Re: Off-topic Latin request.

[Dennis <ixohoxi@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Jim Reeds wrote:
> 
> Good work spotting it in Beard, Jim. Bad work on the Latin grammar
> front, Henry: catapulta, -ae, is a first declension noun, and
> hence "catapultum" and "catapultus" (one each in Beard's
> sententiae) are impossible forms. In fact, even without a
> dictionary you can tell something is wrong in the 2nd sentence: no
> Latin noun can have both -ae and -us forms: only 1st declension
> nouns have -ae forms, and only 2nd and 4th declension nouns have
> -us forms. (If only I had remembered this in time for my  final
> exam in Mrs Craik's Latin class in 1962!)

	And, for something of Voynichology interest, there's always:

	"Michiton oladabas multos portas... "

	Note the lack of gender agreement in "multas portas". And, "michi" for
"mihi", and the superfluous "ola-" in front of "dabas".   

	Newbold was much too smart to make mistakes like these.  He must have
felt that the VMs's putative encryyption scheme would leave this error,
since his decipherment scheme had so many variables.  It's the story we
know all too well - a system with so many variables that someone using
it can read plain text into just about anything.

Dennis Stallings