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.

(Yesterday, 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