Re: VMs: Re: Re: Inks and retouching

["GC" <gc-@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

John wrote:

> Sometimes your 'colour' is just a little too colourful. 8-)

What the heck, it was only Wednesday, and I'm not due to visit Earth again
till next week.  So much of conversation is simply too serious, maybe I do
get carried away - I'll try to reign in my id. :-)

> Anyway, in reference to the oddity of the word ending in 'i' I don't think
> anyone decided that and EVA <i> couldn't end a word - it just didn't in
all
> but
> this one circumstance (I think). The fact that you agree that this
assertion
> is
> correct doesn't do much in the way of making a point. The possibility that
> the author
> ran out of room seems reasonable since we don't have much else to go on.

A couple examples, you're right, not much to go on here:

f29r.5.6 - here you also have my alternate {8} and my alternate {a} in the
same word, unusual.

f55r.10.5 - again we have the alternate {a} in association, and the <i> may
or may not be separate from the 'second a'.

We have an example of the double <i> ending a word at f32v.7.7.

> However,
> I think that 'm' is normally the expected
> 'oops-I-ran-out-linespace-so-guess-the
> rest-of-the-word-when-reading' ending to a voynich word.

My reverse sort lists 12 1/2 pages of words ending in {m} for the herbal
section alone.  (Reminder  - Gotta make one of these for the rest of the
manuscript).  I haven't gone into my database to tally them up, but I'd put
the figure at roughly 12%.  So if the {m} is some sort of abbreviatory
signal, then what is the {n}?  This would add about another 3% to the tally.

> >> No one seems to have differentiated here on the variations of this
> pattern.
>  If as many of us 'assume', the <in> and <iin> are indeed {n} and {m}
> respectively,
> what is the EVA <n> by itself?
>
> Don't forget that sometimes the 'n' is part of an '@', just like sometimes
> a 'y' or an 'o' is part of a 'ch'...

Okay, I'm a little lost.  I pulled up the dreaded EVA chart to locate an @,
but couldn't find it.  I opened the EVAhand1 font file and the @ location is
blank.  I did notice that EVA for my @ is <u>.  EVA <u> *looks* like an @,
so it was a ringer for the the job, even though it occurs in the herbal
section one time, at the end of f35v.6.3.

> >> These are glyph patterns, one-two-three strokes, and all three can be
> found in the
> middle of words, only without the distinguishing flourish that makes an
<i>
> an <n>.
>
> Interesting, and how exactly can one tell that the 'i' in the middle of a
> word
> is actually an 'n' and not an 'r','l', or even a 'j'?

An EVA <j>?  Curious connection.  I would have gone for the EVA <m> as a
more likely suspect.  Anyway, this all goes back to the discussion awhile
ago (maybe more than a year?) of observed sets of glyphs and how the human
mind abhores chaos.

I believe I made the observation that *most* created alphabets appear to be
based on patterns.  Those found in Porta were the ones I used as example,
where a pattern was chosen and only slightly modified from one glyph to the
next for each alphabet.  I don't have a degree in logic or psychology, but
I've been around long enough to notice that people love patterns, and the
easier to remember, the better.  They also never venture outside their
sphere of knowledge, and after a certain age do not attempt to increase this
sphere, as a rule.  These observations served as one of my primary keys to
understanding.  My 'logic' went something like this:

Education at this time was not only heavily mnemonic, it also attempted to
incorporate all sciences into one by connection.  Medical science and
herbalism for instance, were inextricably tied to astronomy/astrology.  The
author lived and breathed unseen patterns and connections.  So why would he
then create a script where similar patterns had no connection whatsoever?

With this in mind, I took all the glyphs I'd previously recorded, and began
setting them out in groups on a page, based on similarity.  Not
surprisingly, the bulk of these fit into neat little groups, and those
groups had the same number of glyphs in each.  Your EVA <n> for example, has
the <n>, the <in>, and the <iin> as the three most used.  There is an
occasional <iiin>, but very weak signal here.  These groupings are identical
in number and form for your EVA <r>, <s> and <m>.  My connected {c}
groupings, your EVA <e>, has identical number and structure.  Again the same
for the gallows groupings.

There was that little subset that was troubling, the {c} with a tail, the
{a} with a tail (EVA <u>, my {@}.  <i> glyphs without finals, etc.  They all
have one thing in common however that places them not in a subset, but in
the mainstream.  When a westerner writes an {m} or an {n} in the middle of a
word, it would seem inappropriate to give it a final tail - it just looks
odd.  We don't finish words with {a} or {c} usually, but the same applies,
only in reverse.  The locations for the modified {a} and {c} are word finals
or stand-alones.  The locations for the "unterminated" {m} and {n} are
always in the middle of a word, and as you pointed out, there are only a
couple of examples of the EVA <i> as finals, and in two of the three cases I
listed above, there was little room to write the hook.  The third case is
questionable as the actual glyph itself.

Now we go to the extended groups, and each has one or two examples in the
"this just don't fit" subset.  Each example follows the rule stated above.
So the herbal section has 39 examples of my "ccc" glyph (proper EVA would be
<EEe>?) in the middle of words, and we have 6 examples of this same glyph as
word terminator, each with the final "hook" or flourish.  This also holds
true for EVA <i>, EVA <Ii> and EVA <IIi> in the middle of words.  Out of
character maybe, but one thing changes - the above holds true for my "cc"
glyph, but only for the Currier [A] material.  Later on, possibly for
writing convenience in heavier text sections, the author dropped the final
flourish in most instances when this glyph ends a word.

The research is a little more evolved in areas of glyph variation and
intended meaning, but this sums up the basics.  You can't begin to decipher
until you've got a grasp on glyph construction and transcription, so this
has been a very important and involved part of my study.

I hope this cleared things up a bit.

GC

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