116v

[N._N.]

Hi! This is my first post. I am new to the Voynich world (if not to the manuscript itself). Last month I wrote a You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. on 116v and thought I'd share it here. I am a linguist and wrote this with a linguist audience in mind so I apologize if it's too technical. I fully anticipate that people will disagree with me as this seems pretty different from some of the current theories on 116v I've since read, but I'd be happy just to have others engage with the ideas

Welcome from another relatively recent member! From my point of view, your post is a good approach to the matter and perfectly understandable without a linguistics degree. The reading of the first sentence in particular seems interesting.  

My only issue with the interpretation as some Romance language/dialect from the Pyrenees or even further west is that it complicates the history of the manuscript significantly and is at odds with most of the other information pointing to Northern Italy/Southern Germany/Augsburg/Prague, both for the manuscript's creation and the first appearances we know of. Sure, ~200 years is a lot of time to circulate within Europe, but every transfer would have increased the probability of leaving traces behind, beyond some barely understandable notes.

For that reason, I have been wondering for a while whether some of these plain text notes might not be later additions, i. e. in the manuscript's post-Kircher period in Rome. From all that we know, it ended up in a Jesuit collection there without much attention to it for the next few centuries. However, the Jesuits always had members from all over catholic Europe and beyond. Particularly after the dissolution of the order in the Spanish Empire and France in the second half of the 18th century, many of them ended up in Italy. Some of those exiled Jesuits may have added their attempts to make sense of the manuscripts at that point... this dating is probably unlikely due to language and script, but since since all other explanations are not without issues either, it might be worth considering.