01-03-2018, 01:54 PM
I'm not sure whether to post here, or to ask the moderators for a whole category called 'History of Voynich Studies' or something of that kind.
Time-lines are so important in my work that I may over-estimate their importance for other people, but I do like to have such things in order so that I can read from beginning to end to see how a theme has been developed, distorted, done justice (or not) over time.
As far as I know, these are the only mentions of matters related to any 'Cuman theme' (not 'theory') in Voynich studies . If members can add items of which I'm ignorant, please do.
If the moderators want to re-locate the thread, that's fine.
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2004. First 'Cuman-related' item. Not sure what got Leonard Fox onto that track, but on November 6th. of that year he wrote to the Jim's [first] Voynich mailing list about his own friend and colleague Peter Golden who had already written several essays on the Codex Cumanicus and who had already pointed out that the text's Turkic language was "quite closely related to Karaim"... 'Karaim' is how Golden and Fox speak of the Karaite dialect spoken by Jews of the Crimea. Fox said in that message that he could confirm the the similarity, because Karaim (or Karaite) was the language of his own childhood.
In 2004, Fox already had a completed English translation of Simon Szyszman’s book “Le Karaisme: ses doctrines et son histoire,” but was looking for a translator.
2011/12. I spoke about Cuman before 2012, and about Karaites from rougly that time, but elsewhere. 2012 is the first mention on my Voynichimagery blog. There are 13 posts which come up if you search 'Cuman' though they'll all be in the context of historical and cultural background clarifying the implications of the imagery or my reading of it.
2016. Koen tells me that Emma referred to the Codex Cumanicus in Feb. 2016, while talking more generally about language-groups and Turkic languages in connection with the structures of the Vms text.
2014-2018. The video by the Turkish family says they've been working on the text for four years. (Video published, unbeknownst to me, on Feb.22nd)
Feb 27th. 2018: My post goes up saying, "my opinion is that the language is very likely Cuman and the script quite likely derived from Uyghur script, influenced by others which I think include Sephardi script." A few days earlier, on another blog, I'd quoted a passage from a letter written by a Catalan Franciscan during the first half of the fourteenth century.
Feb. 28th.2018 Nick Pelling posts the Turkish gentleman's video with some others which, altogether, left a less pleasant taste.
March 1st. 2018: Conversation gets going at Voynich ninja, in a post called 'Calgary engineer believes he's cracked the mysterious Voynich Manuscript'.
As a personal note: I'm rarely excited by ideas asserted by members of a group already united by bonds of friendship, earlier collaboration, or common adherence to a theory. In this case we have four people, three highly competent in the historical lingusitics side of Turkish/Cuman/Karaim and me, who has come to the same view by a very different route through contextualising and analysing the Voynich imagery. None of us has worked with the other; none of us has a theory-in-common that we're all trying to promote. None of us (so far as I know) has any private correspondence with the other. And, to top it off, Cuman/Old Turkish/Karaim is far from what anyone would expect to occur, given the century-old ideas still so pervasive.
Four people well qualified, reaching the same general point of view without communicating with each other and (as it would seem) without even knowing what the other was doing. Well, I like it.
Time-lines are so important in my work that I may over-estimate their importance for other people, but I do like to have such things in order so that I can read from beginning to end to see how a theme has been developed, distorted, done justice (or not) over time.
As far as I know, these are the only mentions of matters related to any 'Cuman theme' (not 'theory') in Voynich studies . If members can add items of which I'm ignorant, please do.
If the moderators want to re-locate the thread, that's fine.
-----
2004. First 'Cuman-related' item. Not sure what got Leonard Fox onto that track, but on November 6th. of that year he wrote to the Jim's [first] Voynich mailing list about his own friend and colleague Peter Golden who had already written several essays on the Codex Cumanicus and who had already pointed out that the text's Turkic language was "quite closely related to Karaim"... 'Karaim' is how Golden and Fox speak of the Karaite dialect spoken by Jews of the Crimea. Fox said in that message that he could confirm the the similarity, because Karaim (or Karaite) was the language of his own childhood.
In 2004, Fox already had a completed English translation of Simon Szyszman’s book “Le Karaisme: ses doctrines et son histoire,” but was looking for a translator.
2011/12. I spoke about Cuman before 2012, and about Karaites from rougly that time, but elsewhere. 2012 is the first mention on my Voynichimagery blog. There are 13 posts which come up if you search 'Cuman' though they'll all be in the context of historical and cultural background clarifying the implications of the imagery or my reading of it.
2016. Koen tells me that Emma referred to the Codex Cumanicus in Feb. 2016, while talking more generally about language-groups and Turkic languages in connection with the structures of the Vms text.
2014-2018. The video by the Turkish family says they've been working on the text for four years. (Video published, unbeknownst to me, on Feb.22nd)
Feb 27th. 2018: My post goes up saying, "my opinion is that the language is very likely Cuman and the script quite likely derived from Uyghur script, influenced by others which I think include Sephardi script." A few days earlier, on another blog, I'd quoted a passage from a letter written by a Catalan Franciscan during the first half of the fourteenth century.
Feb. 28th.2018 Nick Pelling posts the Turkish gentleman's video with some others which, altogether, left a less pleasant taste.
March 1st. 2018: Conversation gets going at Voynich ninja, in a post called 'Calgary engineer believes he's cracked the mysterious Voynich Manuscript'.
As a personal note: I'm rarely excited by ideas asserted by members of a group already united by bonds of friendship, earlier collaboration, or common adherence to a theory. In this case we have four people, three highly competent in the historical lingusitics side of Turkish/Cuman/Karaim and me, who has come to the same view by a very different route through contextualising and analysing the Voynich imagery. None of us has worked with the other; none of us has a theory-in-common that we're all trying to promote. None of us (so far as I know) has any private correspondence with the other. And, to top it off, Cuman/Old Turkish/Karaim is far from what anyone would expect to occur, given the century-old ideas still so pervasive.
Four people well qualified, reaching the same general point of view without communicating with each other and (as it would seem) without even knowing what the other was doing. Well, I like it.
