28-03-2026, 07:30 AM
I know you’re not really supposed to bring up your own theory in someone else’s thread, but since you specifically asked about it, I hope that’s okay, because it answers your question.
There is a possible explanation. You cite 22% of words beginning with the vowel “o” as an anomaly. That figure is correct
I assume that the “o” represents an absorption of the article in German. However, since “o” is also a normal letter, I excluded all words consisting solely of an “o” and a single letter—that is, all words with only two or one letter.
This brings us to approximately 19%.
I compared this with four Middle High German medical and prescription texts from the same period and region as the VMS parchment, and counted all attested independent definite articles (der, die, das, daz, diu, di) as well as all their case forms and spellings:
Ortloff von Baierland (47,569 words): 11.7%
Breslauer Arzneibuch (92,848 words): 17.8%
Admonter Bartholomaeus (29,244 words): 17.1%
Cookbook Cod. germ. 1 (2,788 words): 15.0%
They thus account for between 12 and 18% of all tokens. The VMS prefix “o,” at 19.6%, lies at the upper end of this range. And this fits with the fact that the VMS has very few short words overall - only 9.7% of tokens have one or two glyphs, compared to 16-20% in the MHD texts. There is simply no room left for standalone articles...
What’s really interesting here is that the distribution of these “o”s as articles fits quite well with the Bavarian / Middle High German language of the 15th century. And that’s just part of what I call the absorption cipher. (This type of cipher can also be used to explain the “qo,” and that fits the frequency pattern as well.)
Its no proof, i know, but what I’m trying to say is: You should be careful about jumping to conclusions; there are always possibilities you haven’t considered
It could, of course, be a coincidence, but in principle, when you also consider the other grammatical similarities, a Coland design seems rather unlikely to me.
There is a possible explanation. You cite 22% of words beginning with the vowel “o” as an anomaly. That figure is correct
I assume that the “o” represents an absorption of the article in German. However, since “o” is also a normal letter, I excluded all words consisting solely of an “o” and a single letter—that is, all words with only two or one letter.
This brings us to approximately 19%.
I compared this with four Middle High German medical and prescription texts from the same period and region as the VMS parchment, and counted all attested independent definite articles (der, die, das, daz, diu, di) as well as all their case forms and spellings:
Ortloff von Baierland (47,569 words): 11.7%
Breslauer Arzneibuch (92,848 words): 17.8%
Admonter Bartholomaeus (29,244 words): 17.1%
Cookbook Cod. germ. 1 (2,788 words): 15.0%
They thus account for between 12 and 18% of all tokens. The VMS prefix “o,” at 19.6%, lies at the upper end of this range. And this fits with the fact that the VMS has very few short words overall - only 9.7% of tokens have one or two glyphs, compared to 16-20% in the MHD texts. There is simply no room left for standalone articles...
What’s really interesting here is that the distribution of these “o”s as articles fits quite well with the Bavarian / Middle High German language of the 15th century. And that’s just part of what I call the absorption cipher. (This type of cipher can also be used to explain the “qo,” and that fits the frequency pattern as well.)
Its no proof, i know, but what I’m trying to say is: You should be careful about jumping to conclusions; there are always possibilities you haven’t considered
It could, of course, be a coincidence, but in principle, when you also consider the other grammatical similarities, a Coland design seems rather unlikely to me.
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