Here you can probably even see how it was drawn:

   

If you look at the gaps (red arrows), it seems likely that this glyph was not drawn in one stroke. Instead, two letters have merged into one another. Its could be a typical ‘t’ (see also the t directly to its left) and the "3" similar variants of a z. In one place, the ‘z’ has been written over the horizontal bar of the t.

This also supports the theory that it is tz, in addition to all the other words that make sense with tz. Especially since he apparently comes from the language area where this harder pronunciation was common.

(24-12-2025, 04:28 PM)JoJo_Jost Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.You have to remember that the 8 cannot be a ‘d’; the ‘d’ in this handwriting can be seen in aladaba8. It could also be an ‘s’ (see below), but that is also taken, by ‘as’. And “fix”/ "six" (if the f is written as a long stroke, then it is likely that the ‘s’ is also written as a long stroke). 

You seem to be unaware of how a single scribe often used different shapes for a single letter. You should really consider having a look at some actual manuscripts, as Koen suggested above.

I also recommend reading "The Palaeography of Gothic Manuscript Books" by Albert Derolez. It's a small book, written very clearly and well illustrated. If you have an interest in the subject, you will find it useful.

@marco Yes, I ordered it because I'm actually interested in it too. thx. But it also has something to do with probabilities. And I've already translated quite a few handwritten texts. One of the techniques that has always helped me is comparing letters with others in the text in other words. That's common practice and is also done all the time here in this thread. So I don't understand why it should be handled differently with the 8 now?   

But its, okay - I just wanted to prove that the 8 could also be a tz, since Koen had asked and I can't find the source where I read it, which I find annoying myself.  I hope I at least succeeded in doing that.

But just for fun, I'd really be interested to know, because I'm not sure. Who can say how this 8 was written with a quill pen? Where did it start, which path did the quill take, and where did the letter end? Was it written in one continuous stroke, or not? 

It is the 8 in porta8

   

(25-12-2025, 07:13 AM)JoJo_Jost Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Here you can probably even see how it was drawn:

Where did you get that image?  It is not from the McCrone report, is it?

All the best, --stolfi

(25-12-2025, 11:40 AM)JoJo_Jost Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.But just for fun, I'd really be interested to know, because I'm not sure. Who can say how this 8 was written with a quill pen? Where did it start, which path did the quill take, and where did the letter end? Was it written in one continuous stroke, or not? It is the 8 in porta8

The resolution is not sufficient to say for sure.  I think I see three (slow) strokes.

But, in my view, all the text on that page was originally Voynichese. Most of it got washed off by the big water spill and its mopping-up, leaving only the oror Sheey at the corner.  Then the desperate owner tried to restore that text.  But he did not know the Voynichese alphabet, and guessed that it was a charm in Latin letters... He guessed some letters, but could not make sense of them as words, either...

All the best, --stolfi

(25-12-2025, 05:17 PM)Jorge_Stolfi Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.He guessed some letters, but could not make sense of them as words, either...

There are several glyphs on this page other than oror Sheey that look more like Voynichese than Latin letters: the unusual lopsided d, a backward slanted i in "vix", the ch*r before "cere", and even the third "a" of "oladabad". It's not as if they (whoever wrote this page) were unaware that Voynichese letters are different than Latin letters, so replacing some of them with Latin letters by "guessing" is weird. If these were more visible than others, not entirely erased, we would still be able to make out some of them that were not 100% perfectly overwritten. But there is no trace of erased writing in the MSI of f116v, so the idea that there was any ink there before it was overwritten is entirely speculative, unlike on the tomato sauce page f103r, where several mostly erased words are still clearly visible.

(25-12-2025, 05:00 PM)Jorge_Stolfi Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Where did you get that image?  It is not from the McCrone report, is it?

No, it ist from yale: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

4K monitor, copied with Windows key + Shift + S, pasted into Paint.NET and cut together.

           

An ‘8’ is quite normal.
It becomes interesting when the author makes a mistake out of habit.
Such mistakes cause the system to fail.

   

(25-12-2025, 05:36 PM)nablator Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.There are several glyphs on this page other than oror Sheey that look more like Voynichese than Latin letters: the unusual lopsided d, a backward slanted i in "vix", the ch*r before "cere", and even the third "a" of "oladabad". It's not as if they were unaware that Voynichese letters are different than Latin letters, so replacing some of them with Latin letters is weird.

On the contrary.  Imagine that the person trying to restore the writing was a newbie, someone who had spent zero time studying it.  He would have no reason to think that the text is either all Latin Letters or all Voynichese letters, and would have no idea of what these are supposed to look like.  So, when he could only see a few bits of strokes, he naturally guessed a Latin letter that might fit them.

Quote:If these were more visible than others, not entirely erased, we would still be able to make out some of them that were not 100% perfectly overwritten. But there is no trace of erased writing in the MSI of f116v

The resolution of those MSI images is still too low to show such traces.  Here is a much higher magnification of a couple of gyphs on f47r, line 9, near the start (McCrone Report image 6a):

   

The smudges (A1), (A2), (A3) is what remains of the original ink of those glyphs.  As one can see on this image, the parts of the k that were retraced were not "100% perfectly overwritten", but the smudges that remained are invisible on the Beinecke 2014 scans and would be invisible on  the MSI scans of that page, if it had been imaged.

The original bits of the You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. text that survived the spill must have been even fainter, and they must have been all retraced.  To see the bits of those bits that were missed by the retracer would require images with at least the same resolution as the one above.

All the best, --stolfi