This thread has been one of the more interesting regarding spelling and pronunciation of Castilian Spanish in old documents.. I would like to quote from "Northern New Spain, A Reasearch Guide". Under the heading "Paleography". A section having to do mainly with how the lack of writing and spelling rules can cause great frustration in attempting to translate these old documents. I hope the following quote will be of some help.
"Double and triple consonants are a curiosity. "C, N, P, R, S, and T" are the most frequently encountered. This practise leads to varying degrees of frustration especially as one tries to decipher doubled letters in a poorly written word - for example, doubled "t's" in
'ttesttamentto'.
"Further problems in reading result from the fact one and the same writer commonly transposed several letters. Modern readers are accustomed to stricter standardization, but the practise was quite acceptable in colonial paleography. "C" and "V" were often interchangable, as were "B" and "V", "S, C and V," "Y and I," "J and X." "U and V," "J and G," - to name only some of the more common. 'Vecino' may well be spelled 'Bezino' in the same document".
"Other orthographic variations include dropping the first letter of words, such as 'ijo' for 'hijo', or sometimes disguising the initial letter as a nondescript scrawl. Some elisions also occur".
"These orthographic variations are actually explainable. And the the reason for these inconsistencies constitutes one of the best methods for decipherment of difficult words and passages. Most extant colonial documents were written by scribes or copyists who 'listened to the text being dictated'. Behind the written Spanish word is usually the spoken word. A mere change in vocal empasis is often reflected by the scribes choice of consonants, just as a change in speed of dictation often led to the employment of abbreviations. Many of the copyists lacked extensive education, with the result that they wrote down what they heard rather than what was orthographically preferred. Sometimes the copyist knew neither word nor correct grammatical form". End of quote.
What is being said is that there were no rules of writing and spelling, so no rules were broken. In my own experience with this, I had trouble with the word, "embio" and "embiarse". I checked every possible word and verb form with no luck. I finally decided to read a couple of sentences before these words to see if it would come clear. JACKPOT! The correct verb is 'ENVIAR', meaning "to send". The letters "N and V" were transposed by the copyist to "M and B". Other surprises were finding proper names with a lower case first letter, or a question ending with a period or comma, or a sentence ending in the middle with a period, and then continuing with a captitolized new word for the continuation. Only by eliminating the period did the sentence make sense.
Other inconsistencies are the joining of two words such as "dar le" into 'darle' or "se lo" into 'selo', this word appears in a sentence as "a junto, a selo". If it's one word I haven't found it yet, if it's two words, I haven't as of yet been able to figure what it is this writer is trying to say.
Anybody want to try "generos", or "huissenes" or "sin dazada"?