Re: VMs: The Glyphset

[Dennis <tsalagi@xxxxxxxx>]

Nick Pelling wrote:
> 
> AIUI, medieval Latin abbreviations are (basically) Tironian notae... though
> I strongly believe that these are *not* early Arabic numerals, but are
> instead fossilised Tironian notae: I assert that the VMs' mindset dates
> from *before* the broad acceptance of Arabic numerals - that is, its heart
> is late medieval.

	Look at D'Imperio again, or the recent table of
Bright's Characterie.  
They do go back that far.  In the Bright table, I
thought the ones most like 
the VMs were from the 14th century, not the 15th.

> EVA q- does appear to (visually) correspond to how some (typically 14th
> Century) authors wrote "q": but the gallows (shape-wise) remain a mystery.

	I strongly disagree.   Look at Capelli's Tavola IV
again:

http://www.geocities.com/ctesibos/voynich/image/tavolaiv-top.jpg

The resemblance is too strong to be coincidental. This
is one of the few 
definite things we've seen.  

> My general conclusion on the glyphs is that they were mostly appropriated
> from contemporary (Quattrocento) wax-tablet scribal single-stroke
> tachygraphy (shorthand) practice, even the gallows (which I suspect
> probably encoded low multiples of 10) - plus a (very) few Tironian notae
> 'fossils'.

	Maybe so.  There's very little attestation of this
shorthand, so it's currently unknown.  Perhaps I've
missed something; if so, please correct me!

Dennis
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