Could "a" be a ligature?

[Rafal]

Have a look:
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How do you think? May the symbol which we transcribe as "a"  be a kind of ligature which is actually "ci"?
Do you think it's impossible, improbable, possible or sure? 

Notice that:
- there is a often a small hole in the botom of Voynichese "a", not like in our regular "a"
- the right side of "a" is slant, just like Voynichese "i"


Personally I think it is probable but we cannot be sure. It also doesn't change anything at the moment, currently reading "a" as "ci" doesn't give
us any advantage. But at some moment it could be useful.

[nablator]

Could be. In a few instances, daiin is actually written deiiin, with a tiny separation between e and i, they are in the V101 transliteration IIRC. I don't believe the difference is significant, like most of the glyph variants, because the handwriting is far from perfect.

[oshfdk]

Have a look:
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How do you think? May the symbol which we transcribe as "a"  be a kind of ligature which is actually "ci"?
Do you think it's impossible, improbable, possible or sure? 

I have no idea, but as far as I remember, splitting 'a' into 'ei' (I think it's 'ei' rather than 'ci', since there is no bar) has a long history. It was mentioned in You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. (excerpt below) and I think something like this was discussed even earlier.

   

Suppose 'a' is 'ei', what are the implications of this?

[Bluetoes101]

Other than "e" and "i" I think every glyph is made up of at least 2 strokes, I'm guessing due to not wanting to drastically change direction with the writing implement and cause blotching. 

If you look closely at "o" you'll notice it is done "( )". I think this is probably why "a" and "o" can be hard to tell apart in some places. 

So, it could be.. but by extension the logic might mean everything else could be too.

[zachary.kaelan]

I was pretty convinced that it was, but given that 94% of sequences of i's start with an "a", I think it's more likely to be just some kind of "i" variant for the start of a set. If you replace all instances of "a" with "ci" the already struggling character entropy drops even further.

[Rafal]

I have no idea, but as far as I remember, splitting 'a' into 'ei' (I think it's 'ei' rather than 'ci', since there is no bar)

You are of course right that it would be "ei" and not "ci" in EVA transcription. I must always remember that what looks like "c" is in EVA "e" 

If you replace all instances of "a" with "ci" the already struggling character entropy drops even further.

Yes, but it will become even more similar to Roman numerals. Maybe it is the right trail???

Take the most common word "daiin". If we assume that:
- "a" is "ei"
- "n" is a last, ornate "i" in the word

Then "daiin" become "8CIIII". Would it be some mix of Arabic and Latin numbers? "8 14"? Some field in a table marked by row and collumn?

And if "a" is "ei" then what is "o"? I suppose many of us would agree that these two signs behave very similarly.

Lots of questions, not much answers...

[Koen G]

Where does EVA-a actually add information? The best answer I can come up with is this: in the vast majority of cases, the only information provided by [a] is that [o] wasn't chosen instead. And the o-cases tend to be rarer.

[Bluetoes101]

Where does EVA-a actually add information? The best answer I can come up with is this: in the vast majority of cases, the only information provided by [a] is that [o] wasn't chosen instead. And the o-cases tend to be rarer.

When you see "a" you can be quite sure "k,t,f,p,d" will not be next, this is not the case for "o"

[Koen G]

Yeah, they are certainly not the same. What I mean is that if you dropped all a's from the MS, almost all resulting words would be rare or invalid. But when "restoring" these words, you couldn't always be absolutely certain that an "a" was removed, because it could also have been "o".

[Rafal]

When you see "a" you can be quite sure "k,t,f,p,d" will not be next, this is not the case for "o"

That's good observation. Now you made me think that "a" and "o" aren't that much similar.

- things like "aiin" or "aiir" are much more common that "oiin" and "oiir"
- but "ar" and "al" (without "i"s ) are the same common as "or" and "ol"
- on the other hand "o" with gallows like "oK", "oT" or "oP" is much more common then "a" with gallows which is rare

By, the way, I just noticed at the page You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. some hybrid of "a" and "n" 
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