The Voynich Ninja

Voynichese might be a transcription attempt for people who were used to reading left to right. Such a scenario is not unlikely if we're talking material that crossed the area between east and west a few times.

In 2016, Darren Worley mentioned Codex Cumanicus (Marciana, Venice, Cod. Mar. Lat. DXLIX, XIV Century) on You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.; a You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. available on archive.org was pointed out.

The You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. that can be seen on wikipedia is transcribed at You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.. This is part of a list of words with Latin translation (and German in a later hand?).
The fact that German and Italian both appear in the Codex Cumanicus is another interesting feature (the different scribes and languages mostly correspond to different parts of the manuscript).

You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view., in which whole riddles are reproduced, seems interesting for the frequent reduplication of words ("tap tap", "biti biti bittidim", "butu butu"). The reduplication of "seng" (meaning "your" I think) at p.147 seems particularly interesting. Since the word could be similar to  the reading of EVA:daiin daiin with Ardic's system: "seng seng" could then conceivably correspond to daiin daiin. But I believe that the high frequency of reduplication in these cases might easily be due to the "literary style" of riddles rather than to the Cuman language per se. 

Anyway, whether Voynich is or isn't Turkic, my superficial impression is that the Codex Cumanicus could be a relevant parallel, providing an example of a manuscript produced with the contribution of different cultures. Of course, the later Aztec codices are also relevant in this respect.

I believe that the Voynich alphabet was created by someone familiar with Latin scripts. This is not only consistent with  the left-to-right direction, but with the similarity of Voynichese characters with Latin scribal abbreviations observed by Mary D'Imperio and several others.

Another interesting feature of Codex Cumanicus (that doesn't match Ardic's mapping) is that -9 seems to be used to represent 'ng'. The symbol is similar to Voynichese y and clearly different from 'g' (see the first two and the last two lines for '9' - the longest line, 5, has three occurrences of 'g').
-ng seems to appear frequently in the ms, but from the transcription I wouldn't say it is predominantly word-final. Still, the fact that '9' is used for something different from the common -us seems noteworthy.

-JKP- Wrote:In any document that's long enough, if the shapes that look like consonants and the shapes that look like vowels are balanced so one follows the other throughout the text, you are going to find dozens, sometimes hundreds, of words in almost any language you can imagine. The trick is to find an approach that looks at the text as a cohesive whole so that it confirms itself, so meaning doesn't have to be wrestled out of it or imposed upon it. I haven't see that yet.

I completely agree.

(01-03-2018, 11:55 PM)Koen Gh. Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Voynichese might be a transcription attempt for people who were used to reading left to right. Such a scenario is not unlikely if we're talking material that crossed the area between east and west a few times.

...Again...It does not matter in the language analysis how you would write a text...you could make anagrams, you could mix the letters, vertically, horizontally, you can make letter substitiutions, you can write phonetically, left to right, you can mirror your scripts etc. etc.  You can even make abbrev. In the end, it does !not! matter for the text analysis, especially when the sampled text becomes longer: you still will be able to recognize the language aspects.

(01-03-2018, 11:55 PM)Koen Gh. Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Voynichese might be a transcription attempt for people who were used to reading left to right. Such a scenario is not unlikely if we're talking material that crossed the area between east and west a few times.

That reminds me something.

What if, we write Arabic texts using transliterations, one-to-one mapping, will a native speaker be able to read it?

For example, I copied this from Wikipedia:

‏"لغة القرآن" بما أن القرآن نزل باللغة العربية، فقد أُطلق اسم اللغة عليه

And transliterate it one-by-one, and write left-to-right:

"lGƕ alqrãn" bma än alqrãn nzl ballGƕ alʕrbyƕ, fqd äᵘTlq asm allGƕ ʕlyh

(The mapping system is quite arbitrary, because I do not understand Arabic. But I think people who understand it would be able to see the basic rules behind the mapping system)

Will a native speaker, or an Arabic learner, be able to read it if they know the mapping / transliteration system?

Yes. In fact a number of Middle Easterners communicate on the Web that way, in forums, transliterating to Latin characters (this is something I've personally seen). I can't remember what they called it... Arabish?


It is not something new. There are a number of countries in which the language was historically written in both Arabic and Latin and sometimes also Cyrillic.

(12-12-2018, 09:33 AM)-JKP- Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Yes. In fact a number of Middle Easterners communicate on the Web that way, in forums, transliterating to Latin characters (this is something I've personally seen). I can't remember what they called it... Arabish?


It is not something new. There are a number of countries in which the language was historically written in both Arabic and Latin and sometimes also Cyrillic.

Thanks, JKP.

I checked You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.. It seems that the system is not strictly a transliteration system, but they add vowels like real languages written in Latin letters would do. This is a bit different than what I thought, but I guess it won’t be a problem for people who are used to Arabish system.

(12-12-2018, 08:24 AM)ChenZheChina Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

(01-03-2018, 11:55 PM)Koen Gh. Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Voynichese might be a transcription attempt for people who were used to reading left to right. Such a scenario is not unlikely if we're talking material that crossed the area between east and west a few times.

That reminds me something.

What if, we write Arabic texts using transliterations, one-to-one mapping, will a native speaker be able to read it?

For example, I copied this from Wikipedia:

‏"لغة القرآن" بما أن القرآن نزل باللغة العربية، فقد أُطلق اسم اللغة عليه

And transliterate it one-by-one, and write left-to-right:

"lGƕ alqrãn" bma än alqrãn nzl ballGƕ alʕrbyƕ, fqd äᵘTlq asm allGƕ ʕlyh

(The mapping system is quite arbitrary, because I do not understand Arabic. But I think people who understand it would be able to see the basic rules behind the mapping system)

Will a native speaker, or an Arabic learner, be able to read it if they know the mapping / transliteration system?

Hello ChenZhe,

Yes - your Arabic transcription is perfectly legible and intelligible.

Not only that but, because your transcription uses a unique character for each Arabic letter, it’s possible to convert it back to the correct Arabic form without necessarily needing to know a word of Arabic.

But a non-Arabic speaker would not know the correct pronunciation of some words because, as I’m sure you know, Arabic doesn’t indicate short vowels. The first word of your example is pronounced ‘lugha,’ but you have to know to insert the ‘u’ between the ‘l’ and the ‘gh’. It’s not indicated in the script.

There are different ways of transcribing Arabic in Latin characters, and all have their atrengths and weaknesses. Basically, the more you make the transcription easy for a non-Arabic speaker to pronounce, the further that transcription diverges from a one-to-one system such as yours. Hence ‘lugha’ has five letters while the Arabic word, and your transcription of it, both have three..

The distinction between transcription and transliteration is important. Actually, since we don't know if/how Voynichese is spoken, we don't have any transcription of Voynichese, only (tentative) transliterations.