[split] Color annotations

[Jorge_Stolfi]

In my opinion, it is much more likely that the scribe who wrote the color annotation “rot” was a German speaker.

Well, I think that the original crib manuscript, from which the VMS Scribe was copying plant parts, had been written by a German speaker for his German scribe.  Like the examples that have been posted, with "rot" keys near some flowers that were, in fact, painted red.

But the stem of VMS You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. was not painted red (or any other color), even though that page does have some (rusty) red (applied with a broad quill rather than a brush).   I think that is already evidence against those letters being a color key by the VMS Author to the VMS Scribe (or to some Painter to be engaged later).

Note that there are only two or three such "color keys" in the VMS.  If they were indeed color keys, We would expect a lot more -- like, almost one key on every page with flowers (the part whose color is most important).

While the letters in VMS You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. do resemble "r" "o" "t" from contemporary manuscripts, they are rather awkward. 

Hence my belief that the VMS Scribe misunderstood the key that he saw on the crib herbal as a Voynichese label that he had to copy.  He probably turned the drawing sideways and mis-interpreted those letters as Voynichese glyphs: namely Ch o se

An then the Retracer further messed up the situation by not turning the page, and re-interpreting the rotated Voynichese glyphs as Latin letters.  Which he possiby did understand as the German word "rot".

(And yes, those letters definitely were retraced.  You can still see the original trace of the o, just inside the darker trace, on the NW side.)

All the best, --jorge