116v

[Jorge_Stolfi]

@ Stolfi, the 8 at the end of the word, written as an “s,” is indeed well attested in Gothic bastard scripts...

But isn't that final "s" always minim-height?  Are there any examples of a final-"s" as tall as a "h" or "l"?

My proposal is that, among the surviving smudges, the Repairman saw the fairly complete remains of a few Voynichese d that he could not parse as any valid Latin letter in that assumed script.   He may have decided that they were an oversize final-"s" because it was the "least wrong" prossibility.  

Just as he decided that some cross-like smudges had to be crosses, because there was no Latin letter (not even "t") that would fit that shape.

and since the ‘d’ in aladabas is now clearly written as a “d,”

Same there.  Presumably the smudge there was an incomplete d, and he guessed that it must have been a Latin "d" with that rather unusual shape -- because what else could it have been?

And while this doesn’t happen often in manuscripts in the middle of a word

"Does not happen often"... or rather "never happens"?

there was a great deal of spelling anarchy—a fact that is often forgotten today...

"Spelling anarchy" is a big cop-out.  It can justify arbitrarily stretched readings.

And yet even with that joker card we cannot get valid readings for more than half of the words in that text.

Isn't it strange that this very smart scholar who could devise a new script and a strong encryption scheme was so bad at German and Latin spelling?

But at least you must admit now that the Voynichese text can be full of "spelling errors" too.   Like daiin being written dain or dair or  kaiin or laiin...  No?

All the best, --stolfi