Re: Nabatean, was Re: VMs: Personal Guess

[Nick Pelling <incoming@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Bruce,

At 16:43 10/08/2003 -0700, Bruce Grant wrote:
> Though it is always possible that the VMS represents a natural language 
> encoded
> in some way (say, a transcription of a non-written language or a 
> shorthand), the
> idea that it is plaintext in a language that we can't read only because it 
> is so
> obscure seems pretty unsupportable to me.

While it's difficult to predict with much accuracy what European shorthands 
in the lull between Tironian notae and Bright's Characterie would have 
looked like, I think we can rule this out in the VMS' case, simply because 
of the complex structuring we've observed from the statistics.

A shorthand would be very much more predictable than what we observe - it 
would need to be, in order to be able to be read back successfully.

Cheers, .....Nick Pelling..... 


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