(01-02-2025, 04:42 PM)Koen G Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.In this case, I'd say there isn't necessarily an intent to obscure. Maybe there is. But perhaps the marginalia writer did not yet master the language they were trying to write. Maybe they had not mastered writing itself, and made some mistakes turning the words in their head into written text.
I agree that if there's no denotative meaning to be communicated to the reader, there's no need for any obfuscation to be at play. As you said, this could be an instance of pen testing, a spell, or words with a personal meaning or connotation only known to the writer(s).
For the sake of argument, let's say this text was written deliberately to convey something to someone, something beyond random pen tests or spells (even if it's something as tangential to the text as a painting instruction).
If the scribe did not yet master the language they are writing in, why not write in a language they
do master? Here are some ideas I can think of, maybe you can help me out:
- They were instructed not to.
∟ Scribe was copying a text or was told to use this language. Not a satisfying explanation since we would have to then wonder why those instructions were given and shift the question over to the hypothetical instructor. See the other 3 scenarios below:
- They think the intended readers will prefer to read in this language.
∟Maybe the painter is a native Michitonese speaker, a language no longer spoker and of which very few written text survive to this day. We could even consider the possibility of throwing in some loanwords or code-switching, make the marginalia a mixture of Michitonese and other languages. What are the odds that not even through cognates could we make sense out of this?
Although a likely later addition to the MS, the month name of "jong" or "yong" IIRC was a somewhat rare noun but decipherable given the context nonetheless. From what I understand, Michitonese reads like some Romance or Germanic language, or a mixture of both, right? What are the odds of amateur or even professional paleographers not making sense out of a whole line, if the text is just some plaintext, obscure Romance-Germanic language? (Genuine question to you guys btw, maybe it really is difficult af).
- They want to catch the attention of future readers.
∟Medieval hoax hypothesis, etc.
- They want to obfuscate the meaning.
∟The scribe has reasons to restrict the set of readers who will understand the meaning. This would explain why we still have trouble to read the writing even when it's not in Voynichese script.
Option #2 (intended readers will prefer to read this language) is not excluded from this "obfuscation" scenario.
I do like the explanation that the scribe did not master writing itself. If they are the same writer as You are not allowed to view links.
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Login to view. it would even explain the monstruos error of mistaking (and correcting) an m for a d, but would they make so many mistakes as to make the text so unintellegible?
You draw Hanlon's razor, fine, let me draw Occam's instead: If Voynichese is unintellegible through simple substitution (either because it's largely assemic or cipher), unintelligible marginalia could be a case of the same gibberishness written in a different script or under slightly different rules, and it would fit both the Hoax or Cipher theories quite well IMHO. You wouldn't have to assume that any scribe, who were possibly versed in astrology and herbals to some extent, if not more diverse literature, did not yet master writing.