(17-03-2025, 09:41 AM)MarcoP Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.1. o. wr^ of o. dn~ is in.y~, as he t chi.y mo 9.&in-
sp.^s y~, & is th.^ Gn~l, S.lg co~miss.~ to his vni u^s.l vicar
& Leuten.t, rec.g pow^ fr him, Apoc.13.2.
Here's what I came up with for that passage:
1. The wrath of the dragon is in them, as he that chiefly mous & in-
spires them, and is their General, sealing commission to his vniuersal vicar
and Lieutenant, receiuing power from him, Apoc. 13. 2.
What looks like a dot in "in.y~" is, I believe, actually part of the "i" one line below. Final "9" is often used for "-us" even in English words such as "thus"; in this case, it seems to be used similarly in "mous" for "mov's" (i.e., "moves"). On further thought, I've concluded that the symbol for "that" isn't "+" but simply "t." with the final period sometimes joined to the "t" -- similar to the dot at the end of "fr.", which ends up looking more like "fn" as a result.
I too am skeptical about this kind of abbreviation lowering entropy on the whole. However, some contrastive phonemic or graphemic information that would ordinarily be reflected in writing gets removed when it isn't required for comprehension, leading to similar forms for quite dissimilar words (e.g., "bo." = "body"; "so." = "soul"). Word endings also seem to gravitate towards a more limited range of forms, so that -- for example -- a final superscript "t" or "r" can substitute for a variety of longhand phonemic or graphemic sequences. Even though fewer characters end up being used, the characters that are kept seem in some respects to be unexpectedly predictable. But again: I don't know whether these tendencies are strong enough to counterbalance the increase of entropy we'd typically associate with abbreviation in general.