A lot of uncertainties remain about the handwriting of the German-Latin-like text of f116v. Could it have been written by the Voynich scribes, or does it belong in a slightly later period? Are some of its features unique, or are they found elsewhere? Do some features point to a specific region, and if so, how specific? Sometimes, we see a script that looks and feels the same, but looks may be deceiving, so we need to come up with a standard way of comparing and assessing comparative scripts.
Inspired by Katie Painter and Claire Bowern's paper You are not allowed to view links.
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Login to view. (presented at the Malta conference), Marco Ponzi and I got talking about doing something similar for the You are not allowed to view links.
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Now if we are to learn anything new from this, we will need lots of data. Therefore, the whole thing has been set up with collaboration in mind. First, we have to make sure that our categories are clear and well-selected. So if you are somewhat familiar with the You are not allowed to view links.
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Then, if you would like to collaborate on this project, even if it is just by adding one manuscript every once in a while, please let me know and I will invite you to be an editor on the file.
Some notes:
- In the images, green means good, red means bad. When something is circled in red, it is a counterexample.
- We did not include certain glyphs that were too problematic:
- "8"-shaped glyphs, there is still too much discussion about whether they are 'd' or short-'s' or both
- 'i', it is too variable
- 't' and 'c', they can be too difficult to tell apart in this kind of script
- We did include 'c' as part of the 'ch' ligature
Tips for filling in the file:
- Manuscripts can have multiple scribes. To make sure that you stick with one scribe, ideally look at one or a few adjacent folios.
- A form needs to be somewhat common. For example, a feature of the You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. script is that the bottom of 'a' is open. If you hunt through a manuscript for any 'a' with an open bottom, you will probably find one, but this is not the point. If a scribe closes all of his 'a' on a page apart from one, then his 'a' is closed.
- It is clear that we are looking at the bastarda/gothic cursive family of scripts, but within that family it will be useful to include a lot of variation. I have been testing it mostly with 15th century German manuscripts so far, but we also need 14th century, 16th century, England, France... Just to get a more well-rounded data set. Got a favorite manuscript? Put it in there!
- The total is automatically calculated in the blue column. Expect scores to be low! The maximum to be obtained is 25, but it will be a challenge to find anything over 15. A good score is around 10, an awesome score is between 10 and 15.
So let me know if there is anything you would like to see changed, and if you would like to help with this project!