Re: VMs: Occitan months...?

[Jorge Stolfi <stolfi@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

  > [Nick Pelling:] Here's a nice page I put together showing all the
  > months (from the zodiac sidfiles) in one place, with their
  > individual strokes outlined in colour
  > http://www.voynichinfo.com/nickpelling/months/occitan-months.html

Great page! 

Here are some observations:

  Mars:

    I think that there is a small "parsing" error here. You have an
    "r" consisting of three parts (blue): a "v"-like stroke, a short
    dash, and a descending stroke. Instead the "r" should comprise the
    first two parts only; and the second part is actually an almost
    square stroke that starts with your short dash but extends
    south-by-southeast until the edge of the "c".

    The descending blue stroke below the "c" is definitely part of the
    latter, not of the "r". The "hollow font" style and the "serifs"
    of that "c" are rather strange (but they remind me of the brown
    outline of the bottom big red gliph on f1r.) Perhaps the scribe
    pressed the pen so hard that it left two widely separated streaks,
    which joined when he released the pressure at the bottom.
    
    And/or perhaps that letter was originally a "c" with a
    pressure-split stroke, or a "c" with a cedilla under it, or an "s"
    shaped somewhat like the Greek final-sigma; but the letter was
    retraced at a later time, and the Retracer mistook it for an
    "outline-font c".
    
  April-1:
    
    Note the lighter tone of the "thunderbolt"-like superscript after
    the main "b", and the faint "echo" of the dot over the "i". It
    would seem that this word too has been re-written over a faint
    original.
    
  April-2: 
 
    The superscript on the "b" looks rather different from that of
    April-1, and there is no sign of a dot over the "i". Could it be
    that this word was written by the Retracer on the blank vellum,
    attempting to copy April-1, rather than just touched up?
    
  May-2:
  
    Note that the circumflex of May-1 has been dropped in May-2.
    
  August:
  
    The "s" (blue stroke) should probably extend down until the
    horizontal arm of the "t". In Rene's 15th century alphabet (that
    matches well with other month-label letter shapes), the "t" looks
    more like an EVA "c" than a modern "t".
    
  September:
  
    I cannot figure out the symbol after the "s" (green stroke), but
    it does not seem to be just an "e".  Perhaps it is two letters?
    
  October:
  
    The top stroke of the "c" should extend further to the  right.
    
    I would guess that the thin vertical line above the "t" is a stray
    pen mark, not really part of the "t".
    
    The bottom of your yellow symbol is not a loop, but a single
    descending stroke, split in two by pen pressure. The left half of
    your cyan symbol is actually the right half of "b"'s belly.
    
    The "r" actually comprises the second vertical cyan stroke, a
    faint north-by-northeast connector, and a squarish stroke that is
    the leftmost tip of your blue symbol.  
    
    The blue symbol thus should be reduced to an "underscore" with an
    "apostrophe" over it.
    
  November:
  
    The cyan symbol probably includes the leftmost tip of the blue
    one, so as to make an "r" shaped like the others above.
    
  December:
  
    The "d" (red) should include the brown arch above it, 
    completing a theta-like shape.
    
    There are three "thunderbolt" superscripts in this word; the
    second one should include the faint vertical wisp extending from
    its left end.
    
    The bottom of the "b" should be  round; the corner you got there
    is the tip of the archer's boot.
    
    The "r" should again include the squarish stroke
    at the start of the following blue glyph.
    
    The last symbol should have two strokes, a "shallow bowl"
    with a "thunderbolt" above it.
    
  > Could they be written in Occitan? I think so - but what do you think?
    
There are several symbols which we need to "decipher"

  (1) the horizontal bar over the "e" of September, October, 
  and November.  I presume that it is a tilde, so those "e"s 
  should be read "en" or "em". 

  (2) The circumflex in May-1.  Could it be two dots over an "ij", 
  misinterpreted by the Retoucher?  Or could it be a macron that 
  was once used to distinguish "y" from "ij"?  (There seems
  to be such a macron on the last symbol of June.)
  
  (3) The "staircase" superscript after the "b" of September.
  Presumably it is a scribal shorthand for "er" or "re"?
  
  (4) A "shallow bowl" with a "thunderbolt" above it, in April-1,
  November, and December (×3). Hmmm... hey, it looks very much like
  an "é" ("e" with acute accent)!
    
  (5) A "shallow bowl"  with a check-mark like superscript in April-2,
  presumably a mis-shapen variant of (4).
  
  (6) An "underscore" with an "apostrophe" over it, at the end of October.
  Perhaps an even more mis-shapen variant of (4)?
  
  (7) The superscript shaped like a small "L" in September. Another
  mis-shapen (4)?
  
So if (4) is indeed an "é", we have

  "marc", "març", or "mars"
  
  "abéril" (×2)
  
  "may", or perhaps "maij" (×2)
  
  "yony", or perhaps "yonij"
  
  "jollie"(?)
  
  "s??p?émber" or "s??p?émbre"
  
  "octémbre"
  
  "novembré"
  
  "décébré"
  
For whatever it is worth...

--stolfi

    
  
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