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Mon 12 Oct, 2020 07:24 am
Greetings, fellow lovers of languages. A colleague has given me the assignment to translate (into English) the first line of folio f6v of the Voynich manuscript. The assumptions are that:
(a) the text is in a proto-Romance (or Vulgar Latin) language used in the 15th century
(b) the characters can be transliterated by means of a key which my colleague has provided
(c) the text refers to a common plant which was harvested for food in the Mediterranean at that time.
My first attempt at a raw transliteration is as follows:
loasA t as éeelas doas êos éapéA t éeas éas oméA
where A denotes "free a", a denotes "trapped a", é is the long e, and t is probably a full stop (UK) or period (US).
I am considering the possibilities that:
* the text is not entirely Latin and may include some words from Italian or Neapolitan languages of that era
* the é could alternatively be et (and), in which case the transliteration might read:
loasA t as eteelas doas êtos etapetA t eteas etas ometA
* the terminal s could be the Latin suffix -is or -us, in which case the transliteration might read:
loasA t ais eteelais doas êtios etapetA t eteais etais ometA
or
loasA t aus eteelaus doaus êtous etapetA t eteaus etaus ometA.
* the terminal A could be the Latin enclitic -que, in which case the transliteration might read:
loasque t ais eteelais doas êtios etapetque t eteais etais ometque
or
loasque t aus eteelaus doaus êtous etapetque t eteaus etaus ometque.
I would welcome any ideas from speakers of Latin or modern Romance languages (I speak French and Romanian and can read Italian, Portuguese, Spanish and a few words of Neapolitan).
Alternatively, if we treat the "9" glyph as a variable prefix or suffix, or even a punctuation mark, which we provisionally denote by *, the first four lines could read:
roaius* taius etccraius doaius estoius etapet*. etcaius etaius οmet*
οcct etoius eteret* docretaius etcaius οnauus retc* etoius etaius
doaus eret* etol οoetoeret* etcreto* eret* οrol ius*etot
*esteret* *meto*. οt *nan* net* nc* οron* <> *mon*
It's also possible that the glyphs presented here as "m", "n", "r" and "t" have not been correctly transliterated.
Maybe some intuitive Latin scholar can detect some meaning therein, or alternatively identify it as gibberish.