Re: Latest on Hamptonese

[Dennis <ixohoxi@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Jorge Stolfi wrote:
> 
>     > [Dennis:] I also think that Hampton thought that his script had
>     > mystical significance. Every piece of his Throne is labeled both
>     > in English and Hamptonese.
> 
> Those labels may be the Rosette stone! But surely that has been
> tried before, and obviously it didn't work... But at least the labels
> should put some constraints on the nature of the Hamptonese "code".

	I really don't know who has tried to decipher it or
how, so I'm not so sure that anyone tried using the
approach we use here in Team Voynich.  Even a crippie
might not think to try phonemic English.  I used just
the same techniques one would use to solve any simple
substitution cryptogram, although it felt like solving
one in a language I didn't know well.  The stats for
phonemic English are rather different from standard
English orthography.  

	As for a Rosetta Stone, Hampton has plenty of cribs. 
The tables of the Ten Commandments are just one
example.  He occasionally put some English words in a
Hamptonese text.  He has alternating paragraphs in
Hamptonese and English.  I agree, though, that it would
be a good idea to get some of the bilingual furniture
tags.
 
> Hampton *could* conceivalbly have used a logographic system where each
> word was encoded by 2 or 3 of what you consider to be single letters.

	A simple nomenclator?  That's possible.  However,
Hampton was not well educated, and the Hamptonese texts
are written in a flowing, easy manner -- just as the
VMs is.  So I doubt this.

> And/or, perhaps Hamptonese has a very small vocabulary and does not
> record syntactic subtleties --- sort of a simplified Chinese,
> specialized for commandments and revelations. However I agree that
> these theories are stretching it...

	That sounds like Levitov.  If this is some
Afro-American "spirit writing", that might well be
possible.

> On the other hand, it seems a bit unlikely that Hampton would develop
> a truly phonetic alphabet with distinctive signs for 30+ sounds.
> Instead, I would expect a system where the same symbol represents two
> or three distinct phonemes, that are to be disambiguated by context
> --- as in standard English spelling. (Only I would expect Hampton's
> "spelling" to be more systematic than English).

	I don't think that Hampton's spelling would be very
consistent.  Too, a phonemic writing system would lend
itself to the variation  of spoken English.  "The" in
English is usually pronounced "dhuh" but in formal
speech or for emphasis, it may be pronounced "dhI". 
Black people might pronounce it "duh".  There are
countless other examples.  

> I see that you also ignored the underlining in some characters--- cf.
> e.g. the "l"s of <p10.2> and <p10.15>, and the "v"s of <p10.7> and
> <p10.20>. 

	That passed my notice completely.  But even with that,
we might not have a syllabary.  The underlining could
indicate something comparable to the way Hawai'ian uses
the macron to indicate "long" vowels.  

>   Attend mass every Sunday and holy day.
> 
>   Keep the fasting days and abstinence from meat as commanded by the Church.
> 
>   Confess all sins to a Priest at least once a year.
> 
>   Take Communion at least once a year.

	Not having been raised a Catholic, I never heard of
these lists.  In *Perceval* by Chretien de Troyes a
priest tells Perceval, the simpleton, such a list. 
Obviously such lists have been around a long time.  In
his letters Paul recites several such lists.  The
scholars say that these were typical lists of household
virtues in the Hellenistic age.

> In the New testament, Jesus recites five of the ten commandments:
> 
>   "You shall not murder," [OT VI.]
>   "You shall not commit adultery;" [OT VII.]
>   "You shall not steal;" [OT VIII.]
>   "You shall not bear false witness:" [OT IX.]
>   "Honor your father and mother." [OT V.]
> 
> There seems to be a lot of theological writing, Christian and
> non-Christian, about the question of why those five and not the other
> five.

	Good question.  I read recently that Sabbath
observance was not practiced until after the Jews
returned from the Babylonian Exile.  Maybe the
Commandments weren't emphasized either.  

	The end of the Jewish War in 70 CE was a watershed in
Jewish history.  The Jewish leaders met at Javneh. 
They realized that Jewish worship could no longer
center on the now destroyed Temple.  Worship would have
to be in the household and at the synagogues.   The
Torah and other Jewish writings would provide
consistency.  Much of the nitpicking body of rules
undoubtedly entered Judaism after that decision.  

> Judaism identifies among the ten OT commandments a
> subset of seven "Noachian Commandments", that
> were given to Noah. (A gentile who follows them is considered
> righteous enough to join the kingdom of God in some sense).

<NITPICK>

	The Noachian commandments were not all drawn from the
10 Commandments.  I don't remember the details, but one
Noachian commandment was not to eat limbs torn from
living animals.  

</NITPICK>

> A [non-denominational?] site about the 10 commandments
> http://www.religioustolerance.org/chr_10co.htm
> observes that "Literally read, the [Old Testament] Decalogue includes
> 19 different commands and prohibitions. If the text is further divided
> into component parts, there are a total of 25 instructions."

	Fortunately we have a lot of other cribs.  

	I'm starting that Hamptonese is like Helene Smith's
"Martian", except that Hampton used the phonemes of
modern.  I'll coin a term.  "Neoglossy" is both the act
of producing a hitherto unknown language in an altered
state of consciousness, and a word to denote the
language thus produced.  I've always thought that
Enochian is a neoglossy.  Kelley doesn't seem like the
sort of person who would write out a language of words
based on Elizabethian English, Latin, Greek, and
Hebrew, and then remember to produce it consistently. 
He wasn't that thorough and scholarly a person.  

	I suppose that those two neoglossy's will help some
with the decipherment of Hamptonese.  

Dennis