Re: Nabatean, was Re: VMs: Personal Guess

[Barbara Barrett <barbarabarrett@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

> > Rene Rote;
> > --- Jeff <jeff@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> > > Jeff Sheets sheetsj@xxxxxxx wrote
> > > > Hey, I just found this while surfing.
> > > > http://www.nabataea.net/voynich.html
> > >
> > > This can't be ruled out. The guy makes some very
> > > interesting points ...
> >
> > Actually, I am not too convinced about many of his
> > points, but I can easily believe that the VMs
> > reflects a very old source text (or texts)
> > which may not have been written in Latin or
> > the Latin script. Most classical science as
> > known in the late middle ages has come down to
> > us through the Middle East.

Barbara Babbles;
Neither am I, even strong character shape correspondences do not denote
connection. The two languages that have the highest number of common
characters are Indus Valley and Rongo Rongo - seperated by centuries of
time and thosands of miles of distance - contact between these two
systems is so unlikley that it is safe to call it impossible. 

Almost every writing system in the world has one or more characters in
common with serveral other *unrelated* writing systems - and always they
represent different things (few scripts don't have an "x" shape
somewhere in them or a "u" shape for example, but non represent the same
phoneme/syllable! Japanese has a recognisable cursive "h" but its value
is /n/ or /m/ depending upon word position or the suceeding consonants'
value. EG; /n/ when final or initial but /m/ when the next syllable's
consonant is bilabial - /w/ /p/ /b/). 

The only time one can make a very tentative suggestion that the
characters my be the same (or similer) phoneme or syllabic is when the
scripts are geographically close, culturally tied, or suspected to be
linguistically tied (IE one being ancestral to the other).  That's with
"natural" scripts of course. 

In a created script it depends upon what scripts the creator has been
exposed to, in which case the authour will, for purposes of secrecy,
give a familier letter an unfamilier value.

Not that things don't get reinvented without exposure to the originals.
Elements of runic orthography are turning up in tXt mSSeges, and the
sumarian inovation of turning characters through 90 dgrees has
resurfaced for smilies and other "emotes" :-).

Barbara
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