08-08-2025, 03:57 PM
Captain Currier can tell you better:
"One might conclude that p f are an elaborate form of t k , with the same value. This is often the case in medieval manuscripts, especially in illuminated ones; certain letters have magnified, aberrant, beautified forms. But, not true! These two letters are not
the same as those two, as the statistics show. The letters t k are followed anywhere in a word by our little friend e about half the time (say 750 out of a total of 1500), including initially. These two, that p f are never, ever, anywhere in the manuscript, followed by e. These latter symbols are much less frequent than the first two, but their occurrence followed by c is zero. I don't have to calculate sigma's on that! Therefore, p f are not aberrant or variant forms of t k, but separate letters in their own right. This holds true through the whole manuscrpt. That is one of the peculiar things about the manuscript: we have two languages they are definite, no doubt about it at all but there are features like this that follow through from one language to another. That's just an item of incidental intelligence; there it is, for what it's worth".
"One might conclude that p f are an elaborate form of t k , with the same value. This is often the case in medieval manuscripts, especially in illuminated ones; certain letters have magnified, aberrant, beautified forms. But, not true! These two letters are not
the same as those two, as the statistics show. The letters t k are followed anywhere in a word by our little friend e about half the time (say 750 out of a total of 1500), including initially. These two, that p f are never, ever, anywhere in the manuscript, followed by e. These latter symbols are much less frequent than the first two, but their occurrence followed by c is zero. I don't have to calculate sigma's on that! Therefore, p f are not aberrant or variant forms of t k, but separate letters in their own right. This holds true through the whole manuscrpt. That is one of the peculiar things about the manuscript: we have two languages they are definite, no doubt about it at all but there are features like this that follow through from one language to another. That's just an item of incidental intelligence; there it is, for what it's worth".