29-03-2026, 09:17 AM
Postscript: The -y-Problem
Since 40% of VMS words end in -y, there is a connection here that deserves attention.
If "y-" at the beginning of a word indicates verb prefixes (ge-/ver-/be-/er-), it stands to reason that “-y” at the end of a word indicates suffixes.
Obvious candidates would be "-en, -er, -n, and -e", which are frequently reduced or merged in Middle High German in the Bavarian phonetic spelling.
Taken together, these endings account for the following percentages:
VMS -y at the end of a word: 39.5%
Ortloff von Baierland: 31.1%
Breslauer Arzneibuch: 37.8% (excluding vnde)
Admonter Bartholomaeus: 25.0%
Kochrezeptsammlung: 31.1%
I am not yet entirely convinced by this interpretation, but the figures are within the expected range.
There is a second, perhaps more interesting possibility: that -y represents a word-final -e that was intentionally moved to the end of the word—to suppress the high frequency of "e" in the plaintext and make the ciphertext look less like German.
In Middle High German, between 41% and 54% of all words contain at least "e".
(It should be noted that in phonetically written Bavarian, many e-endings (-en, -er) are dropped or reduced -- "haben" becomes "habn", "machen" becomes "machn". The actual share of words containing e in spoken Bavarian would therefore be lower than the 41-54% measured in the written MHD texts, bringing it closer to the 39.5% observed in the VMS, or lower.)
In the VMS, 39.5% of all words end in -y.
If -y is a shifted -e, the scribe has moved the language’s most frequent vowel to a fixed position at the word boundary—a simple but effective means of frequency masking.
The two interpretations (suffix vs. shifted vowel) are not mutually exclusive. This remains an open question—but if we look at actual transcriptions, the interpretation with the shifted “e” might make more sense—especially since in phonetically written Bavarian, most endings are omitted or reduced.
Since 40% of VMS words end in -y, there is a connection here that deserves attention.
If "y-" at the beginning of a word indicates verb prefixes (ge-/ver-/be-/er-), it stands to reason that “-y” at the end of a word indicates suffixes.
Obvious candidates would be "-en, -er, -n, and -e", which are frequently reduced or merged in Middle High German in the Bavarian phonetic spelling.
Taken together, these endings account for the following percentages:
VMS -y at the end of a word: 39.5%
Ortloff von Baierland: 31.1%
Breslauer Arzneibuch: 37.8% (excluding vnde)
Admonter Bartholomaeus: 25.0%
Kochrezeptsammlung: 31.1%
I am not yet entirely convinced by this interpretation, but the figures are within the expected range.
There is a second, perhaps more interesting possibility: that -y represents a word-final -e that was intentionally moved to the end of the word—to suppress the high frequency of "e" in the plaintext and make the ciphertext look less like German.
In Middle High German, between 41% and 54% of all words contain at least "e".
(It should be noted that in phonetically written Bavarian, many e-endings (-en, -er) are dropped or reduced -- "haben" becomes "habn", "machen" becomes "machn". The actual share of words containing e in spoken Bavarian would therefore be lower than the 41-54% measured in the written MHD texts, bringing it closer to the 39.5% observed in the VMS, or lower.)
In the VMS, 39.5% of all words end in -y.
If -y is a shifted -e, the scribe has moved the language’s most frequent vowel to a fixed position at the word boundary—a simple but effective means of frequency masking.
The two interpretations (suffix vs. shifted vowel) are not mutually exclusive. This remains an open question—but if we look at actual transcriptions, the interpretation with the shifted “e” might make more sense—especially since in phonetically written Bavarian, most endings are omitted or reduced.