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Did the scribes copy the letters correctly?

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• Did the scribes copy the letters correctly?

• RE: Did the scribes copy the letters correctly?

  ololololo > 8 hours ago

  (Today, 04:07 AM)agalakhov Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Well, I personally have another variant of this theory.
  
  The manuscript is a copy. The Scribe was not hired, he was working for himself copying some manuscript not known to us. The original was in a language barely known to the Scribe, so the Scribe had to invent his own way to write down and even to read the glyphs.
  
  Just an experiment: what would happen if a person who only knows Latin would try to copy a text in Greek or, even worse, Arabic without understanding it at all, especially if it is not a very clear writing? Consider the person to be really overconfident about their writing skills. It could even be that someone has mistaken right-to-left script as left-to-right and wrote a "copy" of it in such a way. I can easily imagine a person who owns some book that he can't read but for some reason believes that this book is of extreme value and thus must be copied at all costs.
  
  This would explain many features of the Voynich manuscript including existence of some grammatical structure (the original had it and it wasn't completely destroyed even during such a "copying"), low entropy (the copier has mistaken different words for the same one), prevalence of certain glyphs in certain positions (that's how the copier has read them), slightly different language of two different scribes (they included their personality in their copies) and so on.
  
  Unfortunately, such a theory is very hard both to prove and to disprove. The only real proof would be finding the original, but even if it existed, it is very unlikely to exist today. So I don't believe my theory is of any use, I just keep in mind that what we're trying to read is not necessarily correctly written.

  According to this logic, a very inept person took over the rewriting of this ancient book, because, apparently, he made a mistake with all the drawings.

• RE: Did the scribes copy the letters correctly?

  Jorge_Stolfi > 7 hours ago

  (Today, 04:07 AM)agalakhov Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.The manuscript is a copy.

  
  With that I agree.  The alternative is the "Brain to Vellum" theory -- that whoever composed the text wrote his message directly on the physical artifact kept at Beinecke.   But a copy of what?
  
  

  Quote:The Scribe was not hired, he was working for himself

  
  That is possible.  People often borrowed books that they wanted and copied them themselves.
  
  

  Quote:The original was in a language barely known to the Scribe

  
  I agree with that too.  So far, while our scenarios are different, they lead to the same situation.
  
  

  Quote:I can easily imagine a person who owns some book that he can't read but for some reason believes that this book is of extreme value and thus must be copied at all costs.

  
  Yes, that happened many times.  John Dee was obsessed with a Book of Sogya that contained nothing but some large grid tables filled with letters in mysterious patterns.  AFAIK no one knows how he got it, but if he saw it in someone else's library and the owner did not want to sell it, he surely would have borrowed it and had it copied.
  
  I did that myself twice.  Once I copied by hand half a page of a biography of Jacobus in Latin (which I cannot read), in a library that did not allow xeroxing or photographing.  
  
  And over the last year I digitally transcribed by hand 20 pages of a mysterious manuscript of unknown contents, written in a unique indecipherable script, which you may have heard about...
  
  

  Quote:so the Scribe had to invent his own way to write down and even to read the glyphs.

  
  This I find questionable.  If the text was written with isolated characters -- like Hebrew, Armenian, Cyrillic, Chinese, etc. -- the person would have to learn to distinguish the various glyphs of that alphabet anyway. Then he should just copy those characters as they were.  Inventing a different original alphabet would not help.  It would only slow down the copying, and the result would not be any easier to read.
  
  And if the script was cursive, like Arabic, I don't see how he could have even started to do that.
  
  Therefore, I agree that then VMS was copied by a Scribe who could not read it.  But he must have copied from a text in the same script.  
  
  

  Quote:It could even be that someone has mistaken right-to-left script as left-to-right and wrote a "copy" of it in such a way.

  
  I agree that it is possible.  The shape of the paragraphs and other details strongly indicate that the Scribe wrote it from left to right.  But he could have copied from an original written right to left, reading it left to right.  Maybe the line breaks are his own, or maybe he reproduced the original breaks too.
  
  That is, the original may have been
  
    word06 word05 word04 word03 word02 word01 
    word12 word11 word10 word09 word08 word07
                                word14 word13
  
  written right-to-left, and our Scribe may have copied left-to-right as
  
    word06 word05 word04 word03 word02 word01
    word12 word11 word10 word09 word08 word07
    word14 word13
  
  or even as 
  
    word06 word05 word04 word03 
    word02 word01 word12 word11 
    word10 word09 word08 word07
    word14 word13
  
  Either possibility would have embarrassing consequences for anyone who has been analyzing correlations across word and line breaks...
  
  

  Quote:Unfortunately, such a theory is very hard both to prove and to disprove.

  
  I don't believe this last part (right-to-left original) is true.  But, if it were, one might find evidence of it, even without deciphering the text.  Just as we find evidence that the Scribe wrote left-to-right, and did not understand the text, and wrote Aries in the Zodiac before Pisces, and both before the Bio section...
  
  All the best, --stolfi

• RE: Did the scribes copy the letters correctly?

  agalakhov > 4 hours ago

  (7 hours ago)Jorge_Stolfi Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.This I find questionable.  If the text was written with isolated characters -- like Hebrew, Armenian, Cyrillic, Chinese, etc. -- the person would have to learn to distinguish the various glyphs of that alphabet anyway. Then he should just copy those characters as they were.

  
  Depending on how the original as written, this is not always true. Horizontal lines could be barely visible or there could be extra connecting lines between the glyphs. The spaces could be uniform in within and between glyphs.
  
  Here, "u", "n" and "ii" are very similar. There are connection lines between some glyphs so one could mistake i.e. "un" for "i□i" and thus invent a glyph "□" (square "o") that did not exist in the original.
  
  There is well-known example of modern Cyrillic handwriting:
  
  So, for the question "in a language that is normally written with isolated characters, are these characters always distinguishable for a person not knowing the language?" - the answer is definitely "no" for both modern and medieval writing.
  
  The unusual "-aiin" - "aiiin" pattern everywhere could be simply explained if "ii" and "iii" are indeed parts of one glyph. Here in other thread there was a suggestion that this could be something like "ων". Here one can probably prove that the Scribe indeed has meant "iii" as three glyphs. But what if the Scribe himself did not know the difference?

• RE: Did the scribes copy the letters correctly?

  ololololo > 2 hours ago

  (4 hours ago)agalakhov Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

  (7 hours ago)Jorge_Stolfi Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.This I find questionable.  If the text was written with isolated characters -- like Hebrew, Armenian, Cyrillic, Chinese, etc. -- the person would have to learn to distinguish the various glyphs of that alphabet anyway. Then he should just copy those characters as they were.

  
  Depending on how the original as written, this is not always true. Horizontal lines could be barely visible or there could be extra connecting lines between the glyphs. The spaces could be uniform in within and between glyphs.
  
  Here, "u", "n" and "ii" are very similar. There are connection lines between some glyphs so one could mistake i.e. "un" for "i□i" and thus invent a glyph "□" (square "o") that did not exist in the original.
  
  There is well-known example of modern Cyrillic handwriting:
  
  So, for the question "in a language that is normally written with isolated characters, are these characters always distinguishable for a person not knowing the language?" - the answer is definitely "no" for both modern and medieval writing.
  
  The unusual "-aiin" - "aiiin" pattern everywhere could be simply explained if "ii" and "iii" are indeed parts of one glyph. Here in other thread there was a suggestion that this could be something like "ων". Here one can probably prove that the Scribe indeed has meant "iii" as three glyphs. But what if the Scribe himself did not know the difference?

  About szynszyla... The example you gave is far from szynszyla (I speak as a person for whom Russian is his native language). The Cyrillic н is written without loops, so it should have been distinguishable. The example illustrates not a feature of the font, but a feature of the handwriting.
  But it leads to the idea that I described in the post itself: the scribe could adapt the original alphabet to suit his convenience, so that at least it would be convenient to write with a pen, but in the process he could copy some letters incorrectly.
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