The Voynich Ninja

Some comments on "possibilities"
   the designer (or scribe) independently invented the embellished forms (this seems less likely)

I'm not sure why this seems less likely.  It might be the hardest case to prove, but that doesn't mean it's any less likely to have happened this way.

The brain has evolved to process patterns and language.  Children play with it while they're learning and there are examples of twins and others developing private languages.  Since individuals already have a clear idea of most of the ideas they are trying to communicate, the possibility that an individual could develop a private alphabet is even more likely than a private language. 

As far as the shape of the letters in such an alphabet, consider how the alphabet will be used.  Runes and stone carving have many examples of character sets using straight lines that intersect, are parallel, or form simple shapes.  These patterns occur, not because the people carving them were copying each other, but because they were the easiest to carve in stone.  I don't know anyone who spends a great deal of time writing things out by hand these days.  Even the people who do probably don't uses quills and ink. But modern scribes use alphabets optimized for the tools they write with.

Medieval writers used certain characters because the transitions between charters is optimized for the language they  wrote in, or because the characters make clear distinctions between different sounds, or because it was faster to use them than an alternate character set.  Writing is learned and any learned skill evolves and improves with practice and standardization.  Once you know the standards its easy to see when they are violated and why.  Mistakes are obvious and non-standard uses are clearly "innovations" rather than errors.  (Although mistakes that get made with too much frequency or by prominent individuals can quickly become new standards.)   It's why text speak and "l33t" is relatively easy to read for native English speakers, and effortless for people who use it as their primary communication format, but looks like a weird code to everyone else.  It's also why a string of emojis can be parsed into English by the informed, reliably recreating the authors meaning.  They aren't a code, they're an alternate alphabet.  The idea that scribes could do the same thing isn't surprising since communication standards evolve from older standards.  They may even have been able to include personal opinions or the content, source attribution, or other information in a manuscript based upon their character choices or character orientation -- all without changing the original content.

I suppose the point I'm making here is that we don't know enough about VMS to assign probabilities to how the glyphs originated (or much of anything else).  It exists in relative linguistic isolation and the probabilities are meaningless unless you're comparing it to similar documents -- and since we don't know what it is, knowing which documents are similar is -- problematic. 

I'm not suggesting the problems are insoluble, or that any particular approach is bad.  I'm just suggesting that we be realistic about what is, and isn't, known, and what is, and isn't, possible in relation to the manuscript. It doesn't have to be a code (or a fake) just because no one can read it.  It doesn't have to be Latin at its core just because some clues point to Italy.  And it doesn't have to fit anyone's personal belief of what it is because they spent lots of time developing their theory (or developed it while high one Saturday afternoon in the 60s and have been promulgating it ever since).  I think someone will find a solution eventually that will achieve general consensus, but it will be because they have a mind open enough to find a fresh approach to the problem.

(01-02-2019, 09:52 PM)crezac Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view....

I suppose the point I'm making here is that we don't know enough about VMS to assign probabilities to how the glyphs originated (or much of anything else).  It exists in relative linguistic isolation and the probabilities are meaningless unless you're comparing it to similar documents -- and since we don't know what it is, knowing which documents are similar is -- problematic. 

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I'm going to say the same thing I've said many times on other threads and sites...

I don't think there's any doubt that the source for the MAJORITY of the Voynich glyph-shapes is medieval Latin letters, numbers, and abbreviations. A few of them show Greek influence, but this is not out-of-place if you consider documents written in Latin characters (in a variety of languages) frequently included loanwords written in Greek, glosses in Greek, and also pages with the Greek alphabet written out. But the majority of the VMS glyph-shapes are Latin.

I really have no doubt about this. Why? Because they are not only the same shapes, but many of them are in the SAME POSITIONS in the Voynich tokens as we find them in Latin (in particular, the ones based on abbreviation shapes).

A small subset, mainly "gallows" glyphs, look like combinations of Latin ligatures and abbreviations and after an exhaustive search (10 years) of almost every alphabet on the planet, I suspect they are invented and loosely based on Latin and Greek scribal conventions, rather than borrowed from some esoteric source.

(01-02-2019, 10:23 PM)-JKP- Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I'm going to say the same thing I've said many times on other threads and sites...

I don't think there's any doubt that the source for the MAJORITY of the Voynich glyph-shapes is medieval Latin letters, numbers, and abbreviations. A few of them show Greek influence, but this is not out-of-place if you consider documents written in Latin characters (in a variety of languages) frequently included loanwords written in Greek, glosses in Greek, and also pages with the Greek alphabet written out. But the majority of the VMS glyph-shapes are Latin.

I really have no doubt about this. Why? Because they are not only the same shapes, but many of them are in the SAME POSITIONS in the Voynich tokens as we find them in Latin (in particular, the ones based on abbreviation shapes).

A small subset, mainly "gallows" glyphs, look like combinations of Latin ligatures and abbreviations and after an exhaustive search (10 years) of almost every alphabet on the planet, I suspect they are invented and loosely based on Latin and Greek scribal conventions, rather than borrowed from some esoteric source.

When I use the term linguistic isolation I don't mean to suggest that the author was unaware of languages besides his own.  I'm not even suggesting that the manuscript encodes an unknown language.  Whatever is encoded can't be read because the encoding isn't understood.  The "alphabet" being used may have similarities with known alphabets, but not have intended functional overlaps.  Some of the similarities could be the result of convergent evolution too.  I'd refer you to the Cherokee syllabry which borrows the shapes of many Latin/English alphabet letters for some phonemes -- and not always the ones the letters encode in English -- and syllables, and has others that were invented for Cherokee (some of which encode phonemes that already have an associated letter in English's alphabet).  Some of these choices probably came about because Sequoyah liked the way they looked.  I won't disagree that many Voynich glyphs appear to have similarities to Latin characters.  But that's not proof that the glyphs originated as an appropriation of anything Latin or that they will follow the same rules.  

By linguistic isolation I mean we have no linguistic history for the development of these glyphs the way we do for Cherokee.  We don't know what sounds they represent or even if they encode phonemes, syllables, or full words.  We can base some of our guesses about how the script works  upon what information the script has to encode to be functional (nouns, probably adjectives and verbs, maybe more).  We can base some more possibilities on what the script needs to be efficient.  That still leaves multiple possible strategies for implementation at various decision points; so no clear path for interpretation and no practical framework to develop a tool set to help with that either.

Whether it's encoded Latin, the personal shorthand of a small guild from the hinterlands, or a devilishly clever fraud to make people waste time and come up with novel theories, I'm just suggesting that you can't filter out the static if you don't know what part of the signal carries the message.  I find it equally probable that the alphabet is the result of one individual's efforts as I do that it was an alphabet that was used and developed by a large group but lost for one reason or another.  We need a better reason for assigning probabilities that "this is what I feel".  Your work with pattern recognition in the manuscript gives better results that a "my gut tells me" approach (although I do find the abbreviations very compelling).  But I don't see a path from "most of this look like Latin to me" to "I can read this" or even "I can give you some idea of who the author of this manuscript was or at least where he studied".

That's not intended as a criticism of anyone's efforts, just an explanation of my point of view. And I'm not disputing your claims about the Latin origins of the script, because for the purposes of my argument it doesn't matter how the alphabet might have originated if you can't read the message. When we can read it, we'll likely have a linguistic context that will mean we don't need to speculate or to assign probabilities to guesswork.  I'm just saying that if you approach the problem wrong it can become much more difficult to solve -- and decades of effort to date indicate it's not easy now.

(02-02-2019, 10:17 AM)crezac Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view....
But that's not proof that the glyphs originated as an appropriation of anything Latin or that they will follow the same rules.  

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Well I keep saying that. For years I've been emphasizing that.

I keep saying glyph SHAPES glyph SHAPES glyph SHAPES and 75% of the people who respond to me READ INTO THAT "Latin language", which is something I have NEVER said.

Latin characters are used for dozens of languages (French, Italian, Spanish, Czech, German, Swedish, English, Polish, Vietnamese, etc.), and co-opting the shapes of Latin characters does NOT automatically mean Latin language, grammar or vocabulary (which is a repeat of what I have repeatedly said).

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BUT there is SOMETHING going on, because if certain of the Voynichese Latin glyph-shapes fall into the same POSITIONS as they do in languages that use Latin characters, then not only was the designer familiar with Latin characters and abbreviations, but the person was manipulating Voynichese in some way that is similar to the way Latin abbreviations are used.

This important dynamic is frequently overlooked, probably because most people are not familiar with medieval Latin abbreviation conventions and ONLY look at Voynich glyphs from a simple-substitution-code point of view (about 90% of the supposed "solutions" fall into this category).

Only a few people have explored the possible expansions of VMS characters in ways that were COMMON in the Middle Ages (one or two characters expanding into several or many). Unfortunately, some who have tried to do this (e.g., Lockerby), did NOT understand that medieval abbreviation-expansion is not a simple algorithm—it is context-dependent. The same abbreviation means different things depending on its position in a word AND its position next to other words.

To be clear, I am not assuming or asserting that some of the Voynich glyphs are abbreviations or ligatures. They might be, they might not. I am simply saying this aspect is overlooked and understudied, and when people have attempted it, it's usually those who are new to this concept and don't realize expansion is context-dependent.

(02-02-2019, 06:05 PM)-JKP- Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

(02-02-2019, 10:17 AM)crezac Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view....
But that's not proof that the glyphs originated as an appropriation of anything Latin or that they will follow the same rules.  

...

BUT there is SOMETHING going on, because if certain of the Voynichese Latin glyph-shapes fall into the same POSITIONS as they do in languages that use Latin characters, then not only was the designer familiar with Latin characters and abbreviations, but the person was manipulating Voynichese in some way that is similar to the way Latin abbreviations are used.

I think there will be some connection with the history of the abbreviations or of the glyphs themselves. I can't express my idea properly yet, i know nothing of philology and can't find information to help me formulate the means by which the answer could be sought.  But i feel like it will be some knowledge they had regarding the progression of the rules, how the usages evolved, or anomalies of their usage from different places or times. Tips and tricks built into a code you can read once you know all the tips and tricks....or possibly there is extra encoding that further enhances the meaning of what is written, like, if this glyph is built into the vord, it is from this period of time, but here is the same word from a different period of time and it has different connotations now that time has passed and events have happened, so we insert a different glyph to indicate this, or change the first glyph in some way. Like how in modern times words like bad, sick, cool, hot are used in very different ways than originally used (the latter two have nothing to do with temperature and are almost synonyms) so you would mark them to avoid confusion. Or similar names that keep recurring, you might add glyphs to indicate it is this one vs that one rather than writing out the long versions. Or different words for the same thing, names for places that change over time.

Maybe they chose to use the penultimate glyphs to correspond with the contemporary ones but because they dont change at the same time, you are left with a mishmash of glyphs that dont seem to go together, but their commonality is that they are all the progenitors of the current set.

Linda, I don't know if they are of interest to you, but I've written a few blogs on the Indic-Arabic numerals and Latin scribal conventions (and their history). Here are a some of them (there are a lot more, but these are the main ones):

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(02-02-2019, 09:03 PM)-JKP- Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Linda, I don't know if they are of interest to you, but I've written a few blogs on the Indic-Arabic numerals and Latin scribal conventions (and their history). Here are a some of them (there are a lot more, but these are the main ones):

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Thank you I will check them out.

Just to soothe the frustration JKP, you did convince me 

There is a strange thing going on in the VM, where both text and image are taken from the familiar, even used in a familiar way, but still given a twist.

The script feels Latin and it's ridiculously easy to read for our eyes, more so even than "real" 15th century Latin script. We can read it, without understanding a single word.

It's just the same for the images. Take the four-person diagram with the back-facing figures for example. We can see the one holding the gold coin or royal orb. We can see the one falling down, just like on the wheel of fortune. But the diagram has been mutated, their order changed. 

In both the script and the images, the building blocks are familiar and can be found in other sources. But they have been put together in a novel way. Sometimes I think it was more like an intellectual game.

(03-02-2019, 01:38 AM)Koen G Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Sometimes I think it was more like an intellectual game.

So maybe, say, a 15thC Rene made this as a puzzle for his circle of friends? Including the 15thC Koen, the 15thC Marco and the 15thC JKP?

This is really meta stuff, I like it.

To me it also looks like much like existing script but just formatted a different way.  I was thinking if someone was in an isolated place and creating a text with knowledge, so to speak, and wanted to keep a record book.  What if I put this scenario to you.  What if you did learn to write a language when you were a child, and through time and experiences did not write or have a need to write for an awfully long time.  There was much upheaval and sickness and migrations and folks under attack.  What if you finally settled down somewhere and started to document things.  Maybe from your memory, maybe you actually forgot how the original where formed or shaped and used what you remembered and or imbellished, so at least you understood it.  This person or persons might just be a few from their original place and just created this for themselves to utilize?  Think about Robinson Caruso being abandoned on an island and you had no writing instruments and paper but when to start to write again the letters and words might seem changed or shortened.  I am thinking outside the box now.  But I also think they are female.  The police and FBI have handwriting experts and can determine if a man or a women wrote a text.  Has this ever been established I wonder.