The Voynich Ninja

(08-08-2020, 04:28 AM)-JKP- Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.For example, in English, you could say, "Keep you tomorrow health best," and everyone would understand it, but no one says it that way. They would normally say, "Take care," or "Be well," "Gesundheit," or "Watch out for your health," or a few other common phrases. No one would say, "Keep you tomorrow health best."

Indeed, I have found usage the hardest part of a foreign language to master, and often neglected by foreign language learning programs. I’m a bit of a human parrot; mastering a foreign phonology is not that hard for me.  Even if your mastery of a language’s phonology, vocabulary, and grammar are all hard to distinguish from a native speaker’s, if you don’t phrase things like a native speaker would, your speech will still sound quite odd to a native speaker. There is no “learn a language in 5min a day with our app!” (to say nothing of Google Translate) solution to this. The only way to fix this is to have lots of conversations with native speakers, and to pay attention to and copy their usage of words and phrases for specific situations.

I’d imagine for ancient languages that are no longer spoken [the way they used to be], there’s an analogous process: after reading lots and lots of writing in that language by fluent speakers, the reader will eventually come to know what to expect in terms of usage, and be able to easily identify deviations from this typical usage which would signal a less-than-fluent or inexperienced user of the language.

(08-08-2020, 12:45 AM)Ahmet Ardıç Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Hi Pepper,

When I do not translate directly (1/1), what I wrote to you seems to be my personal comments. The reason I translate directly is because you can see that the sentence is linked to the drawing on the page and the words have meanings. The direct translation is: "The roots are cute." and/or "The roots are fat."

But none of these words in Turkish alone mean root. But when both of these two words (AYAK SAPI) combine, it becomes an adjective that refers to the roots of the plant. Therefore, translation of a Turkish text into other languages is also a matter of expertise.

I don't need to comment on your other comment because I already shared my opinion on these issues.

Thanks for your comment,

Ah, I haven't been clear. I don't object to you converting your direct translations into a form that makes sense in English ("the foot stalk is plump, robust, cute" > "the roots are cute"). I'm grateful for those Turkish > modern English translations because it helps me understand.

What I'm asking is if somebody writing in 15th century Turkish would write "the foot stalk is plump, robust, cute" in that way? JKP explained this better than me - "keep you tomorrow best health" could be a direct translation from VMS to English but it would be dubious because nobody would construct a sentence that way.

Also, what does cute mean in this context? It makes me smile because it seems so anachronistic for a medieval mansucript, but that could be my ignorance talking!

(08-08-2020, 04:28 AM)-JKP- Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Translations have to be evaluated in two ways.

• First you look at the translation and ask yourself, "Does this make sense?"
  
• Second you have to ask yourself, "Would they normally write it this way?"
  

For example, in English, you could say, "Keep you tomorrow health best," and everyone would understand it, but no one says it that way. They would normally say, "Take care," or "Be well," "Gesundheit," or "Watch out for your health," or a few other common phrases. No one would say, "Keep you tomorrow health best."

So... there is text that is understandable in a rough way. And there is text that is normal and conventional.

Some of the solutions proposed so far (in a variety of languages) have bits and pieces that seem understandable, but they are not normal phrases for the Middle Ages.


If it is understandable, but seems a bit odd AND the translation method has a lot of degrees of freedom, then you have to ask yourself if the degrees of freedom are resulting in a subjective "solution". Normally degrees of freedom make it easier to write something that is traditional and normal and yet, in the case of many VMS "solutions", this is not what happens. Even with all this freedom, translations are still grammatically odd or the grammar is nonexistent.

Dear JKP,

As I tried to explain before, I have some difficulties in translating from Old Turkish to modern English. First of all, English is not my native language. And, we could not identify that old dialect yet. Therefore, I have to either translate the meaning into English, or talk about them by translating 1/1 words. 

When I only translate the meaning a sentence, someone who does not speak Turkish may not be able to reconcile them with what the VMS author wrote. When I translate 1/1 (word by word), the sentences may not look like a complete sentence. In other words, they look like unreasonably lined words.

I was 1/1 translated that words in f-65r. I was also mentioned its meaning. The word AYAK (FOOT) also means 'stand'/'standing upright' in Turkish. When it is called AYAK SAPI (The FOOT HANDLE), it is meant 'the structure that enables standing upright' (for a plant). At this point, these two words become an adjective. Which indicated the root part of the plant that allows the plant to stand upright. The explanation of this situation may be incomprehensible to those who do not speak Turkish. But this is the case.

Of course, we must express these words in both ways in our articles.

Linguists generalize on many issues. For example, they generalize that there is a "SOV" (Subject, Object, Verb) order in Turkish.
But to say that "there is SOV order in Turkish" is a false and unnecessary generalization only. I personally find it wrong to make such generalizations. 

So, In Turkish the basic sentence form is “SOV” (Subject, Object, Verb), but sometimes a poetic writing structure may alter this structure. In addition, it is possible to say that the order of “SOV” may change in some Turkish-language dialects. For example, "SOV" (Subject, Object, Verb) order is can be seen in Gagauz-Turkish language. 

[SOURCE: International Turkic Academy / Hodja Akhmet Yassawi International Turkish-Kazakh University /
"Before The Last Voice Are Gone", Endangered Turkic Languages III: Interdisciplinary Approaches, Editors: Prof. Dr. Süer Eker & Prof. Dr. Ülkü Çelik Şavk, Volume 4, Ankara • Astana  2016, ISBN: 978-9944-237-50-5 / Page: 188,  <http://www.ayu.edu.tr/static/kitaplar/TTD_cilt_4.pdf>]

It is known that this order can be broken in different directions in colloquial language of different dialects of Turkic languages.

Finally, I would like to give some information that is not related to this example. In fact, the information I will give may be a situation that we and many other people in general have experienced. So much so that we are not saying that our work is perfect and there are no flaws or typos.

I am personally have some focusing problems. I cannot focus on a particular subject for more than a few minutes. I often make mechanical typos while typing. But when I find my mistake or when someone else shows it, I can admit it and correct it. People say nobody is perfect, and I have also never claim that I did everything right in every detail. For our VMS related study, these errors will generally be in the form of disagreements on sub-topics, mechanical typos or minor errors will not affect to the main thesis. 

How to translate some particular words into another language is a secondary issue in this stage. On these issues, linguists often fail to reach full agreement on certain issues. After all, let's not forget that we are talking about 600 years old Turkish in an unknown dialect which dialect that %21 of total words are not changed phonetically in time. 

In the sentence we gave as an example (on page f-65r), there were 3 words and we showed all three in today's dictionaries. And I'm reading this sentences in f-65r correctly. 

In addition, the coded sentences that continue on the page before and after the f-65r have not been read yet. Probably by reading these, we can also see that the VMS author used all these three words in You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. as in part of another encoded sentence. So, this is also a possibility that may be we can see in the future.

Thanks,

(07-08-2020, 09:25 PM)Ahmet Ardıç Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

(07-08-2020, 03:02 PM)Pepper Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

(07-08-2020, 02:33 PM)Mark Knowles Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.That is exactly the point. It is the same with Gerard Cheshire's theory and so many other translation theories. The degrees of freedom in interpretation of a given portion of text means that one can inevitably find a translation which very loosely fits the context of the drawings albeit often without any grammar. I think it was referred to this kind of approach to the translation generating a "word salad" of text which the author can interpret as he/she sees fit.

Indeed. From what I understand so far, the Ardics have the following degrees of freedom:

1. The author used multiple dialects, so a word can be translated into any of half a dozen forms
2. As shown in the YouTube video, one glyph can have 7+ sounds assigned to it
3. The author used "poetic" language that is "rhythmically matching" along with some kind of very clever word play
4. The author encoded information in an acrostic down the first line of every page
5. The author also used some Latin / Greek / other words

Seems to me if you take a five-glyph vord you could easily find 50+ interpretations from which you can choose to construct your sentence.

For example, Ahmet, you claim that the first word on the eighth line of f4r is "baby pomegranate." Why does the author write about baby pomegranates on f1v, f2r, f3r, and so many others? I believe your answer will be that the vord means baby pomegranate on You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. and something else on those other pages. Probably a different meaning on each page. This isn't an isolated case; the text is full of repetition. I don't find your explanations of homophones, roots/suffixes, and the author's incredible linguistic prowess to be satisfactory - even when we take them all together.

I also find it very difficult to believe that this author wrote, in an invented script, a 200-page manuscript that 

a) includes acrostic codes
b) is poetic and rhythmically matching
c) makes grammatical sense, both in the acrostic code and in the filler text
d) does all this in two distinct 'languages', Currier A and B

I'm a published fiction author, and I write and edit nonfiction as a profession, in one of the world's most flexible languages - English. And I know I couldn't do what the Ardics claim this mysterious author has done. Not a chance. I could perhaps do a page with a lot of hard work, but 200? No.

Hi,

Let talk about on the specific example.

If you see our work as a kind of interpretation, what is your opinion about our translation work on f-65r in VMS?

There is only 3 words in page f-65r and for sure it is a sentences.
Which part of our reading can be call as interpretation in this sentence read work?

There is 3 words in this page, one of them only has 1 sound drop and 1 sound change (OIYAK became AYAK) in time. (OI became A only > Phonetically, it is still the closest to each other, and no linguist can read this word differently than our reading. In the past 600 years, it has experienced a very small sound change and there are many similar phonetic change examples in Old Turkish.)
And other 2 words never change in phonetic value in last 600 years and we already share that dictionary links for those words.

The sentence was written as OIYAK SAK APAK, which is today as AYAK SAK APAK.

AYAK (foot, leg, stand, hoof)  You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
and
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and
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SAK [see this section in the page: (II) is. (sa:k) bit. b. esk. Sap.] (stalk, handle, stem, shank, grip, shaft) You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

APAK [See: Tombul, gürbüz, sevimli in the link-page] > (plump, robust, cute ) > You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

600 years old: OIYAK SAK APAK
Written today as: AYAK SAK APAK

which with direct (1/1) translation:
Foot stalk plump, robush, cute 

Wich translation in normal way is:
The foot stalk is plump, robush, cute

Our interpretation is only that; "the author calls "foot stalk" for "root of the plant".

What part of this translation would be considered as interpretation?
"The author calls "foot stalk" for "root of the plant" part is our  interpretation only.

In that case, just accept the dictionary's equivalent of 1/1 words and forget about our interpretation.
Which is "Foot stalk plump, robush, cute" with zero interpretation. Which reading is only based on the dictionaries.

By the way, please note that, linguists are already 100% agreed with our statement for this sentence and nobody read it in different way yet.

To call this type of reading as an anagram or an interpretation, one must be completely away from linguistics.

This reading is one of the clearest readings made in VMS and there is many more.

The words are not changed in last 600 years and those are still shown in dictionaries today.

I don't know what can be said to those who call "interpretation" to this type of reading.

With all due respect, this type of reading is purely scientific and the evidence is there. Evidence cannot be challenged. Linguistics have read thousands of ancient texts in same way with using same methods since from very long time. If our reading will be interpreted as interpretation. More than a million articles written in academies will need to be officially announced as garbage.

1. The author used only one dialects in this sentence, so a word can not be translated into any of half a dozen forms for sure.
2. After our YouTube video, the paired phonetic matches have been simplified a little more. You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
And sound matches for syllabic characters will be simpler in reading progress for sure. 
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This is a case for our study method and is explained in our study papers. 
3. But there is a much more important detail. Between 1951 and 1956 scholars claimed to have read the Hittite scripts/texts. They also published their articles. In these readings, 1 word of the Hittites was paired with 5 different sound values. And it was scientifically accepted. The same situation exists in Egyptian hieroglyph readings. The same was done with transcriptional translations of many ancient texts (which were officially announced as 'reading have done'). In this case, you criticize us for doing what scientists do. So you have to declare that Hittite readings, Egyptian readings, and others are also garbage. Because they all pared one sing with more than one phonetic value. 
4. The multiple sound equivalents you mentioned are mostly valid for syllabic signs, and we will simplify them just like simple alphabet characters in the next period and we will have read more than 1000 words and 300 sentences in the near future for sure (in one or two years may be unless we have any problems like health issues). The biggest problem is that I'm not doing this VMS studies as a job. And this is not my only hobby too. We have to do this job in our free time. Otherwise we would have been read much more full pages.

You said that; "Why does the author write about baby pomegranates on f1v, f2r, f3r, and so many others?"

The answer could be one of this in general in other cases;
1- We know that The author is grafting (combining or fixing two different plant together/bud/instilled/) the plants and attempting to combine some species. (we know that from our readings)
2- You cannot evaluate these words in this way. Because many words in Turkish have more than one meaning. Therefore, everything will be revealed when sentence solutions are completed. Today we are at a very early stage. We need more free time to work on VMS or we need to find other Turkish VMS readers to speed up the reading process on the MS. We are already working on these issues.
3- Why should the author not use the word 'baby pomegranate' on more than one page? But if a time machine is built, you won't have to go and ask because these will be explained with more sentence analysis. So, no need to have time machine any more to visit VMS author to ask this.
4- For example, in f-2r this word is written with the 2 other words as ÇNOR, ÇULU, ŞAMU. I explained the word ÇNOR. I'm not writing here again. The two words next to it are ÇULU and ŞAMU. The sound of -U at the end of these two are suffixes.

“-Ü/-U” and “-İ/-I”: these are an Object Pointer Suffixes (Turkish Direct Object Suffix (accusative) such as “the” in English). (Clauson, Guise) 

So, it means you can see these words in root form in dictionaries.
ÇUL (gunny, sack, bag, poke): You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
ŞAM (candle, wax): You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

ÇNOR ÇULU ŞAMU =
The Baby pomegranate gunny candle
or
The Baby pomegranate bag wax

So these three words together are an adjective. An analogy is made using this adjective. She/He mentioned a certain part of the plant drawn on this page has been identified with using this adjective in this text.

... etc ...

I don't know what kind of article you have written on which topic before. However, these works are not interpreted with feelings and/or personal opinions. No solution can be found if the solution will not met with mathematics, and linguistic-knowledge.

You also said that; "Seems to me if you take a five-glyph word you could easily find 50+ interpretations from which you can choose to construct your sentence."
If it's that easy, use the same method yourself and read as many words and overlapping sentences in English as we did in VMS. Let's see is it true what you said or do you have difficulty for evaluating some details in linguistic?

You don't find my explanations of homophones, roots/suffixes, and the author's incredible linguistic prowess to be satisfactory etc. just because you don't know Turkish. If the VMS was in Japanese or Chinese or any other language, I could be where you are today.

For anyone to say I have read any ancient text, they must meet the following criteria:

1- An alphabet transcription mapping that is useful for reading a large number of words needs to be done. (All the transcriptions made, including EVA, were wrong, so it didn't work. We did ATA transcription and read hundreds of words.)
2- Phonetic and syntactic overlaps should be seen in the syntax of words and sentences should give meaningful results.
3- The linguistic structures of the languages compared must be overlapping. For example, word suffixes of the past language should be seen in the other old texts, etc.
4- With the given transcription, other texts written in the same language and same alphabet should be read in same way and everyone should be able to make these readings using the same alphabet transcription.
5- When paragraphs and pages are read, meaningful texts that maintain the integrity of meaning and that are clearly understood to be the continuation of a certain subject should be able to be translated.
6- The root meanings or the whole of the words read should be shown in dictionaries or the meaning content should be proven with linguistic methods. If this cannot be done, the predictions that can be made should not break the sentence integrity. If any word is interpreted as a guess, this should be noted in translations. All translated words should be shown in dictionaries and word-suffixes should be explained.
7- There must be overlapping with historical and time-related realities.

We think that our work meet all these 7 criteria with our work and this will be understood in time. However, despite this, VMS reading is not complete. We are talking about an ongoing work at the moment. We are making new progress every week, and all of these are in a positive way.

Thanks,

Ahmet Ardıç

This page can be helpful if anyone is looking for resources on the word-affixes and/or suffixes of Turkish spoken in Anatolia. Because the native language of the person who wrote the page is English and he also speaks Turkish and I think he is a linguist.  
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(07-08-2020, 09:50 PM)Pepper Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.In Turkish, do the phrases "the baby pomegranate gunny candle" and "the foot stalk is plump, robust, cute" make sense as something one would naturally write and which a reader would easily understand? Because in direct translation they look like word salad. 

For me to say the manuscript has been solved, my basic criteria would be:

1) Other experts in the language (the medieval version) can use the method to translate a page independently and come up with roughly the same translation, allowing for reasonable variation because the manuscript is old and language is fluid. I.e. the results are repeatable.
2) The text makes grammatical sense without the translator having to explain that it makes sense if you kind of squint at it and give the author leeway for being poetic or being constricted by an acrostic.

Until you publish your full method and translation it isn't possible to say whether these criteria have been met. I would very much like them to be, because I want to read this damn manuscript (in modern English) before I die. 

I will say that when you publish your findings, people much more knowledgeable and clever than me are going to ask you much more informed and clever questions. I would suggest you don't accuse them of being emotional, racist, Euro-centric, or try to twist their words to say they must agree with you. Science, as you say, should be about the facts and the evidence.

(08-08-2020, 04:28 AM)-JKP- Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Translations have to be evaluated in two ways.

• First you look at the translation and ask yourself, "Does this make sense?"
  
• Second you have to ask yourself, "Would they normally write it this way?"
  

For example, in English, you could say, "Keep you tomorrow health best," and everyone would understand it, but no one says it that way. They would normally say, "Take care," or "Be well," "Gesundheit," or "Watch out for your health," or a few other common phrases. No one would say, "Keep you tomorrow health best."

So... there is text that is understandable in a rough way. And there is text that is normal and conventional.

Some of the solutions proposed so far (in a variety of languages) have bits and pieces that seem understandable, but they are not normal phrases for the Middle Ages.


If it is understandable, but seems a bit odd AND the translation method has a lot of degrees of freedom, then you have to ask yourself if the degrees of freedom are resulting in a subjective "solution". Normally degrees of freedom make it easier to write something that is traditional and normal and yet, in the case of many VMS "solutions", this is not what happens. Even with all this freedom, translations are still grammatically odd or the grammar is nonexistent.

You said that: {In Turkish, do the phrases "the baby pomegranate gunny candle" make sense as something one would naturally write and which a reader would easily understand? Because in direct translation they look like word salad.} 

However, we are not even talking about a complete sentence or about a phrase. I was wrote that; "these three words together are an adjective". I did not write that "these three words (ÇNOR ÇULU ŞAMU) is a sentence or phrase". Because this is an adjective but not a sentences and/or phrase. 

So, you interpret these three words as if they were a complete and meaningful sentence or adjective which they are not. However, if you look at the page with these words, you will see that they are the continuing part. 

[font=Roboto, arial, sans-serif]In brief, "The Baby pomegranate bag wax" (is not phrase or is not sentence too, but it is an adjective.[/font]

Thanks.

(07-08-2020, 12:00 AM)Ahmet Ardıç Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

(04-08-2020, 12:05 AM)Pepper Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Hi Ahmet, nice to see you here and thanks for answering questions. What is your translation of the vord daiin? 

Hi Pepper,

You asked an explanation about a short word with using a short sentence. However, the answer is not short. Because this word is used in many different meanings as both a word suffix and an independent word. For this reason, this word is used very often in VMS and this is a very normal situation.

We can write this word in Latin abc in the form SAĞN / ŞAĞN / SEĞN, SAM / ŞAM / SEM / ŞEM, ŞAIIN / SAIIN / ŞEĞN / ŞEİİN according to ATA alphabet transcription. 

I am not saying that the author was referring to all of these words by writing with this single word. There's absolutely nothing like that. Only this word has a Turkish equivalent of all different transcription combinations and some of their meanings are also common. Because the word root is the same. So, that as the word is read in context, the human brain (for a native speaker) automatically derives all variations, and selects the appropriate one for the context. An example of the brain automatically selecting the appropriate concept to the context in English would be the presentation of the word “fly.” Depending on the context in which it is being read, the brain will draw a distinction between “fly” the verb and “fly” the noun. A similar situation exists in Turkish, albeit with more options. If this is confusing, you can read the explanation below and see that all of them in Turkish.

I hope you will understand my English in first read.

The spelling of this word as SAIIN and as like SAĞN are so close to each other with in phonetic-value that they cannot be perceived as different words. The root of this word is the SA- ('SAĞ-' in some dialects), and it has the suffix '-ĞN'.

The suffix “-ĞN” (“-AĞN”/“-ĞIN”/ “-GİN”) is the phonetic equivalent of “-AĞIN / -EĞİN” due to the Turkish vowel harmony rule, for when the last letter of a root is a consonant, a vowel may be placed as a conjunction between the root and the suffix. These suffixes indicate prospect attainability, potentially achieving something, to be able to potentially attain/reach something, and expecting forthcoming form of something (-able). Sir Gerard Clauson in his book "Studies in Turkic and Mongolic Linguistics" (page 154) explained the suffixes “ĞIN”, and “GİN” as: ["-ğın/-gin function uncertain; e.g. kev- "to masticate" > kevgin "indigestible"; rare and unproductive and probably very old."]. In addition, Sir Gerard Clauson explained in his book "An etymological dictionary of pre-Thirteenth-Century Turkish" (Clauson) that: ["-ğ the commonest Deverbal Suffix; forms a wide range of Deverbal Nouns and Noun/Adjectives, Nomen actiones, etc".]

You can see this word in some Turkish dictionaries (with certain meanings) in the form SAĞIN. But you can often see this word in dictionaries with the word-suffix '-mek / -mak'. So you can see this word in the dictionaries as like SAĞINMAK and SAĞMAK too.

The suffixes “-mek/-mak”: these are suffixes of Turkish infinitive. They turn the root word into a verb as well as also a concrete noun.(Clauson, Eyuboğlu, Guise)

SAĞINMAK: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
SAĞMAK: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
(See Turkish equivalents in the dictionary in google word translator.)

In addition, the various meaning of the word SAĞIN itself is shown in some dictionaries.
SAĞIN: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

You could say that essentially, the letter A and E correspond to ATA Transcription with a single typeface. So we can read this word as SEĞİN.
However, the word SEĞİN is a Turkish word too.
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If you read the word in SEM format, it also has Turkish meanings.
SEM: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

If we talk about reading this word as SAM, we can say the following. This word is both a word-suffix and a word that has its own meaning.

The word SAM: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

The suffixe -SAM: The suffix “-SAM” indicates actions taken in first person. This suffix is directly described as “I/me” and is related to the suffixes “-SAM”, “-SIM”, “-SİM” or “-SEM” which all describe action’s owner to be “I, me, myself” (first person) (Guise).

In Turkish, some word-suffixes can be written separated from the main word/root since ancient times.

Likewise, the pronunciation of word SEM also has Turkish meanings. For example, we know that this word is used in the meaning of 'medicine' in Old Turkish. But the word SEM also has other meanings too. 
SEM: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

The pronunciation of this word as ŞAM and as like ŞEM has some meanings in Turkish.
ŞAM: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
ŞEM: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

If we talk about the spelling of the word ŞAĞIN;
Today, this word is written and read in the Anatolian dialects in the form of UŞAĞIN. In other words, the word has a U sound on the front side. We know that some dialects in Azerbaijan are still used in the form of ŞAĞIN in the same meaning.

In this spelling, the root word is the word UŞAK. But when it was take the word suffix -ĞIN, the K sound was lost in pronunciation and the word became as USAĞIN.
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If we read the word as ŞEĞN, this lives in our language in the form of ŞEYİN. The root of this word is ŞEY. It usually appears in the root form in dictionaries.
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ŞEYİN: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

As you can see, we have shown all the different readings of this word read in VMS according to ATA transcription. Moreover, we shared all related Turkish dictionary pages.

You may have noticed that this word is repeated in almost every page, with multiple numbers in VMS. Moreover, just like in modern Turkish, this word appears in VMS as both an independent word and as a word suffix. So, in this point, the overlap between Turkish and VMS is very clear. All I can tell you is that the word is not used in the same meaning, or in the same function with all of these repetitions in VMS.

So that's why there are many repetitions.

In the runic alphabet inscriptions from the Old Turkish Period, cases where two or more sounds were met with a single alphabet sign were recorded. So this is not just for VMS-specific too.

However, this type of alphabet has helped the author to encode confidential information. We talked about how this coding is done in our second youtube video in English.   You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

May be it is very difficult to understand this situation for a person who thinks English (or any other PIE rooted language) in his/her brain, but an example, even if a word has 10 readings and 100 different meanings, someone who knows Turkish will understand the meaning of the word when they read a sentence. In addition, Turkish speaking person will always understand whether it was used as a word-suffixe or as a separate word too.

So, This is suffix and word. Different readings of the word mostly from same root and a native speaker brain automatically selecting the appropriate concept or meaning form the meaning content. 

The author could write this word in a more separable form by using with simple alphabet characters only, if she/he were wanted to that.

If the author were wanted to that, she/he was not match some single sign in the alphabet with 2 sounds. So this type of writing is not very normal. However, the aim of the author was to create a coded MS which should have been not easy to read. The author was coding and developed a complex alphabet to make this MS difficult to read.

In other words, this alphabet is the situation specific alphabet to created only for VMS, which has been created with consisting of both the syllabic alphabet, the simple alphabet and the tamga-scripts and the numbers. For this reason, now we are reading a simple word in very different ways.

The interesting thing is that even when we take the meanings of different words, the meaning integrity of the sentences is often not broken in meaning. I think this is a situation that created by the intelligence of the author, but it cannot be a coincidence. It is probably not possible to simulate this situation in a language other than Turkish.

Best regards,

Ahmet Ardıç
ATA Team Alberta

Hello Ahmet,

I believe that in your answer you are attempting to provide us with ample explanations to why this particular separate glyph sequence is found very frequently in the VMS (in fact it is the most frequent qlyph sequence), if I'm not being too much mistaken? However, you didn't really answer the question asked. In your links that you have provided no actual translations of the words can be found since everything is written in Turkish, so you have to have knowledge of Turkish to understand the web-pages. Therefore I would here like to re-formulate the original question:

What would be your translation of the - or one of the - most commonly found example(s) of this word/word-suffix in Turkish/Old Turkish languages, into English? 

I am not relying on Google translate, I would like an answer from someone who speaks Turkish. Thank you.

(08-08-2020, 04:06 PM)Ahmet Ardıç Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.[font=Roboto, arial, sans-serif]In brief, "The Baby pomegranate bag wax" (is not phrase or is not sentence too, but it is an adjective.[/font]

Thanks.

Thank you for the additional explanation, especially taking all this time to respond to us in English.

Is "the baby pomegranate bag wax" a typical adjective in Turkish or Old Turkish?

(08-08-2020, 05:09 PM)Alin_J Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

(07-08-2020, 12:00 AM)Ahmet Ardıç Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

(04-08-2020, 12:05 AM)Pepper Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Hi Ahmet, nice to see you here and thanks for answering questions. What is your translation of the vord daiin? 

Hi Pepper,

You asked an explanation about a short word with using a short sentence. However, the answer is not short. Because this word is used in many different meanings as both a word suffix and an independent word. For this reason, this word is used very often in VMS and this is a very normal situation.

We can write this word in Latin abc in the form SAĞN / ŞAĞN / SEĞN, SAM / ŞAM / SEM / ŞEM, ŞAIIN / SAIIN / ŞEĞN / ŞEİİN according to ATA alphabet transcription. 

I am not saying that the author was referring to all of these words by writing with this single word. There's absolutely nothing like that. Only this word has a Turkish equivalent of all different transcription combinations and some of their meanings are also common. Because the word root is the same. So, that as the word is read in context, the human brain (for a native speaker) automatically derives all variations, and selects the appropriate one for the context. An example of the brain automatically selecting the appropriate concept to the context in English would be the presentation of the word “fly.” Depending on the context in which it is being read, the brain will draw a distinction between “fly” the verb and “fly” the noun. A similar situation exists in Turkish, albeit with more options. If this is confusing, you can read the explanation below and see that all of them in Turkish.

I hope you will understand my English in first read.

The spelling of this word as SAIIN and as like SAĞN are so close to each other with in phonetic-value that they cannot be perceived as different words. The root of this word is the SA- ('SAĞ-' in some dialects), and it has the suffix '-ĞN'.

The suffix “-ĞN” (“-AĞN”/“-ĞIN”/ “-GİN”) is the phonetic equivalent of “-AĞIN / -EĞİN” due to the Turkish vowel harmony rule, for when the last letter of a root is a consonant, a vowel may be placed as a conjunction between the root and the suffix. These suffixes indicate prospect attainability, potentially achieving something, to be able to potentially attain/reach something, and expecting forthcoming form of something (-able). Sir Gerard Clauson in his book "Studies in Turkic and Mongolic Linguistics" (page 154) explained the suffixes “ĞIN”, and “GİN” as: ["-ğın/-gin function uncertain; e.g. kev- "to masticate" > kevgin "indigestible"; rare and unproductive and probably very old."]. In addition, Sir Gerard Clauson explained in his book "An etymological dictionary of pre-Thirteenth-Century Turkish" (Clauson) that: ["-ğ the commonest Deverbal Suffix; forms a wide range of Deverbal Nouns and Noun/Adjectives, Nomen actiones, etc".]

You can see this word in some Turkish dictionaries (with certain meanings) in the form SAĞIN. But you can often see this word in dictionaries with the word-suffix '-mek / -mak'. So you can see this word in the dictionaries as like SAĞINMAK and SAĞMAK too.

The suffixes “-mek/-mak”: these are suffixes of Turkish infinitive. They turn the root word into a verb as well as also a concrete noun.(Clauson, Eyuboğlu, Guise)

SAĞINMAK: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
SAĞMAK: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
(See Turkish equivalents in the dictionary in google word translator.)

In addition, the various meaning of the word SAĞIN itself is shown in some dictionaries.
SAĞIN: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

You could say that essentially, the letter A and E correspond to ATA Transcription with a single typeface. So we can read this word as SEĞİN.
However, the word SEĞİN is a Turkish word too.
SEĞİN: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

If you read the word in SEM format, it also has Turkish meanings.
SEM: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

If we talk about reading this word as SAM, we can say the following. This word is both a word-suffix and a word that has its own meaning.

The word SAM: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

The suffixe -SAM: The suffix “-SAM” indicates actions taken in first person. This suffix is directly described as “I/me” and is related to the suffixes “-SAM”, “-SIM”, “-SİM” or “-SEM” which all describe action’s owner to be “I, me, myself” (first person) (Guise).

In Turkish, some word-suffixes can be written separated from the main word/root since ancient times.

Likewise, the pronunciation of word SEM also has Turkish meanings. For example, we know that this word is used in the meaning of 'medicine' in Old Turkish. But the word SEM also has other meanings too. 
SEM: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

The pronunciation of this word as ŞAM and as like ŞEM has some meanings in Turkish.
ŞAM: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
ŞEM: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

If we talk about the spelling of the word ŞAĞIN;
Today, this word is written and read in the Anatolian dialects in the form of UŞAĞIN. In other words, the word has a U sound on the front side. We know that some dialects in Azerbaijan are still used in the form of ŞAĞIN in the same meaning.

In this spelling, the root word is the word UŞAK. But when it was take the word suffix -ĞIN, the K sound was lost in pronunciation and the word became as USAĞIN.
UŞAK: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

If we read the word as ŞEĞN, this lives in our language in the form of ŞEYİN. The root of this word is ŞEY. It usually appears in the root form in dictionaries.
ŞEY: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
ŞEYİN: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

As you can see, we have shown all the different readings of this word read in VMS according to ATA transcription. Moreover, we shared all related Turkish dictionary pages.

You may have noticed that this word is repeated in almost every page, with multiple numbers in VMS. Moreover, just like in modern Turkish, this word appears in VMS as both an independent word and as a word suffix. So, in this point, the overlap between Turkish and VMS is very clear. All I can tell you is that the word is not used in the same meaning, or in the same function with all of these repetitions in VMS.

So that's why there are many repetitions.

In the runic alphabet inscriptions from the Old Turkish Period, cases where two or more sounds were met with a single alphabet sign were recorded. So this is not just for VMS-specific too.

However, this type of alphabet has helped the author to encode confidential information. We talked about how this coding is done in our second youtube video in English.   You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

May be it is very difficult to understand this situation for a person who thinks English (or any other PIE rooted language) in his/her brain, but an example, even if a word has 10 readings and 100 different meanings, someone who knows Turkish will understand the meaning of the word when they read a sentence. In addition, Turkish speaking person will always understand whether it was used as a word-suffixe or as a separate word too.

So, This is suffix and word. Different readings of the word mostly from same root and a native speaker brain automatically selecting the appropriate concept or meaning form the meaning content. 

The author could write this word in a more separable form by using with simple alphabet characters only, if she/he were wanted to that.

If the author were wanted to that, she/he was not match some single sign in the alphabet with 2 sounds. So this type of writing is not very normal. However, the aim of the author was to create a coded MS which should have been not easy to read. The author was coding and developed a complex alphabet to make this MS difficult to read.

In other words, this alphabet is the situation specific alphabet to created only for VMS, which has been created with consisting of both the syllabic alphabet, the simple alphabet and the tamga-scripts and the numbers. For this reason, now we are reading a simple word in very different ways.

The interesting thing is that even when we take the meanings of different words, the meaning integrity of the sentences is often not broken in meaning. I think this is a situation that created by the intelligence of the author, but it cannot be a coincidence. It is probably not possible to simulate this situation in a language other than Turkish.

Best regards,

Ahmet Ardıç
ATA Team Alberta

Hello Ahmet,

I believe that in your answer you are attempting to provide us with ample explanations to why this particular separate glyph sequence is found very frequently in the VMS (in fact it is the most frequent qlyph sequence), if I'm not being too much mistaken? However, you didn't really answer the question asked. In your links that you have provided no actual translations of the words can be found since everything is written in Turkish, so you have to have knowledge of Turkish to understand the web-pages. Therefore I would here like to re-formulate the original question:

What would be your translation of the - or one of the - most commonly found example(s) of this word/word-suffix in Turkish/Old Turkish languages, into English? 

I am not relying on Google translate, I would like an answer from someone who speaks Turkish. Thank you.

Hi,

I hope, my annotation here will explain the subject more clearly. 
Thank you for requesting additional information.


First of all, I must say that the word suffix -SAM / -SEM is used frequently in Turkish. Reading this word suffix SAM or SEM does not change the meaning. So this two (SAM and SEM) are the same thing. The intended use of this word-suffix is different and the frequency of use may vary according to dialects. For example, in Anatolian Turkish, the function of the suffix -im is expressed in the Pomak-Turkish language (pomak) as -SAM (first person indicate suffix -im).

[In this source, you can see this: "arno sam (dobre sım): iyiyim" in Pomakça <https://pomakcasozluk.wordpress.com/pomakca-turkce/>]

However, I must say that I have not encountered an article that compared the frequency with which the word suffix SAM / SEM is used in Turkish with different languages. If I have time, maybe I can write such an article. However, I will give an example of some literary or linguistic texts here and you will perceive the frequency of use of this syllable visually.

Below I share a link to an academic article published in a university in Turkey. The article itself examines some examples of texts from Turkish but Çuvaş-Turkish language dialects in terms of grammar. This article quoted a one-page Turkish-ÇUVAŞ dialect written text. This article also partially examined the word-suffix -SAM. In the quoted Chuvash text, the frequency of occurrence of this word suffix is seen.

In this source article, she did not count and specify how many times this SAM syllable occurs as a word-ending sound in every 100 words. However, looking at the copied text in the 1-page Chuvash dialect, this quote will give you an idea of how much the SAM syllable is repeated at the end of words. And we can count ourselves in how many words this structure was seen. Let's see how many times the SAM last-syllable appears in the text on a single page. In this text below, I marked the last syllables of SEM/SAM in bold so that we can count clearly in page 43 in this published academic article. In addition, from this page 26 of this article, she also states that the word suffix SAM is used in 'second person and plural conjugation' and gives some examples.

In addition, The author of the article wrote that this word suffix (-SEM /-SAM) of the Chuvash Turks is also used to make nouns plural. The author of the article that reports on page 43 of this article that, uniqueness names in Chuvash dialect do not take a morpheme to show the number suffix, whereas nouns in the plurality category take the morpheme + sem (Unity names do not take a morpheme to indicate the number field, whereas names in the plural category take the morpheme + sem / This particular quote that in as; "Teklik isimler sayı ulamını gösterecek bir biçimbirim almazken, çokluk kategorisindeki isimler +sem biçimbirimine alır."). 

For example, this situation is not found in Anatolian Turkish. For this reason, we need to know which dialect the VMS author uses. May be the VMS author was using some form of the ÇUVAŞ dialect.

 [Source; Doç. Dr. Funda KARA form T.C. Atatürk University Socıal Sciences Department Of Turkish Language And Literature (2013)  < You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.  >]

The quoted text is in the Chuvash-dialect (in the Cyrillic text) from an article by M. Pavlov's source is cited [Indicated Source in this article: M. M. Pavlova, Hănăhtaru puhhisem, Şupaşkar 2009, Ṩěně văhăt, s.17]:

Let's look at the quote now: (Note: -CEM in Cyrillic-alphabet = -SEM in the Latin-alphabet)
 
КАЙӐКСЕМ

Кайӑксем - юрӑ та вӗҫев!

Кайӑк сасси - пирӗн вӑрмансем, ҫеҫен хирсем, тусемпе пушхирсен сасси.

Кайӑксем - сывлӑш ачисем, сывлӑшри океана пӑхӑнтаракансем. Вӗсем,
пӗлӗтрен те, тусенчен те ҫӳлерех вӗҫсе хӑпараҫҫӗ.

Кайӑксем - асамат кӗперӗн ачисем. Вӗсен тӗкӗсене тем тӗрлӗ сӑрӑпа та
сӑрласа пӗтернӗ.

Кайӑксем - савӑнӑҫ хыпарҫисем. Вӗсем кашни ҫулах ҫунат ҫинче пирӗн
пата ҫуркуннене илсе килеҫҫӗ.

Кайӑксем - пире пулӑшаӑкансем, вӑрмансемпе хирсен, пахчасемпе садсене
упракансем. Кайӑксем - вӑрттӑнлӑхпа илем. Кайӑксем - пирӗн ачалӑх тусӗсем.

Кайӑксем ҫинчен чаплӑ сӑвӑсемпе юрӑсем, юмӑхсем хывнӑ. Кайӑксӑр эпир
пурӑнайман та пулӑттӑмӑр. Кайӑксӑр ҫӗр мӗнле пуласси ҫинчен шухӑшлама та
хӑрушӑ!

Авӑ камсем вӗсем, кайӑксем!
 
So, There are about 100 words here and 24 of them ends with this (-SEM/-SAM) syllable / sound.

However, we cannot generalize neither this nor the VMS texts for the Turkish language about this SAM syllable issue. This will vary according to the dialects. It also varies according to the content of the subject posted.

To give an example, let's say a teacher wrote a text telling students   that something like what they should and should not do in a study day. Suppose the teacher wrote in the same text as an example of what he/she did on his/her study day. In this case, most sentences will contain conditional suffixes + first and second person singular suffixes. In addition, imagine that you are using this syllable not only as a word suffix but also as a word too. In this case, he/she will need to use this first person singular word suffixes in almost every sentence in the text. At the same time, the VMS author was using this as a word besides being a word suffix. Which word can be read as like SAM, SEM, ŞEM, ŞAM, SAĞN (saıın/sağn/sağın) based on ATA transcription.

Words:
SAM (straw, grass/sap saman, ot): You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
SEM (medicine/ilaç): You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
ŞAM (candle, wax, solid-parafin/mum): You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
ŞEM (candle, wax, beeswax, silver/mum, bal mumu, gümüş): You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
SAĞIN (milking, lactating, milch, complete/sağmal, süt veren, sağım. tam): You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
or
SAĞIM: (milking/sağım): You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
 
Or suppose that texts are telling an event in the past or a story in the present time. So let's tell a story that doesn't need to use the first and second person singular conditional suffixes like this. In this case, you cannot see this word suffix in that kind of texts. It is precisely for this reason that we cannot generalize as if we see X% of 'SAM' syllables at the end of words in that kind of Turkish text.

I can say that the Turkish language dialects and VMS texts overlap with each other. But I am sure that no other language in the world can match that much. 

In today's Turkish, we are mostly using this suffix (SAM / SEM) to make wish and request modes or to establish conditional structures.

We can see this structure in the Harezmi dialect too. In Harezmi Turkish dialect, we see the conditional mode -SEM / -SAM. In an article written by Prof. Dr. Aysu Ata, She gave some examples of words and sentences in Harezmi dialect.

E.g;
t. şahıs erse men / ersem düşmÀnnı erse men (HŞ 4381), baàda ersem (HŞ 441) bar ersem (KE 144r16)

[You can see more example in this source: Harezm Turkish Morphology, Prof. Dr. Aysu Ata,<https://www.turkcenindirilisi.com/turkce/harezm-turkcesi-sekil-bilgisi-ozellikleri-prof-dr-aysu-h95640.html>]

In researcher Gürer Gülsevin's presentation in 1999, she was informing about "optative varieties" in Old (Anatolian) Turkish. In her statement she was share some examples from Old Turkish.

Some of these are those:
2nd person singularity of optative varieties -sen
gele sen bunda saηa neη garazum yok işidür sen / kala sen anda yavuzdur yalıηuz kanda kalur sen (Mev.1,1) ...

1st person singularity of optative varieties -sam
senüηle meşveret kılsam gerekdür / bu derde çâreler bulsam gerekdür (Işk.3565)

2nd person singularity of optative varieties -sAη
bir kaç haslet birle ârâste olsaη gerek (Mrzb.64b.14)
 
In other words, it is clearly known that this word suffix exists in Old Turkish and there are many academic sources that provide this information. So, some people used to write this word suffix by combining it with the root word. However, it was also possible to write them separately. In this example, both are seen being together, as like VMS texts.

[Source: TDK-Fransız Anadolu Araştırmaları Enstitüsü, Osmanlı Türkçesi Öncesi : Eski Türkiye Türkçesi Toplantısı, İstanbul Aralık 1999, by Gürer Gülsevin,<http://www.turkoloji.cu.edu.tr/ESKI%20TURK%20DILI/gulsevin_01.pdf>]
 
Included in the poetic form of 'koşuk', we often see the '- sam' request suffix.

E.g;  Säbzvân Ķoşıķläri 
145
Säbzvân m yoķ ekän sazäyläsäm
ķanatim yoķ ekän pärvâz äyläsäm
ķani meni yäħşi fe’lli yârginäm
taŋġdä barib aldigä zâr äläsäm
...
367
çärħ igirsäm çärħginäm äylänädi
uygä kirsäm saçginäm tolġanädi
ķoy suyib toylär birib algän yârim
kündiz ötib keçäsi ħuylänädi
368
käşki men uçär çibin bolsäm edi
ķayrilib ķabaġ gä ķonsäm edi
şunçäki rumal alib kiş kişläsä
öldirsä diydälärdän toysäm edi
527
ķari çaldi yer deb tutsäm ne morad
u ölsä men bivä ķalsäm ne morad
undän körä ŧaķa ötsäm yaħşiraķ
u minän men ŧila taķsäm yaħşiraķ
 
... etc ...
 
[You can see more example in this source: 'Säbzvân Ķoşıķläri', Ankara Unıversıty Socıal Scıences Instıtute Contemporary Turkısh Languages And Lıteratures Department, Yüksek Lisans Tezi. Yazar: Asaludin Nazamudin, Yıl: 2012 <https://dspace.ankara.edu.tr/xmlui/bitstream/handle/20.500.12575/30316/asaludin_nazamundin_tez.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y>]

Let me give you some scientific and linguistic information about Turkish lexical structure in order to fully understand this issue.
First of all, we can read this word suffix -SAM and -SEM with using ATA alphabet transcription. Because that, the author expressed the sounds ‘A’ and ‘E’ with the same letter sign. Moreover, this is not only valid for VMS. There is a similar situation in some other old inscriptions written with the runic alphabet in Turkish too. This situation seems to give us a wider range of motion for anagrams. But this perception at first sight is a completely wrong estimate. Because that, there is no difference between writing this word-suffix as SAM or SEM in Turkish. There is a structure called vowel-harmony in Turkish. This structure does not allow the reader who knows the Turkish language to read SEM where they need to read SAM.

So why is that?

In Turkish a vowel usually follows a consonant and a consonant follows a vowel. However, in most old Turkic languages, two vowels in a word could follow each other. In modern Anatolian Turkish, generally the second vowel in a structure can be dropped while only the first vowel maintains its function, as this is called vowel apocopation (vowel loss). Furthermore, the Turkish Vowel Harmony Rule governs these structural amendments, and all alterations are based on the dialectic differences (Clauson, Guise). In addition to this, in rare cases throughout the VM, if there are three vowels side by side, usually the last two vowels can be dropped. 

The Turkish Vowel Harmony Rule refers to an echoing phonetic value of the previous vowel in a word. In other words, the vowels of suffixes must mirror the final vowel of the word being suffixed in a same phonetic value. Most suffixes must follow the rule of vowel harmony (Clauson, Guise). Within the Vowel Harmony Rule, there are two sets of vowels. The first set consists of the letters “A, I, O, U”; the second set consists of the letters “E, İ, Ö, Ü”. These vowels only appear in words as either one of these sets, for within one word, a vowel such as “O” cannot be seen with any other vowels outside “A, I, O, U”. 

Similarly, the same rule allows the phonetic listing of combined letters (syllabic characters) in the Voynich Manuscript. Since most combined letters appear as two consonants, the vowel that is placed initially is not limited to any vowel harmony set – unless the combined letter is not the root of the word. The initial vowel in the root governs which vowel set is employed in added affixiation.

[For more information please see this source about the Turkish. Vowel Harmony <http://www.gravityturkish.com/manisa/vh1.htm>]
            The suffix “-ĞN” (“-AĞN”/“-ĞIN”/ “-GİN”) is the phonetic equivalent of “-AĞIN / -EĞİN” due to the Turkish vowel harmony rule, for when the last letter of a root is a consonant, a vowel may be placed as a conjunction between the root and the suffix. These suffixes indicate prospect attainability, potentially achieving something, to be able to potentially attain/reach something, and expecting forthcoming form of something (-able). Sir Gerard Clauson in his book "Studies in Turkic and Mongolic Linguistics" (page 154) explained the suffixes “-ĞIN”, and “GİN” as: ["-ğın/-gin function uncertain; e.g. kev- "to masticate" > kevgin "indigestible"; rare and unproductive and probably very old."]. In addition, Sir Gerard Clauson explained in his book "An etymological dictionary of pre-Thirteenth-Century Turkish" (Clauson) that: 

["-ğ the commonest Deverbal Suffix; forms a wide range of Deverbal Nouns and Noun/Adjectives, Nomen actiones, etc".]

Here is the most important part (the key for compare different texts in different languages) to see that if VMS text are match or not match with Turkish!!!

 Furthermore, the text that appeared in VM is following many Turkish phonetic and morphological structures. Although, there are too many such concepts to list here a few examples we can provide include facts such as, both VM and Turkish structure does not have any words that end with “/b/, /c/, /d/, /g/”. Likewise, they also do not have any words that start with “/f/, /h/, /j/, /l/, /m/, /n/, /p/, /r/, /v/, /z/, /ş/”. There is some exception to this rule. There might be word being taken from other languages such as Arabic, Persian, etc. Additionally, we must account for the fact that certain first letters may be dropped, as well as letters can be changed to replace others as dialects expanded and evolved. For example, the word “bar” became “var”; “/b/” can also become “/m/”, “/s/| becomes “ş” etc. Another example that has no exceptions is the use of the letter “/ğ/”, as there are no word that start with it. All of this is reflected in the VM.

These features of Turkish overlap precisely with VMS texts throughout 240 pages (excluding maybe a few words which borrowed from other languages such as Persian and Arabic into Turkish). There is not even a second language in the world that can come close to this match.

If there is a situation where a linguist can deny these overlaps, it can be openly questioned whether that person understands linguistics. The situation is that clear.

It was a lengthy explanation in bad English. Thank you for reading with patience.

Best regards,

Ahmet Ardıç
ATAT Team Alberta

(08-08-2020, 03:07 PM)Pepper Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

(08-08-2020, 12:45 AM)Ahmet Ardıç Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Hi Pepper,

When I do not translate directly (1/1), what I wrote to you seems to be my personal comments. The reason I translate directly is because you can see that the sentence is linked to the drawing on the page and the words have meanings. The direct translation is: "The roots are cute." and/or "The roots are fat."

But none of these words in Turkish alone mean root. But when both of these two words (AYAK SAPI) combine, it becomes an adjective that refers to the roots of the plant. Therefore, translation of a Turkish text into other languages is also a matter of expertise.

I don't need to comment on your other comment because I already shared my opinion on these issues.

Thanks for your comment,

Ah, I haven't been clear. I don't object to you converting your direct translations into a form that makes sense in English ("the foot stalk is plump, robust, cute" > "the roots are cute"). I'm grateful for those Turkish > modern English translations because it helps me understand.

What I'm asking is if somebody writing in 15th century Turkish would write "the foot stalk is plump, robust, cute" in that way? JKP explained this better than me - "keep you tomorrow best health" could be a direct translation from VMS to English but it would be dubious because nobody would construct a sentence that way.

Also, what does cute mean in this context? It makes me smile because it seems so anachronistic for a medieval mansucript, but that could be my ignorance talking!

Hi Pepper,

AYAK SAK (foot stalk) words are used in form an adjective. It is quite easy to create new adjectives in the Turkish language, and it is probably the same in many languages. 

When we look at these words (AYAK SAK APAK) one by one in etymology dictionaries to see written examples in history, we can see that two of them was written before year 735 and one from before 1073. 

AYAK: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
SAK (SAP): You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
APAK: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

If you were ask that; "Is there any other written example of that "AYAK SAK" adjective in Old Turkish?".

My answer is "I don't know yet". Because it is the issue with related to check more academic paper to know about old Turkish more if it was used in other text in the past or not. This adjective is used for 'the root of a plant'? So far, I haven't found a similar written (ayak sak) words sample. We know that all adjectives in any language did not have written examples at the beginning of the 15th century or before that time. Maybe the author herself/himself created this adjective. Or may be using of this adjective in Turkish was older, but there are no written examples yet.

Whether this is one way or another does not indicate whether the VMS is Turkish or not. But written instances of both AYAK and SAK are older than VMS for sure. This is the first example I seen that with these two words being used side by side as an adjective. 

So if we found the first example of something, this is good for linguistic record.

Thanks,

(08-08-2020, 03:18 PM)Ahmet Ardıç Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
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As I tried to explain before, I have some difficulties in translating from Old Turkish to modern English. First of all, English is not my native language. And, we could not identify that old dialect yet. Therefore, I have to either translate the meaning into English, or talk about them by translating 1/1 words. 

When I only translate the meaning a sentence, someone who does not speak Turkish may not be able to reconcile them with what the VMS author wrote. When I translate 1/1 (word by word), the sentences may not look like a complete sentence. In other words, they look like unreasonably lined words.

...

In situations like this, it is a good idea to do it both ways...

Create three columns. One is the original VMS passage, the next is the literal translation, the third is the common way of saying it.

Many Bible and Qur'an concordances are designed this way. The literal translation allows a person to see exactly which words were transliterated while the third column provides a more understandable meaning.

This is also the most honest way of doing it because there are no "invisible" steps between the original text and the common interpretation. It makes the methodology more clear, which is always appreciated by those following a scientific method.


Many Voynich researchers know more than one language, so we understand how grammar can be different in another language and how some things are understood by culture. Anyone who has learned a far eastern language (e.g., Japanese or Chinese) understands that text can be very nuanced and local people know how to read meaning into sentences that seem incomplete to someone from outside the culture.