Those who have been following us on Facebook or Twitter might have seen our recent posts about Transcribe Estoria. This is our new crowdsourcing project which will involve as many people as possible in transcribing manuscripts of the Estoria de Espanna. We are working hard in the background getting everything ready for our autumn 2019 launch and we are excited!
1st training text
Lacking
1. A way to indicate ordinals, i.e. superscript ‘o’ or ‘a’
2. Establish criteria for choice of ‘n’ or ‘m’ before a bilabial. Does choice of ‘tienpo’ in abbreviated compendia imply preference for ‘n’ in all situations?
3. Macron for ‘-er’, as in ‘atener’ etc
4. Macron for ‘-er-‘, as in ‘manera’ etc
4. Abbreviated form for ‘oms’ = ‘omnes; any other forms in ms.? i.e. ‘os’, ‘omes’ etc
5. A suggested expansion for ‘mill’ with a line through.
Hi Dave,
Thanks for the comments and also for taking part!
A couple of quick responses:
1. A way to indicate ordinals, i.e. superscript ‘o’ or ‘a’:
In principle we have not considered the possibility of marking this in a special way, since the system accepts the superscript ‘o’ or ‘a’ inserted from the keyboard itself (Ctrl + Shift ++). It’s true that we could add this feature in, but for the moment we wanted to reduce the number of options in the abbreviations palette. We’ll take it on board, though, and see if we do something about this in Transcribeestoria 2.0!
2. Establish criteria for choice of ‘n’ or ‘m’ before a bilabial. Does choice of ‘tienpo’ in abbreviated compendia imply preference for ‘n’ in all situations?
As indicated in the training material, we chose ‘n’ as implosive nasal consonant before a bilabial, according the usus scribendi (‘n’ seems to be the majority option in the manuscript). This was the principle we adopted in Transcribe Estoria, so for example in the C13th passages of E1 and E2 we expand to “m” in line with the practice of the scribe elsewhere in the codex, but in subsequent manuscripts we follow the C14th practice of using “n” before bilabials. This is the case generally in C.
3. Macron for ‘-er’, as in ‘atener’ etc
This one has us a little puzzled, as we think that it is the superscript hook symbol with value ‘er’, as indicated in the following question.
4. Macron for ‘-er-‘, as in ‘manera’ etc
If it is the form ‘maneras’ written in l. 23 col. b (fragment 1), we understand that it is not a macron but the superscript hook symbol with the value ‘er’, which can be found in the Special character menu (special symbols, 4th line, second option). The value ‘er’, from what we have seen, appears almost always represented by this symbol (superscript hook) and not by the macron.
5. Abbreviated form for ‘oms’ = ‘omnes; any other forms in ms.? i.e. ‘os’, ‘omes’ etc
At the moment, we believe that this is the only abbreviated form of ‘omnes’ in the manuscript, In addition to the full form ‘omnes’, of course. As we are at the proof of concept stage we don’t want to overload our poor volunteers. But of course there is always the possibility we have missed something and we may be able to add further symbols. The passages we have chosen here may not contain all of the scribal fiorms in the manuscript of course. When we open up the entire codex in November for anyone who wants to transcribe freestyle we will probably come across more occasions like this. And then we can add them to our “lessons learned” at the end of the project!
6. A suggested expansion for ‘mill’ with a line through.
As in the word ‘como’ with macron, in principle we do not transcribe the macron in ‘mill’, since in both cases it is a latinized use fixed without reflection in phonetics and without too much relevance for the purposes of chronology of writing or changing hands. In the Estoria Digital project we were faced with the question of the extent to which we should mark all features. In truth this is probably not possible anyway, and though our practice is very palaeographical, we had to set some limits on what we would encode.
I hope this is a good answer for you. We very much welcome your commentary and please do keep transcribing!
Thanks for clearing things up. I misunderstood the notation ‘z-er’, thinking it only applied to ‘zer’ combos as in ‘fazer’
By the way is there an abbreviated symbol/compendium for ‘oms’=omnes? And does ‘como + macron’ transcribe as ‘como’ not ‘commo’?
Thanks
Hi Dave,
Thanks for the comments. The “como” question: we reckon that, unlike the case of the Alfonsine, thirteenth century, text, C does something which is highly typical for fourteenth century texts which is the use of a macron which has no phonetic value. As we think that the macron on the ‘m’ is a fossilised echo of Latin, we don;t transcribe it. Of course, all editorial decisions like these can give rise to inconsistencies.
On “oms”, you are quite right! It is one that we have missed, so thanks for that. We’ll add it in as soon as we can.
No consideramos esa lineta con valor abreviativo real, sino expletiva (sin valor o redundante). A diferencia de lo que acontece en el XIII o en los códices alfonsíes, en donde podía abreviar ‘m’, en el XIV y en el C no hemos considerado esta posibilidad, ya que esa ‘m’ no tiene reflejo fonético. En el XIV (y durante toda la Edad Media) es más bien un uso abreviativo fosilizado y de reminiscencia latina (como < lat. quomodo)
"Oms" – ¡Tienes razón! Lo añadiremos a la lista de abreivaturas. ¡Muchas gracias!
As I have already finished the transcription or correction of the two texts you sent, I suppose we don’t have to keep on transcribing the resto of the text before or after you have chosen. Anyway, when will you send the new texts. I am enjoying a lot this work and the platform is really intuitive and easy to use. I only have a doubt at the end of the second text. It is difficult to see there what the writer says … agoraternos afablar… ? … agoratemos afablar…In the text we are correcting, you say …agora tornaremos… but in this handscript we don’t read that, tornaremos. I think we have to say agora temos a fablar, what is similar to Spanish “tenemos que hablar”, it means, “we have to talk”, “now, we will talk about Hercoles…” What is your opinion? Thank you so much and best regards.
Hola 🙂 es un error del escribano. Ha escrito ‘agoraremos’ – probablemente quería poner algo como ‘agora tornaremos’, o lo que pone en E1, que estaba copiando, que era ‘agora tornamos’, pero se confundió al copiarlo, y puso ‘agoraremos’. Para intentar corregirlo añadió él, o un lector/revisor un q-macron justo arriba de la ‘a’ de ‘agoraremos’ para escribir ‘agora q(ue)remos afablar de hercules’. Es muy interesante encontrar errores como este, no? Te recuerda que los escribanos eran personas normales. A mí me encanta.
It’s so great to hear that you are enjoying transcribing. The new text is out this Wednesday! Keep an eye on Facebook for the announcement that it has gone live.
Polly.
¡Hola! Con respecto a “agoraremos”: no logré insertar la corrección de la mejor forma, porque el botón “Corrección” no estaba habilitado excepto al situar el cursor al comienzo de la línea. Es por eso que dejé la marca en ese lugar, y no sobre la palabra corregida. ¿Es un bug o hay otra forma de hacerlo y yo la pasé por alto?
¡Gracias!
Hola Melisa,
Gracias por el comentario. Como dices, es una peculiaridad del sistema. Parece que el menú C no aparece si no es a comienzo de línea. Pero cuando lo intento yo, resulta que el menú no aparece si uno selecciona el espacio inmediatamente antes o después de la secuencia deseada. Yo, por ejemplo, he conseguido utliizar el menú en este caso, pero solo si selecciono la secuencia “agoraremos” sin incluir espacios antes y/o después. Si logras hacerlo así, ¿te importaría decírnoslo? Si no funciona, será un bug del sistema.
Saludos birminghamenses.
Gracias, Aengus. Ahora sí funcionó. Si bien creo haber intentado seleccionando la secuencia completa, supongo que probé demasiadas veces marcando “remos”, y el sistema no admite esa operación. Solo es posible seleccionar lo que está comprendido entre dos espacios.
Gracias a ti, Melisa. Que disfrutes del segundo texto.
Resulta que se nos olvidó incluir OMS > OMS en la paleta de abreviaturas, y aparece en el texto 2. Estamos en ello…