Re: Unique character counts for herbal section

["Philip Neal" <philipneal_vms@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

> I just finished updating and verifying my
> transcription of some of the herbal section, and
> ran this count on unique characters.  Some folios
> hit 24 characters, but if wierdos were removed
> (those that appear only once and are very likely
> an embellishment or mistake for a known
> character), we have a high-end count of 23
> characters for the herbal section.  It's still
> possible that the actual count is 24, since these
> passages are generally very short.
>
> This count is in line with a western latin
> alphabet or table.  Many tables exist from the
> 15th and 16th centuries that place Greek, Hebrew
> and Latin alphabets against each other in
> sequences of 23.  English and Latin had no J, no
> Y, and no Z, and the alphabet is extended to 24 by
> the addition of the "Y", taken from the Greek
> alphabet.

This is the kind of work I like to see! Note that
rare letters have fewer words which they can belong to
(a well known example is Latin K, which is virtually
restricted to the word kalendae) and that words with
one rare letter often contain two (for instance Latin
azyma). I have said before that I think the Voynich
words are not words: the rare letters might indicate
where the same plaintext word appears at different
points in the manuscript.

Philip Neal


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