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Gabriel Landini wrote:
> I thought that this is worth sharing with the list.
>
> On 20 Jan 2001, at 9:07, Mark Perakh wrote:
> > Gabriel, in your list five VMS characters which supposedly are vowels are
> > shown in green, and one in white. Those five which are in green I found in
> > the conversion table on Rene's site, but the white character I did not
> > found in that table. Characters that correspond to R and T in Currier's
> > alphab have both some similarity to that white character, but not exactly.
> > ??? Mark
>
> The story goes like this. Currier created an alphabet that does not
> cover all the characters in the vms. EVA does :-), so I converted
> from EVA to Currier and those EVA-chars which do not exist in
> Currier's (which is written in capitals) were left in EVA (which is in
> lower case).
> So the character in white similar to a @ (EVA <u>) is not present
> in Currier alphabet's, but it is still present in the ms.
> EVA u seems like a squashed EVA <on> or even <an>, so it may
> not be a character on its own, perhaps just a funny ending <a>
> since it appears at the end of words
> - (this reminds me that at primary school I was taught to write a
> different shape of z (extending below the line) when it is word final. I
> do not know if this silly detail is taught anywhere else)-
>
> Anyway, <u> appears about 6 times, always word ending:
>
> <f11v.4> ...-ctho.tchey.tu
> <f35v.6> shol.tcheey.chkcheeu.chcthaiin
> <f71r.C3> ...okeeody.oteey.chekeu{?}.okeol
> <f86r6.C7> {00:00}okas.epar.chir,u.oteo,t[o|e]idy...
> <f89v1.5> ....cheo,kchey.qokoiin.du
> <f105v.11> roees.aiiin.ol.okaiin.os.aiin.chckhodu.
>
> Moreover, the Z of the FSG alphabet recognised by Sukhotin's
> algorithm cannot be a vowel, because Z is a suffix to indicate a
> complex gallow (in EVA) c*h, where * is one of the 4 gallows. At
> most, the Z could be thought as an overimposed <ch> over the
> gallow, but in any case, it is not sequentially correct.
>
> I hope this helps.
> Regards,
> Gabriel
It surely does help. Thanks, Gabriel. Now, when I was able to compare the list
of the supposed vowels in VMS according to Sukhotin's algorithm with the list I
compiled on the base of LSC I found that only two of my supposed vowels
(represented in Currier's alphab by 9 and C) are also vowels in the
Sukhotin's-based list. Interesting that both are also supposedly vowels in the
list proposed by Jim Reeds, which is overall closer to Sukhotin's list of vowels
than my list. I doubt that we have a definite identifications of vowels so far,
since each approach is based on some unconfirmed assumptions. I certainly do not
claim that my list is better substantiated than any other since my list was
obtained by making a number of guesses which have no direct proofs. I viewed the
correct ratio of my supposed vowels in the text to that in the alphabet as an
argument in favor of my hypothesis, but it very well could be just a
coincidence. Did anybody check the ratio of the percentage of Sukhotin's based
supposed vowels in the text to that in the VMS alphabet? Is it within the range
typical of natural languages? If VMS is a hoax, it is hard to believe its
creator(s) sucessfully imitated the ratio in question. Hence, if the ratio in
question falls within the right range, it is an argument in favor of VMS being a
meaningful text. For example, in English the percentage of vowels in a typical
sufficiently long text is about 37%, while in the alphabet it is 23%. In
Finnish, which is at the top of the range (excluding those exotic tongues
Frogguy has mastered in scores) the percentage of vowels in a text is about 65%,
but in most of other languages it does not exceed 40-45%. Czech is at the
bottom of the scale, as its alphabet consists of 41 letters of which 13
represent vowels (31%).Cheers, Mark
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