The idea that it might be a defective script (an imperfect copy), leaving out important details, has definitely been mentioned many times, going back to some of the earliest researchers.
It's very difficult not to get the feeling that "something has been left out" when looking at Voynich text.
This is probably why the suggestion of abjad comes up frequently and probably also why Newbold and others have looked for microscopic shorthand and other micrographic details to try to "expand" the range of variation in highly repetitive words.
Thanks Koen Gh, MarcoP and JKP,
I'll admit I always overlook the imperfect script/copy option. I guess it just seems to me that, since there seem to be multiple hands at work, at some point during writing one of the scribes would have realized that something was wrong with their system and amended it.
Unless they were copying a text they didn't understand in the first place, but why bother to do that?
MarcoP, you bring up the example of tones in Mandarin, which leads me to ask an OT question: are there medieval examples of Mandarin or other Asian languages transcribed using a roman alphabet? From what I understand the earliest are from the late 16th century, but I'm curious to know if there are earlier ones.
(10-03-2018, 12:21 PM)VViews Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view....
Unless they were copying a text they didn't understand in the first place, but why bother to do that?
MarcoP, you bring up the example of tones in Mandarin, which leads me to ask an OT question: are there medieval examples of Mandarin or other Asian languages transcribed using a roman alphabet? From what I understand the earliest are from the late 16th century, but I'm curious to know if there are earlier ones.
Missionaries tended to formalize alphabets for many of these languages, which is why it's hard to find early ones. Many cultures didn't have a written language before trade and missionary expansion in the 16th and 17th centuries.
I know there's a Cyrillic version of Mongolian, but it's recent and the Latin alphabet for Vietnamese isn't very old either.
The tonal languages tend to be Asian and African. Many of them have extensive character sets rather than accents/diacritical marks, although some make distinctions with "tails" or curls that go in different directions.
(09-03-2018, 10:28 PM)Koen Gh. Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.And finally, there is the in my opinion real possibility that Voynichese somewhat simplifies the spoken form of the language. This, again, increases the chances for homonymy.
Just to say, based on these data I don't think we can conclude that "labels are not object identifications". Maybe some labels are not, but mere homonymy is not enough to deduce this.
The possibility cannot increase the chances. The latter can be increased only by some additional certainty introduced (which there is not).
Moreover, there's more than just this (pseudo)-homonymy. For example, if I remember correctly, Wladimir demonstrated that pharma plant labels do not occur in the respective plants' botanical folios. Which would require one to construct really superfluous explantions involving one language used for the pharma section with another language for the botanical section (both forgotten languages written in the same forgotten scripts). A much more straightforward hypothesis, which really does not need any superfluous explanations, is just that labels are not IDs.
What if Voynichese was a script specifically designed for writing various languages?
(10-03-2018, 05:15 PM)Anton Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Moreover, there's more than just this (pseudo)-homonymy. For example, if I remember correctly, Wladimir demonstrated that pharma plant labels do not occur in the respective plants' botanical folios.
I talked a little about the other. But I checked your interpretation. Although the statistics are too small, since only 5 small drawings out of 10 (absolutely accurately identified pairs of small and large plants) have labels. Four of them are unique words. Another word "chokam" occurs 4 times, but it is not on a large plant on f48v.
(10-03-2018, 05:15 PM)Anton Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.A much more straightforward hypothesis, which really does not need any superfluous explanations, is just that labels are not IDs.
I'm in sympathy with this possibility and have often wondered what else they could be (pointers to a section of text? reference numbers? quantity numbers? verbs on how to use something? or what to use it with?).
I've suggested a couple of times that they might be fragments, that they might go together with the other fragments nearby, rather than being stand-alone.
Of course, they could also be ultra-abbreviated. If the word Androsaema (a plant) and Andromeda (a constellation) were abbreviated the same way (e.g., andro or andr or andra), they would look the same, and probably be understandable to the person who wrote them, but would stand for two completely different things. It would work for labels, but I don't see how this could be generalized to large blocks of text without it turning into a one-way cipher, which is why I always start leaning back toward fragments (or something else).
Hello VViews
"otaly" is not a word. There is a strong prejudice thinking that the Voynich is a language. There aren't letters, neither an alphabet
You see "otaly" in three different sections because is a string of symbols that indicates the location of the stars. You see it in Zodiac signs because the place is occupìed by a different star in each sign. These stars give its virtues to the plants labeled with "otaly" and come down to the Earth across the pipe labeled also like that.
Why are repeated two and three times in a row the so-called words in the Voynich? Because are stars which occupy almost the same location