Re: EVA Transcription

["GC" <glenclaston@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Well John, other than a font of its own, I don't know any easy answer.

I have a preference for Currier's early attempt to maintain a transcription
with mnemonic value, a=a o=o m=m, etc.  I personally call the full-looped
gallows an H, and the one with the loop suppressed a K, since it's nothing
more than an H "pressed in on one side", etc.

More importantly I think what I was trying to get at is that one can look at
the characters in the manuscript, figure that 99% of the time two strokes
and a loop make an m, and that there is major connectivity between them, so
this must be a single character, not three.

It is not inconceivable to build a database of the characters and determine
what is written as a unit a high percentage of the time and what is not.  I
must assume that if the author wrote something as a single character, then
its meaning is that of a unit.  Once units are established, counts and
statistics will be based on the unit written as the author intended, and
therefore of much greater value.

There will of course be "errors and oddballs" to deal with, but the
percentage of these if I remember correctly is extremely low.

The suggestion that EVA is "Frogguy made pronounceable" is the same as
saying that the word "to" should be broken into strokes "-!-()" and latin
characters assigned to the strokes might read "iliab", or something similar.
One can pronounce "iliab", or computerize penstrokes to their heart's
content, but the word "to" was written in two units of character, and can
only be understood within that structure.

This is my "for what it's worth", and I won't belabour the point further.  I
am simply upset that new students are taking this EVA transcription to
heart, and even presenting me with counts of items that are nothing more
than "strokes" of the pen, nothing to do with "character" at all.

GC



Well, it's nice to see some active discussion anyway. I think Nick has a
good idea here... The EVA alphabet is a great tool for clear discussions of
a particular line or word item. The dain token differs in structure from the
daiin token - and most of those reading the list know what shape the
characters are in.
GC, is also correct that by developing our own predefined character
strings we may lead ourselves into a mindset that becomes a rule rather than
a tool. No one should state unequivocally that the an, ain, aiin, aiiin are
individual characters by themselves or combinations of c + i + i + end
ligature [or not].
Nick's comment that we should be discussing this in an environment where
dain isn't written in latin characters is a good idea, but may not aid GC's
comments that we're barking up the wrong tree for statistics. It's an easy
enough task to create password protected a web-bulletin board that will
handle EVA's FONT so we can discuss 8an as it looks, but I don't know if
this will aid in destroying the preconceived character-string problem
either.
GC - what's your solution to being able to describe daiiin qoteedy
strings without using a latin-based transliteration scheme?
John.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Nick Pelling" <incoming@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: <voynich@xxxxxxxx>
Sent: Monday, January 14, 2002 9:52 AM
Subject: Re: EVA Transcription

> Hi everyone,
>
> IMO, the basic flaw with EVA isn't the transcription (because every
> transcription [bar one] will be wrong), but trying to communicate via a
> non-HTML-mail mailing list (and hence not being able to use EVA).
>
> If we were able to move the mailing list to a place where we can post HTML
> emails, then we would be closer to a more useful balance, and EVA - even
> given its limitations - would instantly become very much more worthwhile.
>
> HTML-mail security issues aside, of course. :-/
>
> Cheers, .....Nick Pelling.....
>