RE: VMs: News and Replies

["GC" <glenclaston@xxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Nick,

We at least agree that these "notes" are Tyronian in origin to a
great extent.  What lies beyond that may be more telling than we
now realise...


> Here, I'm pointing specifically to the constructional
> difference in
> stroke-style. Whereas the rest look like they have been
> adapted directly
> from a fluid, single-stroke shorthand alphabet,
> developed for use on wax
> tablets, the angular "4" glyph seems a different kind
> of beast - that seems
> like a glyph designed for use on paper or parchment.
> This is the particular
> difference I'm flagging here.

Before paper or parchment became affordable, virtually all
languages were adapted for wax tablets, which also made shorthand
more popular I would assume.  It seems however that this
individual wrote the VMS during a time when paper, parchment, and
the third rate vellum on which it is written were at least readily
available, and most of us agree that it was written after the
invention of moveable type.  The argument can be made that *all*
shorthand systems evolved from ones well adapted for wax tablet
notation, the most probable medium for shorthand note takers.  I
don't think we disagree here to any significant extent on the
origins of the system or the medium for which it was originally
intended.

Beyond that we get into something a little more complex, namely,
whether or not wax tablets were the primary writing medium of the
author.  Note that I say author, not authors.  I have yet to find
a page that is in so clearly different a hand that I even suspect
that more than one person contributed to the VMS.

> If, exactly as in the other cipherbets where they
> appear as a pair of
> codes, "4" and "4o" code for separate tokens, why
> should the more common
> (by a large degree) be the longer of the two?
>
> To me, whatever genesis of the cipherbet you infer
> would need to explain
> this and similar phenomena: my inference is that the
> cipherbet was designed
> to look like a simple contemporary cipher, and to do
> that you'd need to
> keep the number of apparent letters to about 23-25.

That's pretty much the ballpark "per page", but the alphabet
itself is, I think, a little more extensive, even weeding out rare
markings that may be "motion indicators".

> Adapting an existing shorthand alphabet provided the
> first pass, and this
> may even have been used in some correspondence (now
> lost). However, I
> believe that when the same basic cipherbet was applied
> to the particular
> content of the VMS, an additional rare letter was found
> (which I think may
> well have been "z") and the "4" glyph added to code for
> it, perhaps by a
> second code-maker.

Why a 'z'?  Why not the allowance of a 'y', a Greek addition that
was not necessary in the Latin alphabet.  In fact, only a couple
of local languages in the 15th and 16th centuries actually made
use of the 'y', and even fewer the 'z'.  The addition of either
would narrow the local language to a great degree.

I wish I had more time to respond and raise some very good
questions.... perhaps later.  I'm just glad we're both working on
the same angle.

GC


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