Re: "abiril" vs "aberil"  Post #1071

I'm no expert, but if a selection of 15th C. texts is examined with the criterion of discovering how was the letter "e" constructed by various writers, some likely relevant information can be found.

I would construct the lower-case letter "e' starting with a short horizontal stroke from left to right that then loops up and back in a rough arch that connects to the starting point and then follows through in the full curve below. All without lifting the pen. That is not how the letter is constructed in many medieval texts. The investigation shows the letter "e" constructed of two separate parts that are meant to be connected, but when the examples show more informal handwriting, that connection doesn't always happen. Then there can be a clear separation of the two parts.

I believe it is generally agreed that the VMs is an example of such a separation and that it is "aberil" with a two-part "e" that didn't get connected.

Aberil is a bit off topic here, let's discuss that in one of the month names threads. The handwriting of the month names is certainly different from that of f116v.

(Yesterday, 12:54 PM)N._N. Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Sorry, but this is clearly a misleading oversiplification. Everything we know about the manuscript, every kind of reasonable research reveals connections or information that we may not yet be able to piece together, but which might ultimately help getting closer to a solution, whatever that might be.

Perfect, but where does this contradict what I wrote?  Why was it a "misleading oversimplification"?

While collecting evidence, we must be well aware of what exactly it is about.  For instance, when studying the binding and cover of the book, we must keep in mind that the book was re-bound centuries after it was written, and that the cover is not original.  When analyzing the nymphs' hats, we must be aware that many of them were probably added by a later owner, again centuries after the original drawings were made. 

And, in particular, we must be aware that the person(s) who actually wrote the text and drew the figures on the parchment was quite probably not the same person who collected the information, chose the language, devised the script and the encoding, composed the text, and sketched the figures.

As I wrote before, I believe that the reason why no progress was made in the decipherment of the text in 600 years is that everybody jumped to the wrong conclusions about the language and contents, precisely because they tacitly but wrongly assumed that a certain mountain of evidence that has been collected was relevant to those questions.

All the best, --jorge