The Voynich Ninja

Hello Ahmet!
The word you are looking at, very important in my opinion, contains two glyphs 8. You read the first one as the number 8 and the second one
as a letter. Why this difference?

(30-05-2022, 07:19 PM)Ruby Novacna Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Hello Ahmet!
The word you are looking at, very important in my opinion, contains two glyphs 8. You read the first one as the number 8 and the second one
as a letter. Why this difference?

I'm not Ahmet, but if I had to guess -- looking at the two glyphs, the 1st is drawn like an actual '8''; the bottom of the second one has a curved stroke meeting a diagonal stroke rather than a closed bottom loop. A quick scan of You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. doesn't seem to show him making that distinction, but it's potentially there. In any case, that document makes clear that '8' can be either the number '8' or a letter in his theory. Polyvalence does happen in writing systems, so whatever my overall view of the theory is I wouldn't disqualify it solely on that basis.

The purpose of my question was not to disqualify reading, but to understand it. Even if the two 8s are different, why think directly about the numbers? In relation to the number of nymphs?

(30-05-2022, 07:19 PM)Ruby Novacna Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Hello Ahmet!
[The word you are looking at, very important in my opinion, contains two glyphs 8. You read the first one as the number 8 and the second one
as a letter. Why this difference?]

Dear Novacna,

We have seen many examples of the use of numbers by the author, both as numbers and as alphabet characters, with their phonetic values (mostly with the first sound in Turkish pronunciation) between texts. I don't know why the author did this. But our guess is that the author wants to keep the information in the content of the texts confidential. In other words, we can say that she/he made a special and versatile effort to make the texts difficult to read. It may also be the same reason why she used such a complex alphabet and wrote the texts together with the manipulations such as shortening the words or splitting or combining them.

Thanks

(30-05-2022, 03:59 PM)Ahmet Ardıç Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.The words 8 ÇUCSU / 8 ÇOCU-SU (8 çocuğu > 8 CHILDREN / 8 JUNIOR) mean "that eight children", and "the/that/their/those eight children".
Because that "-SU" ("-si/-su/-si-/-su") suffixe at the and is English equivalent of "the, that, their,... " .

The word ÇOCUK means boy/girl, child, kid, infant, juvenile, youngster, junior, ... etc
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Is it not possibly 8 water children, as per the double meanjng of su in previous example?

(31-05-2022, 09:46 AM)Ruby Novacna Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.[The purpose of my question was not to disqualify reading, but to understand it. Even if the two 8s are different, why think directly about the numbers? In relation to the number of nymphs?]

Dear Novacna,

These texts were not written to be read as if they were reading a newspaper. Or, it was not written so that it could be read by everyone, like the usual ordinary texts written until that day. It may have been written for a single particular reader or several individuals. Those particular readers should probably have known how to read this alphabet and texts with a previously agreed upon and known phonetic value.


I think, about 600 years ago, this particular reader was reading these texts and deciding where to read the number 8 (Sekiz "Eight") as an 8 as a number or where to read it as an alphabet character with S/Ş phonetic value, by reading the texts in both ways... etc.  In other words, we do not think that that special reader has read these texts fluently like an ordinary known text at that time.

For this reason, Turcologists, who cannot see the usual old writing style in these texts, are also surprised and try to understand the content instead of making a  rash explanation because they do not fully understand what is happening and where this VM come from or what is VM etc.

So, I think I understand your question. This is a legitimate/logical question. But our expectations should not be to read as in the usual (already familiar) old texts. Nor should we expect these texts to be read fluently, or expect it to quickly become clear why they are so complex. We are looking at texts that are very unusual and unusual even for Turkish (not found in any other 1/1-like Turkish manuscripts).

One Turkic language professor at the Azerbaijan Academy of Sciences thinks that the author also used words that were behind his/her time (i.e. much older/archaic words). For this reason, he translates in different way by giving some words different meanings. That is, although I do not share the exact same ideas with him and do not do the same translation, I do not have the full knowledge to clearly say whether archaic forms of some words are used in the texts.

It is likely that kind of different readings of different views on these texts may continue to write for at least 100 years after today. But after a while today, everyone will understand that the texts are written with Turkic/Turkish content. Over time, many questions will be answered more clearly and our this ATA family project only have presented the key to new start this process for linguists. 

This professor I'm talking about is writing a short article on this subject, and in one part of the article he asked me to write transcriptions of some sentences (with their 600 years old phonetic pronunciation based on the ATA alphabet transcription). The purpose of my contribution to his article with my readings by using my transcription is to show the other reader linguists that sound changes he and I proposes to the alphabet transcription to compare as an alternative reading idea.

That is, we do not read the same signs in the same phonetic form. I think we currently read 3 or 4 alphabet characters differently, but most/rest of them are pronounced in the same phonetic way.

So, we hope that we will show for future readers that difference between this two readings by reading particular page in VM. The main purpose of writing this article is to make other linguist Turcologists aware of the subject.

In other words, there may be those who attribute different meanings to the texts from now on. Because, as I said, the author's unusual writing style is beyond our initial prediction, making it difficult to read.

More Turkologists need to cooperate on this issue. In other words, if you find any Turkologist and if you show the texts with our transcription, than she/he will tell you that it is an unusual Turkish with its spelling and phonetic value. We have not yet been able to reach a consensus on the reasons for this.

Thanks,

(31-05-2022, 12:40 PM)Linda Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

(30-05-2022, 03:59 PM)Ahmet Ardıç Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.The words 8 ÇUCSU / 8 ÇOCU-SU (8 çocuğu > 8 CHILDREN / 8 JUNIOR) mean "that eight children", and "the/that/their/those eight children".
Because that "-SU" ("-si/-su/-si-/-su") suffixe at the and is English equivalent of "the, that, their,... " .

The word ÇOCUK means boy/girl, child, kid, infant, juvenile, youngster, junior, ... etc
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[Is it not possibly 8 water children, as per the double meanjng of su in previous example?]

Dear Linda,

Considering the syntax order of these examined words, it does not seem possible in terms of Turkish. This word is placed at the end of a series of words. 
[attachment=6583]
We also read the frontal parts of this last word in Turkish. Here I just need to verify more old Turkish words on one word by scanning them in various articles. Because we can't find some words in our own dictionaries, but we look for them in various academic articles. 

This is a whole, and the sentence ends means "… those/that eight girls with children." From this written info, we understand that girls in this drawing are (probably) pregnant. 

The word we are trying to clarify is in the first part of the sentence. In this same kind of way, hundreds of sentences that need only one word to be clarified are available in 240 pages long. Some linguists think that these may be archaic forms of those words. Perhaps some of these words may have been borrowed from other languages into Turkish and used in Turkish sentences. The author is probably a multilingual person. 

Most likely, the whole sentence will be as follows like:
This section of the waterway to be owned/using by that junior/girls who have children (/are pregnant)

As far as I understood from the cross-readings I made on different pages, the author writes some things about pregnant women by observing their pregnancy periods and dividing them into certain groups who are close to each other by their pregnancy period. I'm inferring that these are some advice and medicines or medical practices, things related to beauty, health, cleanliness, fertilization, procreation, abortion or cesarean section,... etc.

Thanks

Note: The part that looks like the second word here is actually two separate words written compound.

U SAIROP = O ARAPE / O SARAP = that waterway
U = O (the word used as a demonstrative adjective) > You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
ARAPE: "water way" (su yolu) You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
sARAP: "covered waterway" (üstü kapalı su yolu)
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Here the first word is OLAR/OL-AR (olur) and you have to search the dictionaries for as word OLMAK (being, to be, have/having ... etc see this link for OL-mak:  You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. ) to see its semantic content. The root of this word is OL- and I have explained the function of the suffix -mak before. 
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The word that looks like the third word is actually two separate words written together. (U ÇÇLU/UÇÇILU > O ÇOCULU = o çocuklu ) Which mean in English like "those with children" (o çocuk sahibi olanlar / o çocuklular).
But I want to search for one particular word other meanings here in some academic articles and confirm it. But after that I will look at this whole sentence again and say more precisely what this sentence means in modern language.

From the folio 16r
[attachment=6584]

The author wrote this first word as ŞEİNÖS. 

We know from the evolution process of the words of the Turkish language that one of the conjoined vowels disappeared over time (mostly the second one fell off). There are thousands of examples of this in our language, and we have already shown examples in the VM-manuscript. (For example, the author writes the word ŞALAK (cucumber) as ŞAILAK.) Thus, we can say with great clarity that this word is the word ŞENÖS. 

We have also identify in different word examples that the author wrote the word ÖZ which we use today, in the form of ÖS. In fact, Z > S sound transformations are frequently seen between different dialects of Turkish.

This is a compound word as ŞEN+ÖZ. And the root of this word is ŞEN+. 

Some of the semantic content of the word ŞEN as an adjective; (If we write the English equivalent) are; Merry, cheerful, gleeful, jolly, cheery, blithe, jaunty, eupeptic, convivial, frolicsome, merrymaking, mirthful, sportive, breezy, jocund, ... etc.
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The second component (final part) of this word is the word +ÖZ. Some meanings of the word ÖZ are: Extract, essence, substance, core, quintessence, pith, content, soul, gist, matter, elixir, ... etc. 
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When these two words are used together (as like ŞEN ÖZ / ŞEN+ÖZ), the meaning of "joyful essence"/"merrymaking extract" is formed.

In different dialects of the Turkish language, the words ŞEN and NEŞE are used interchangeably to create words that can be used with the same meaning. For example, the words "NEŞE-lenmek" and "ŞEN-lenmek" can mean the same because their root meaning content is mostly the same. The word NEŞE  in some dialects is also used as the name and/or adjective of some of the plants that have a narcotic effect.

But in fact, we see these two words (ŞENÖZ) in the form of nouns as compound words.
ŞENÖZ: "İçinde mutluluk ve sevinç bulunan şey" in Turkish.
ŞENÖZ in English; The thing in which there is happiness and joy. / That which contains happiness and joy.)

To see this ŞENÖZ meaning (as a noun) on the dictionary page, please see this > You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

So the author seems to have used these (ŞEN ÖZ / ŞENÖZ) words together as an adjective or directly as a noun to describe this plant.


The other word is a word written in the form of UÇCAPOŞ. This word is also formed by combining two separate words (UÇCA + POŞ).

The first of these is the word UÇCA. The words in today's modern Turkish, which are close to this word in phonetic value, are UCA (lofty, high, sublime, supreme, exalted, noble) and UÇÇA (slow).
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Here, the word that the author writes in the POŞ form is the word HEAD, which is close to it as a phonetic value. Already in the content of the VM manuscript, many other examples have been read in which the old O sound of many words has turned into the A sound today, and the P sound is transformed into the B sound here.

P>B and O>A sound changes are also a common occurrence among different dialects.

Some of the semantic contents of the word BAŞ (POŞ) are; head, grand, ... etc.
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In other words, the compound word written in the form of UÇCAPOŞ (UCA+BAŞ or UÇÇA+BAŞ) means "high head" or "slow head".

In this case, if we want to express the meaning here in English by reading these words we have marked here, we can write the following:

ŞEN+ÖZ UCA+BAŞ / ŞEN+ÖZ UÇÇA+BAŞ = "joyful essence slow/high head extract" and-or "merrymaking extract slow head"
-or-
ŞENÖZ UCA+BAŞ = "The high-head in which there is happiness and joy", "The thing in which there is happiness and joy high head", or "the happiness and joy high head", ... etc.

Frankly, looking at the meaning created by these words, I think that these words may have been used together as an adjective or analogy. When we will read the whole of this 16r page, it is probably possible for us to make a clearer translation. I hope, it would be more accurate to evaluate these words together with linguist Turcologists.

The content on medical and drug making issues is mostly created in a way that explains some details about women's and children's health and especially pregnancy-period processes.

Now, let's show this two words (DÖŞ ÜYÇÖSÜ / breast size) written side by side with their explanations in dictionaries below.

[attachment=6798]
The author wrote these words about 600 years ago in the form of  "DÖŞ ÜYÇÖSÜ". Today, we write these words (in the modern Turkey Turkish as) in the form of "DÖŞ ÖLÇÜSÜ".

As can be seen here, the first word remained unchanged for 600 years without any phonetic changes. The second word has undergone a minor phonetic change in minor form and the reason for which is known by us and by Turcology & Old Turkish area linguists.

These words mean in English; "breast size" (chest size, thorax measurement/size)

It is the suffix -SU/-SÜ at the end of the word ÖLÇÜ-SÜ / ÖYÇÜ-SÜ. The word suffix -SU, -SÜ, SI, -Sİ is a suffix that can make an adjective from a noun. This word suffix also has other functions. For example; It is a suffix meaning "likely" and "as like". This is also the word suffix that functions as "object ponter" and "Possessive Pronoun" as a function. We have explained this subject before by showing the sources, so I do not go into more detail about word affixes here. If you want to learn more Turkish grammar, please see: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

You can see that the word DÖŞ means "BREAST" on this dictionary page: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

You can see the meaning content of the word ÖLÇÜ/ÖYÇÜ (MEASUREMENT, SİZE) on this dictionary page: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.


Of course, it is possible to put forward other variants of phonetic sound affinity. For example, the second word ÜLÇÖSÜ can also be read as ÜLÜÇ ÖSÜ > İLİÇ+ÖZÜ. However, a clearer explanation can be made on this subject while the sentences in which these words are used are analyzed in the book. Of course, all of the variants I mentioned are evaluated within the Turkish language. Botanists and doctors can probably provide clearer explanations.

Since I haven't written for a long time, you can find some current news about our work below;

1-) In terms of word/drawing overlaps we detected in the VM, (the number of words matching with drawings in same page) is 101. This number will definitely increase for sure. Because we have only been able to take a detailed look at 10% or 11% of the VM content yet.

2-) Our presentation at Niğde University was very successful. I was not the only one in this University to talk about the Turkish content of the VM texts. Turcolog linguist and Old Turkish expert Prof. Dr. Mayıl Asgarov himself has been give another presentation in the same university and he said that the content of VM is in Old Turkish. I think an academic article on this subject will be published in the coming months in Turkish.

(This University was the fifth university we talked about the VM Turkish content. Hundreds of Turkish language experts have been informed and not a single negative opinion or article has been published or sent to us yet. Currently, the all feedback/statements are positive and it is clearly understood that the VM texts have Old Turkish content for sure. However, the author or authors' dialect they used in VM has not been determined yet. There are still different opinions on this subject.)

3-) The presentation I made in the Turkish Language Department of the Azerbaijan Academy of Sciences was deemed successful and the department head of the academy presented me with a certificate of appreciation. After this presentation, Prof. Mayıl Asgarov himself began to do readings in VM by using our ATA abc-transcription. I also wrote one joint article with him and I think this article will be published in the journal of the Azerbaijan Academy of Sciences soon (in Azerbayjani Turkish).

4-) We will speak at a symposium with an international jury between October 3rd and October 5th in Türkiye/Ankara. In this symposium, Prof. Dr. Mayıl Asgarov and I participated in with two separate articles. Mr. Asgarov (states that he has currently read 10 full pages of the VM texts and) will present one of these pages at this international symposium to be held in Ankara. I submitted the full translation of the page 33v as an article and it was accepted for this symposium to present in Ankara in October 2022. So I was officially invited to speak about the VM Old-Turkish content at this symposium. The majority of the science committee/jury members of this event are Turkish language scientists. Some of them will come from Germany and Hungary. You can see the full list of them in this attached link and below.

The Organizing Committee Chairman
Prof. Dr. Ahmet Bican ERCİLASUN

  The Organizing Committee
Prof. Dr. Ferruh AĞCA
Prof. Dr. Kâzım Yaşar KOPRAMAN
Prof. Dr. İbrahim DİLEK
Prof. Dr. Hayati BEŞİRLİ
Prof. Dr. İsmet ÇETİN
Prof. Dr. Yunus KOÇ

THE SCIENCE COMMITTEE MEMBERS of THE ORGANİZATION
Prof.  Dr. Mehmet AÇA [TÜRKİYE]
Prof.  Dr. Ferruh AĞCA [TÜRKİYE]
Prof.  Dr. Necdet Yaşar BAYATLI [IRAQ]
Prof.  Dr. Bülent BAYRAM [KAZAKHSTAN]
Prof.  Dr. Ts. BATTULGA [MONGOLIA]
Prof.  Dr. Hayati BEŞİRLİ [TÜRKİYE]
Prof.  Dr. Eva CSAKİ [HUNGARY]
Prof.  Dr. Yakup ÇELİK [TÜRKİYE]
Prof.  Dr. İsmet ÇETİN [TÜRKİYE]
Prof.  Dr. İbrahim DİLEK [TÜRKİYE]
Prof.  Dr. Oğuzhan DURMUŞ [[TÜRKİYE]
Prof.  Dr. Faruk GÖKÇE [TÜRKİYE]
Prof.  Dr. Kemal ERASLAN [TÜRKİYE]
Prof.  Dr. İnci ERGİNÜN  [TÜRKİYE]
Prof.  Dr. Bilge ERCİLASUN [TÜRKİYE]
Prof.  Dr. Marcel ERDAL [GERMANY]
Prof.  Dr. Reşat GENÇ [TÜRKİYE]
Prof.  Dr. Bülent GÜL [TÜRKİYE]
Prof.  Dr. Tuncer GÜLENSOY [TÜRKİYE]
Prof.  Dr. Abdurrahman GÜZEL [TÜRKİYE]
Prof. Dr. Ahmet Bican ERCİLASUN [TÜRKİYE]
Prof. Dr. Jabbar İSHANKUL [UZBEKISTAN]
Prof. Dr. Leyla KARAHAN [TÜRKİYE]
Prof. Dr. Yunus KOÇ [TÜRKİYE]
Prof. Dr. Zeynep KORKMAZ [TÜRKİYE]
Prof. Dr. Kazım Yaşar KOPRAMAN [TÜRKİYE]
Prof. Dr. İsa ÖZKAN [TÜRKİYE]
Prof. Dr. Fatih SAKALLI [TÜRKİYE]
Prof. Dr. Saim SAKAOĞLU [TÜRKİYE]
Prof. Dr. Osman Fikri SERTKAYA  [TÜRKİYE]
Prof. Dr. Vahit TÜRK [TÜRKİYE]
Prof. Dr. Fikret TÜRKMEN [TÜRKİYE]
Prof. Dr. Bahaeddin YEDİYILDIZ [TÜRKİYE]
Prof. Dr. Jens WILKENS [GERMANY]
Prof. Dr. Dursun YILDIRIM [TÜRKİYE]
Prof.  Dr. Peter ZIEME [GERMANY]

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Presentation at this symposium will be in Turkish. It is a symposium open to anyone who wants to participate. We would be pleased if there were international audiences willing to come.



Note: The subject of the Old Turkish language in the content of the VM will be understood more clearly day by day. To date, no statement we have made on this matter has been rejected verbally or in writing by any Turkish language expert. This probably will not happen in the future too. The author's dialect is not yet understood, and because of the author's use of many abbreviations, and the author's use of many drug names, and the medical terminology she used (so we say that some of the pronouns here are very likely that the author herself produced, and we are pointing to the evidence about it) which all makes it difficult to read. One reason why not all 240 pages can be translated quickly into today's language is that we encounter words that we need to search in almost every line. In other words, Turkish words can be read in every line of 240 pages, but the "unreadable" words make it difficult to read & interpret that sentences as a whole in a short time.

I hope that in the future, with the participation of more experts working on the Turkish language in academic platforms (and of course with the participation of doctors, pharmacists and herbalists-botanists who speak Turkish), we can be faster in the VM page readings.



Thanks