Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 16, No. 136.
Centre for Computing in the Humanities, King's College London
<http://www.princeton.edu/~mccarty/humanist/>
<http://www.kcl.ac.uk/humanities/cch/humanist/>
Date: Fri, 2 Aug 2002 12:05:47 -0400
From: Jim Marchand
Subject: Restricted Code
We were talking about restricted code and its problems. Being a
medievalist, I have a cute example from the Middle Ages, reported,
among others, by B. L. Ullman, Ancient Writing and its Influence.
Our Debt to Greece and Rome (repr. NY: Cooper Square Publishers,
1963), 133. Medieval students were not serious like our students
are, and they liked to play games. Gothic script had many ups and
downs in it, much like the Suetterlin-Schrift ones German
grandmother used to use, so that often all you seemed to have were
short up and down strokes. This was particularly true of m, n, i,
u, whence all the mistakes of modern editors, who read iudeorum as
videorum (heaven knows what that is supposed to mean), etc. etc.
You have to see this to get the effect: The students offered a
story of short actors not wanting to give up their function of
distributing wine obtained from certain vineyards near the walls
and wrote: mimi numinum niuium minimi munium nimium uini muniminum
imminui uiui minimum uolunt, where only the last word is clear.
Note that in the Middle Ages, i's did not have dots over them, and
no distinction was made between u and v, both modern inventions.
The sentence means: "The very short mimes of the gods of snow do
not at all wish that during their lifetime the very great burden of
the wine of the walls be lightened." For those who hold Ullman in
high regard, as I do, note the error in his English. Auch an
Ullman habe ich Fehler entdeckt. Back to restricted code: the
sentences so formed could use only i, u, m, n.
Jim Marchand
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