej (in the word dy- daj, dej) depending on the way people in different dialect pronounced the words for which y was used. A general principle was that j was used where consonant, and i when vowel was needed.
In the Voynich Manuscript, there are about 1600 words that seem to start with y, and about 900 unique words (written only one time). Many of those words are considered y-pre-fixed by many VM researchers.
The fact is that y is not Slovenian prefix.
In the Voynich Manuscript, y stands for the contemporary Slovenian conjunction IN (English: and or German und.) In dialectal pronunciation, it is still pronounced as ‘an’. In the dialectal language of White Carniola (close to Croatia) the ‘i’ is still used for ‘and’, but in Croatian and Serbian, it is also used in their literary language.
The original Old Church Slavonic conjunction ‘and’ was ‘i’ as it is evident from the 10th century Freising Manuscript, first Slavic document in Latin letters. In the region where the Glagolitic liturgy was being practiced in the 15th century, including in parts of Slovenia, the letter ‘i’ was still used for the conjunction ‘and’, however the Protestant writers in the 16th century, adopted Germanized form ‘inu’, which was pronounced either as jnu, jn, an.
The Freising Manuscript written in Latin letters does not have y letter. The conjunction i is very frequently used, mainly because of the nature of the text (listing the divine helpers). CH is used for h sound. The word ‘ili’ is used for the frequently used ‘al’ word in the VM.
Why are so few conjunctions y (and) in the Voynich Manuscript?
The reason for this is the Slavic style of writing which persisted up until the printing presses were used. Croatian linguist Denis Crnković used the term ‘word blocks’ for the short unstressed words written together with the host word as one word.
In the above text written by Antol Vremec in the 16th century, the ‘i’ is written separately as conjunction ‘and’. The marked words can be considered word blocks; some contain two, some three words that were later written separately. This writing was written close to where I believe the Voynich Manuscript was written 100 years earlier.
The word blogs, and perhaps the isocolic writing, also characteristic for the Slavic medieval writing, made it into the VM from the OCS.
In the 15th century, even the OCS Glagolitic liturgical books began to conform to Western practice of word spacing. According to Crnković, the graphemic practices in the late Middle Ages, Renaissance and Modern era are not yet sufficiently researched.
His study of the medieval Slavic isocolon revealed that the use of word spacing in various configurations played a significant role in guiding the reader.(This is also noticed in the Voynich Manuscript where spaces are used to indicate pronunciation.)
An accented word or an accented host-word with unaccented prepositions, conjunctions or other particles attached to it were termed 'word block (ŽAGAR 2000: 169). A word-block might show a preposition connected to the word it governs, a particle connected to a host-word. The word block or word unit is any word or combination of words separated from other words by a space. It is usually pronounced as one word.
In the VM Slovenian, as well as in Croatian, this was further complicated by missing vowels which made reading very difficult. Example: dbshu – da bi šel.
The separation of the text, and the word blocks first started in France and Germany in 11th century and became consistently used by mid-13th century.
At the same time, Crnković also pointed out many dropped vowels in the Croatian form of Glagolitic OCS (ns mlst– naši milosti, nbskih’ blag’ – nebeških blag.
Crnković observed that the books written before the printing presses contained 20 to 30% word blocks formed of hostword + enclitic or proclitic.
The practice of conjoining prepositions and particles with host-words into so-called word-blocks was practiced in Slovenia as well, when using Latin letters. In the first printed books by Primož Trubar, this was done more consistently, but his followers began to insert the apostrophe, and later full spaces.
In the Voynich Manuscript, the conjunction y is sometimes attached to the next word, and sometimes written separately, leaving a narrower space in between.
Besides the conjunction ‘y’, the verb ‘je’ – (he, she, it – is implied with the grammatical form je.) is also most often attached to the host word, because it contains a short vowel e, which in phonetic is often dropped.
While the use of a letter y is the same for i – in (and) and j- je (is) the correct meaning could often, but not always, be determined from the words next to in.
In these words, i stands for IN (and), even where there is no space, because of other grammatical clues.
Because the verb and conjunction can have the same position in a sentence, and the verbal form JE (he is) contains short vowel, the word is often pronounced as j(e). In the Voynich Manuscript, it is spelled as y. The distinction can only be made from the context.
The author of the Voynich Manuscript was not using space consistently, particularly after a one-letter words, like y, k, s, h, v and the one-letter words in which the semi-vowel was dropped, like ch(e), t(tu), y (ye/je), s(sy), k(o). When the Slovenian words were first written, Latin had no letter for semivowel, and because of this, many semivowels and unstressed vowels were dropped. Slovenian linguist A. Bohori? insisted that the unwritten semi-vowels be replaced with vowels, and that prepositions be separated with an apostrophe.
In the Voynich manuscript, the apostrophe is used only once.
In the VM, the Y (as a verb or as a conjunction) is written separately or together with the next word, so that the distinction can only be made from the context. For example: ‘y ty’ cannot be read differently than ‘in ti’, but then again, if the author made a space after y by a mistake, that would change the interpretation to ‘yty’ (iti – to go).
There are relatively few Slovenian words that start with i, and in the VM, there are really scarce. To mention a few: ykol -- ikol (ever), ydy -jedi (foods), yty -iti (to go), yt -yt ( to go), yky - ikej (ikej – anyway).
The assumption that personal pronoun must be next to the word DAM is based on narrow interpretation of the word ‘I GIVE’.
There are a few personal pronouns related to giving in the VM, but mostly, the words are related to things (dam reči – I preach; dam dar – I give gift; dam dol – I give down – I place; DAM R(A)D – I like to give); dam oam – dam vam – I give to you (pl.), tdam – ti dam -I give to you (sing.)
The reason why DAM had such high frequency in the Voynich Manuscript is most likely the versatile use of the word DAM. Several Voynich researchers have considered DAM as a suffix, however only --am is a suffix, and D belongs to the root. Because the peasant, and the religious language were to limited for the author who was a poet and philosopher, he had to invent many new words. One way to create new verbs was to combine a noun and verb DATI (in appropriate conjugational form. Some such words are still in use, but most of them were shortened. Examples: REČI DAM – words give – REČEM (i say), DARI DAL (gifts I gave) - DARIL (his word is used in both forms, except that DARIL is spelled as DARAIL). The principle is the same as English ‘take a look’.
Slovenian words did not start with lj, although this might be assumed from its capital Ljubljana. Many contemporary linguists are protesting this spelling, which crept into Slovenian from Croatian. In most early Slovenian writing, the word for people was LUDI, not LJUDI. Even the ‘ilj’ suffix was not that common in early Slovenian but was used under Glagolitic Croatian influence, mainly to make a distinction in pronunciation of the letter L (the words taken from Glagolitic vocabulary were pronounced as l, while the words taken from other parts of Slovenian speaking lands, particularly Upper Carniola, the L was pronounced as w. While Croatians still write and pronounce the final l as l, or lj, Slovenians write it as l and pronounce it as u. For final Slovenian l/u the Serbinas use final o and also pronounce it as o. Some of o suffixes are even in the Voynich Manuscript.
There are plenty of words starting with b, however they are not recognized by the VM researchers, because when they are connected to the e or c/h, they look like EVA sh.
I did not find the initial n, and only a few initial m letters. There is no initial v, because in early Slovenian, the o was used instead of v.
Since the question of initial and final vowels might seem problematic, it requires proper explanation. The author of the VM was using his own writing convention that would be closer to the Old Church Slavonic than to Latin and German.
Glagolitic and Cyrillic alphabets had special letterforms for semivowels, which were dropped by many early Slavic writers. This is particularly noticeble in the VM, so that Dr. Bax suggested the writing was abjad. In the VM, the initial and final i was written as y, but in contemporary Slovenian, used by VM computer analists, there is no letter y, because it was replaced by i, j,ij, ji.
In my list of unique VM suffixes, including word endings) the y predominates, while other vowels are very rare: 6 a-suffixes. 6 e-, 18 i-,
In this post, I intend to focus on suffix i and on letters i, j, y
EVA y, SLO-VA i, j
EVA i, SLO-VA i
The spelling of the i, y, g was very concussing in the 14 and 15th century as the distinction between minims resulted in various letterforms, such as i with a dot, and y with dots to indicate sound, although such distinctions were not made consistently. Besides that, the Check influence, that extended also in Alsace, created confusion between g and 9-like y because of the similarity of the letterform and different sounds – Czeck g was pronounced as j (y).
Different letters for sound j in Czeck:
gey (jej), gest (jest), geden (jeden), i izekl - i izekel, svoj - svoj
The debate whether 9-like letterform could be transcribed as Latin y is still going on, while there is no question about the single minim used inside the words for Latin i.
There was a lot of confussion about this letter in the Middle Ages.
In Latin, y was named ‘Greek I’, pronounced similar as German ü or French u, (Note that Ardic transcribed it as u and ü,), but in Europe it also became pronounced differently. In Dutch it is equivalent to IJ. The original Greek name was upsilon/ypsilon/ipsilon is used for it in many languages.
Slovenian language developed from the Old Church Slavonic, which was written with Glagolitic or with Cyrillic alphabet. Both alphabets had several distinct letters for half-sounds, most common of which were yat and yer. Yat was used for the sound ae or e (like in cat or egg)They were considered long vowels, which in Slovenian became ij or ji. Since the minim i was not used as a final, the y was used for initial and final yat.
The best grammar books on the development of Slovenian language from the OCS were written by Fran Mikloschich in various language, including German. Some of them are available on line. It explains the strings of consonants caused by unwritten Slovenian semivowels, as well the strings of vowels caused by missing consonants as well as the problems with the semivowels. (I will explain this separately with examples from the VM and Slovenian books.)
In the Voynich Manuscript, y was used for word initial and word final. However, in the 16th century, when Slovenian language became standardized, the y was replaced with i, ij, ji, and y, as well as aj and ej (in the word dy- daj, dej) depending on the way people in different dialect pronounced the words for which y was used. A general principle was that j was used where consonant, and i when vowel was needed.
In the Voynich Manuscript, there are about 1600 words that seem to start with y, and about 900 unique words (written only one time). Many of those words are considered y-pre-fixed by many VM researchers.
The fact is that y is not Slovenian prefix.
In the Voynich Manuscript, y stands for the contemporary Slovenian conjunction IN (English: and or German und.) In dialectal pronunciation, it is still pronounced as ‘an’. In the dialectal language of White Carniola (close to Croatia) the ‘i’ is still used for ‘and’, but in Croatian and Serbian, it is also used in their literary language.
The original Old Church Slavonic conjunction ‘and’ was ‘i’ as it is evident from the 10th century Freising Manuscript, first Slavic document in Latin letters. In the region where the Glagolitic liturgy was being practiced in the 15th century, including in parts of Slovenia, the letter ‘i’ was still used for the conjunction ‘and’, however the Protestant writers in the 16th century, adopted Germanized form ‘inu’, which was pronounced either as jnu, jn, an.
The Freising Manuscript written in Latin letters does not have y letter. The conjunction i is very frequently used, mainly because of the nature of the text (listing the divine helpers). CH is used for h sound. The word ‘ili’ is used for the frequently used ‘al’ word in the VM.
Why are so few conjunctions y (and) in the Voynich Manuscript?
The reason for this is the Slavic style of writing which persisted up until the printing presses were used. Croatian linguist Denis Crnković used the term ‘word blocks’ for the short unstressed words written together with the host word as one word.
In the above text written by Antol Vremec in the 16th century, the ‘i’ is written separately as conjunction ‘and’. The marked words can be considered word blocks; some contain two, some three words that were later written separately. This writing was written close to where I believe the Voynich Manuscript was written 100 years earlier.
The word blogs, and perhaps the isocolic writing, also characteristic for the Slavic medieval writing, made it into the VM from the OCS.
In the 15th century, even the OCS Glagolitic liturgical books began to conform to Western practice of word spacing. According to Crnković, the graphemic practices in the late Middle Ages, Renaissance and Modern era are not yet sufficiently researched.
His study of the medieval Slavic isocolon revealed that the use of word spacing in various configurations played a significant role in guiding the reader.(This is also noticed in the Voynich Manuscript where spaces are used to indicate pronunciation.)
An accented word or an accented host-word with unaccented prepositions, conjunctions or other particles attached to it were termed 'word block (ŽAGAR 2000: 169). A word-block might show a preposition connected to the word it governs, a particle connected to a host-word. The word block or word unit is any word or combination of words separated from other words by a space. It is usually pronounced as one word.
In the VM Slovenian, as well as in Croatian, this was further complicated by missing vowels which made reading very difficult. Example: dbshu – da bi šel.
The separation of the text, and the word blocks first started in France and Germany in 11th century and became consistently used by mid-13th century.
At the same time, Crnković also pointed out many dropped vowels in the Croatian form of Glagolitic OCS (ns mlst– naši milosti, nbskih’ blag’ – nebeških blag.
Crnković observed that the books written before the printing presses contained 20 to 30% word blocks formed of hostword + enclitic or proclitic.
The practice of conjoining prepositions and particles with host-words into so-called word-blocks was practiced in Slovenia as well, when using Latin letters. In the first printed books by Primož Trubar, this was done more consistently, but his followers began to insert the apostrophe, and later full spaces.
In the Voynich Manuscript, the conjunction y is sometimes attached to the next word, and sometimes written separately, leaving a narrower space in between.
Besides the conjunction ‘y’, the verb ‘je’ – (he, she, it – is implied with the grammatical form je.) is also most often attached to the host word, because it contains a short vowel e, which in phonetic is often dropped.
While the use of a letter y is the same for i – in (and) and j- je (is) the correct meaning could often, but not always, be determined from the words next to in.
In these words, i stands for IN (and), even where there is no space, because of other grammatical clues.
Because the verb and conjunction can have the same position in a sentence, and the verbal form JE (he is) contains short vowel, the word is often pronounced as j(e). In the Voynich Manuscript, it is spelled as y. The distinction can only be made from the context.
The author of the Voynich Manuscript was not using space consistently, particularly after a one-letter words, like y, k, s, h, v and the one-letter words in which the semi-vowel was dropped, like ch(e), t(tu), y (ye/je), s(sy), k(o). When the Slovenian words were first written, Latin had no letter for semivowel, and because of this, many semivowels and unstressed vowels were dropped. Slovenian linguist A. Bohori? insisted that the unwritten semi-vowels be replaced with vowels, and that prepositions be separated with an apostrophe.
In the Voynich manuscript, the apostrophe is used only once.
In the VM, the Y (as a verb or as a conjunction) is written separately or together with the next word, so that the distinction can only be made from the context. For example: ‘y ty’ cannot be read differently than ‘in ti’, but then again, if the author made a space after y by a mistake, that would change the interpretation to ‘yty’ (iti – to go).
There are relatively few Slovenian words that start with i, and in the VM, there are really scarce. To mention a few: ykol -- ikol (ever), ydy -jedi (foods), yty -iti (to go), yt -yt ( to go), yky - ikej (ikej – anyway).
The assumption that personal pronoun must be next to the word DAM is based on narrow interpretation of the word ‘I GIVE’.
There are a few personal pronouns related to giving in the VM, but mostly, the words are related to things (dam reči – I preach; dam dar – I give gift; dam dol – I give down – I place; DAM R(A)D – I like to give); dam oam – dam vam – I give to you (pl.), tdam – ti dam -I give to you (sing.)
The reason why DAM had such high frequency in the Voynich Manuscript is most likely the versatile use of the word DAM. Several Voynich researchers have considered DAM as a suffix, however only --am is a suffix, and D belongs to the root. Because the peasant, and the religious language were to limited for the author who was a poet and philosopher, he had to invent many new words. One way to create new verbs was to combine a noun and verb DATI (in appropriate conjugational form. Some such words are still in use, but most of them were shortened. Examples: REČI DAM – words give – REČEM (i say), DARI DAL (gifts I gave) - DARIL (his word is used in both forms, except that DARIL is spelled as DARAIL). The principle is the same as English ‘take a look’.
Slovenian words did not start with lj, although this might be assumed from its capital Ljubljana. Many contemporary linguists are protesting this spelling, which crept into Slovenian from Croatian. In most early Slovenian writing, the word for people was LUDI, not LJUDI. Even the ‘ilj’ suffix was not that common in early Slovenian but was used under Glagolitic Croatian influence, mainly to make a distinction in pronunciation of the letter L (the words taken from Glagolitic vocabulary were pronounced as l, while the words taken from other parts of Slovenian speaking lands, particularly Upper Carniola, the L was pronounced as w. While Croatians still write and pronounce the final l as l, or lj, Slovenians write it as l and pronounce it as u. For final Slovenian l/u the Serbinas use final o and also pronounce it as o. Some of o suffixes are even in the Voynich Manuscript.
There are plenty of words starting with b, however they are not recognized by the VM researchers, because when they are connected to the e or c/h, they look like EVA sh.
I did not find the initial n, and only a few initial m letters. There is no initial v, because in early Slovenian, the o was used instead of v.
![[+]](https://www.voynich.ninja/images/collapse_collapsed.png)