Undotted Arabic script letters can yield dozens of possible word readings per triliteral root

Evidence

All the books discovered were difficult to decipher and translate. An extreme example of the ambiguities inherent in this form of writing is that the same consonant outline, when unpointed (i.e., without nuqat), could represent either b, t, th, n, or y. The permutations of uncertainty in 5. — L. P. Harvey, Muslims in Spain, 1500 to 1614, 1263 (#expands, via linked claim)

One method employed by the forgers to make these works difficult to read was to write them in an unusual Arabic script. This is not the place to enter into a full technical description of this distinctive writing system. Suffice it to say that the only parallels for this angular form of writing are to be found on certain astrolabes (and possibly on early tombstones: see EI (2d. ed.), s.v. “kitabat,” plate 6). All Arabic scripts in normal use at the relevant time (and still nowadays) are cursive and depend heavily on a system of subscripted and superscripted dots (nuqat). The Sacromonte script is only vestigially cursive. The distinguishing dots are written only sporadically and erratically. To provide a simple example of the ambiguities that may result from these features, we may take ı, a character almost exactly identical to the undotted modern Turkish letter ı. If it does carry a superscripted dot, it represents in this script n (in nonfinal positions), but if the superscripted dot is not present, then the same basic letter form could equally well be a t (two dots), th (three dots), b (one underdot) or y (two underdots), not to mention p (one dot with a gemination [tashdid]). If a number of such letters with “missing” dots occur within a triliteral word, the possible permutations, and so the possible number of words that can be read from the same outline, rapidly become dauntingly large. If it were not for the fact that composition is highly formulaic, translation would be virtually impossible. — L. P. Harvey, Muslims in Spain, 1500 to 1614, 1760 (#exemplifies, via linked claim)

Bib, we know, was how the word was often actually pronounced in Valencia (as a consequence of a process of vowel closure, termed imala in Arabic treatises of phonetics, that was a characteristic of the Andalusi dialects). Bib was what people actually said, there is no doubt about that, but nobody before the sixteenth century would consistently write the word that way. (A useful parallel might be that in North America the English word “water” is pronounced with some kind of voiced or attenuated dental medial consonant, but nobody there would ever dream of actually writing that word with a d: “wader.”) In some regions where Hispano-Arabic vernaculars existed (in Valencia above all) we witness the emergence of what we may perhaps call “written vernacular texts” in which divergences from the old norms are not occasional slips and errors but are apparently intentional. — L. P. Harvey, Muslims in Spain, 1500 to 1614, 610 (#complicates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: A scribal name error proves a Latin-script original preceded the Arabic version; Unpointed Arabic script makes single consonant outlines ambiguous across five readings — L. P. Harvey, Muslims in Spain, 1500 to 1614, 1263; The Sacromonte forgers’ almost undotted Arabic script made readings exponentially ambiguous — L. P. Harvey, Muslims in Spain, 1500 to 1614, 1760 (+2 more)

Broader Connections

• Unpointed Arabic script makes single consonant outlines ambiguous across five readings #expands (0.95) — L. P. Harvey, Muslims in Spain, 1500 to 1614, 1263
• The Sacromonte forgers’ almost undotted Arabic script made readings exponentially ambiguous #exemplifies (0.92) — L. P. Harvey, Muslims in Spain, 1500 to 1614, 1760
• Sixteenth-century Valencian Arabic produced deliberate written vernacular spellings, not mere errors #complicates (0.74) — L. P. Harvey, Muslims in Spain, 1500 to 1614, 610