VMs: Comments on "ih" versus "ch"...

[Nick Pelling <nickpelling@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Michael,

I've looked at your "q" and "ih" examples, here are my comments...

> "q" is nearly always at a "words" start. (But there are rare exceptions,
> as in f93v.P.6 "sheqokam".)

FWIW, I'd guess this was originally "shey okam", but that the "y" was later 
[mis-]corrected to "q". If you look at the "q" on the line immediately 
below it, it's formed completely differently.

> The second ih-occurence on f2v (first word on the bottom paragraph)
> isn't easy to recognise on the image I used.

I guess you mean the fourth word on the bottom paragraph, "chckoy". This 
looks as though the "o" has been [mis-]corrected (there's also a rare 
annotation-like mark which looks like "la" above the start of that line): 
my guess is that it was originally "chckhey" or perhaps even just "chckhy".

> The other ih-ligatures in Herbal A with embedded gallows are:
> f24r.P.2: okaiikhal  - i-ih-a, okay

I'm also not sure what's going on here. I should first point out that on 
that page, lots of the "ch" ligatures are a bit slapdash where the left 
half-loop meets the crossbar, which makes interpreting this tricky.

BTW, though it may be an optical illusion, the left downstroke of the "l" 
in the line above seems (in the sidfile) to go *over* the top right loop of 
the "k" in "okaiikhal", which would seem to imply that the second line was 
written before the first (similar to some of Philip Neal's observations on 
alternate lines). FWIW, I don't know what to make of that either. :-o

> f24r.P.19: otaiphy - a-ih-y, okay

This looks like the scribe was cramped by the long tail of the "p", and so 
started the horizontal bar of the "ch" strikethrough lower than normal. 
This is actually quite interesting in its own right, as it seems to imply 
that the writer prized legibility over fluency - that is, information over 
style.

> f30v.P.3: chtoithy - very strange
>
> This looks _weird_ in the manuscript. There seems to be a horizontal
> line from the "o" to the "h", the "i"-stroke is embedded. "o" and "h"
> looks less faint than the other components of that weirdo, so I would
> suspect it as a result of later retouching. On my image, the first word
> of the pargraph looks "very retouched" too - if somebody has access to
> high resolution images, please check it.

It's a messy word, for sure: but the simplest explanation is surely that it 
is actually "chtocthy", but where the horizontal bar of the "cthy" has been 
started too far to the left. I don't believe this is an "ih" at all.

> f45r.P.1: shaikhy a-ih-y, okay

The first few "a"s (but not the last one) on the top line of this page look 
retouched to me. I think your example would originally have been "shockhy".

> f51r.P.14: daiiithy - i-ih-y, okay

OK, this is the closest yet to a genuine "ih" - but it's still far from 
clear whether "daiiithy" or "daiicthy" is the better transcription.

> f90v2.P.1: cphdaithy - a-ih-y, okay

The "a" looks questionable (retouched), as does the "ih" (no good reason 
why it shouldn't be a "ch"). Whoever transcribed this may have used similar 
harmony laws as a guide to what they were expecting. :-o

> f90v2.P.2: ikheeos, ih at beginning, okay

The first character is smudged & it's not obvious "ikheeos" was chosen over 
"ckheeos". Perhaps "*kheeos" would have been more honest?

> f90v1.P.7: etodaithey, a-ih-e, okay

Ah, the lion root page! The word "etodaithey" is interesting because it's a 
"long gallows" - a stretched-out gallows where other letters are contained 
inside. However, as it appears on the page now, what we see is a normal 
gallows leg on the left & a strikethrough ("ch") gallows leg on the right. 
Further, the initial "e" is so integrated into the long gallows' left leg 
that it probably shouldn't even be transcribed: and the right leg's 
terminating half-loop seems to have been misinterpreted as a ch crossbar.

To me, the most sensible explanation for this is that it should actually be 
transcribed "todarteey", where the two "t"s are the (long gallows) 
container and "odar" is that which is contained within.

Also note that the terminating downstroke of the final "y" seems to go over 
the letter on the next line: though this too could be an optical illusion, 
perhaps it isn't...

> f93v.P.6: qochoithy - that's the reality...

No, I don't think so: I'm more convinced it should be the far more sensible 
"qochocthy".

My opinion (please correct me if I'm wrong!) is that most ch-strikethrough 
gallows are drawn by drawing the initial "c", the gallows, the 
strikethrough crossbar, then the terminal "c": this is far trickier to do 
cleanly than a simple "ch", and so you often end up with examples where the 
top of the initial "c" and the start of the crossbar don't quite match. In 
each of your examples, I don't think there's any good evidence to support 
the idea of "ih" being a real part of Voynichese.

Please understand that I'm really not criticising the idea of stroke 
harmony - its existence is almost self-evidently true (but still benefits 
*greatly* from being expressed in the way you have done). However, I really 
don't think that there is ATM any good evidence for transcribing "ih" over 
"ch" where other good simple explanations present themselves.

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


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