VMs: RE: Michiton oladabas

["GC" <glenclaston@xxxxxxxxx>]

Rene wrote:

> > [...] an attempt to decipher a section of text,
> > and that the would-be decipherer was using a
> > glyph-based transcription that interpreted some
> > of the VMS endings as Latin abbreviations.
> >
> > It also occurred to me that all one would have
> > to do to find the section of text is to use the
> > pattern "oladabas" as a starting point and locate
> > all "words" that fit the pattern of identical
> > glyhs for characters 3, 5, and 7.
>
> It may not be so easy, due to the many possible
> interpretations of what is 1 or 2 characters.

This rather subjective approach to "interpretation" of the VMS
glyphs comes up more than once as a reason for one thing or
another not being easy or practical, doesn't it? :-)

I grant that it is possible that many early researchers were
wrong, and that the VMS script may be stroke-based, but for
purposes of discussion, we all seem to consider <a> as a glyph,
<o> as a glyph, <y> as a glyph, and <e> as a glyph.  <sh> is
usually discussed as a whole, with no discussion I can find on its
separate parts, and we all tend to view the standard gallows and
combinations as individual units.  In fact, I think we can all
come to some agreement that the 23 glyphs that appear individually
in multiple hundreds or thousands of situations are discussed as
individual units in virtually all discussions that take place on
this list.  I'm even willing to admit that Nick has a very good
argument for considering the connected <qo> combination as a glyph
in its own right.

Since most early Voynichologists take these glyphs for granted,
and since we're coming up with more and more evidence every day
that these individual glyphs are related to early tachygraphic
systems, it would be interesting indeed to find that some early
would-be decipherer considered these as glyphs in their historical
context.  F116v is probably such a case.

My first reaction to "oladabas" was that the discussion "falsch
ubren" related to the "o" character, and the "o" with the dotted
line pointing to the "a" character has some significance in this
discussion.  A pattern for oladabas might simply be "OxAxAxAx",
using the <o> and <a> as real equations for the letters.  The "x"
symbol might be the Latin "9" abbreviation, and the "s" equation
most probably the "e" glyph.  "e" is not equated with "s" in
D'Imerio's list, but I stumbled across something somewhere that
did make this equation.  I really need to keep better notes! ;-)

Now that I brought this up, I'm going to have to set up a program
to check each page I transcribe for these occurrences.  I'd really
like to see this marginalia explained.

GC