The Voynich Ninja

The subject of discussion should be the system, and how it could encode information. Unfortunately, research on the system and its many oddities is so scattered that it can be hard for one individual to comprehend everything. I certainly don't. But I know enough about entropy at the character level to understand just how far removed Voynichese is from any language.

Aga, can you explain what the Ladin language was like in the 15th century, so that you can dismiss it that easily? In the reacent According to the recent Austrian book, the Ladin speakers helped Slavic missionaries in Pannonia translate the Bible in the Old Church Slavonic (called slovenščina at the time). Perhaps the assumption that Ladin and Latin is the same thing is not that obvious, because for Slovenians, 'ledinski' means 'native'. Considering the statement of Lombard historian Paul Deaconus, that the Sclavenes were their neighbours, when they settle in Northern Italy, and that some Lombards understood their language, further attest to the existence of language that has later become known as Slovenian.

(07-12-2023, 02:51 PM)Koen G Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.In my opinion, discussing which language Voynichese could be at the current stage makes no sense.

I fully agree with this, and I have been trying to argue for  this in the past, but people who think differently won't be convinced.
The counter argument (which is not valid of course) is that in most if not all successful translations of unknown texts, the first step was to discover the language it is based on.

The second argument I get is that I should not be 'preaching' because I have not solved it, so I don't know.
Never mind. It is a good conversation stopper.

Back to your point.
I would argue as follows:

The distance between Voynichese and Latin is about the same as the distance between Italian and Latin, and German and Latin. These other languages are close together.
It is like finding the way from London to a specific street in central Barcelona.

You can travel 99% of the way without knowing the specific street.

(08-12-2023, 01:21 AM)ReneZ Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

(07-12-2023, 02:51 PM)Koen G Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.In my opinion, discussing which language Voynichese could be at the current stage makes no sense.

One might then say discussing which language Voynichese could NOT be at the current stage also makes no sense.
With your swallowtail merlon analysis you have tried to narrow down the geographical area covered by the Voynich. What would be wrong with trying to narrow down the linguistic area by for example comparing common source texts?
Now it is true that speculation of origin language may not take one very far at this time it is not clear which lines of research would take one far.

(08-12-2023, 01:21 AM)ReneZ Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I fully agree with this, and I have been trying to argue for  this in the past, but people who think differently won't be convinced.

That is often a feature of people who think differently. I daresay they would say the same.

My default assumption would be that the language is Latin, but I am not going at this time to exercise any effort working on the basis of that starting hypothesis as I cannot at this time see a way from getting from there to the solution.

Of course, like any analogy, it is an oversimplification, and there are valid source languages that could require a dedicated approach. This would be the case for Hebrew, or any of the Arabic languages.

These remain largely unexplored.

@cvetkakocj
I don't simply dismiss Ladin. On the contrary, I consider parts of it, but not 100%.
About the same as Resia. 60% Slavic and the rest Italian, German and others.

@Rene
What do you want to do? Wait until you get the result? It's not an escaped canary that might come back.
You have to do something. Whether right or wrong, in the beginning the possibility is enough. Before it was pictures, now it's words.
Time will tell what is likely and what is not. But you have to do it.

When I write "du nichts wollen machen spass", it's still German, even if it's all cabbage and turnips.

At one point (hopefully) aiming for specific languages will be involved. This could happen fairly early on in the process even. But statistical anomalies must be "solved" somehow before a language can be determined. I like Rene's travel analogy: we need to find out the general direction first, and determining the language will only be like finding the correct street in whatever city we end up in. 

I agree that this is somehow immensely difficult to communicate to people, to make them understand. For example I noticed in Lisa's recent talk that people get excited asking "could it be this or that language". It's an understandable reflex to wonder if an obscure language could explain what we see. 

Of course, with some people who insist on language x or y, a certain degree of nationalism mixed with confirmation bias is involved. This makes for a cocktail of delusion that's hard to cure.

Neither Friedman nor Currier understood what they were working on, both of them are cases of 'I have a hammer, this must   be a nail'

I have other reasons to believe the language to be Latin, but when you have a ms., scientific and early 15th c., what is the most likely language?

I have taken some time out during the summer for private reasons, but have started work again and have identified some more of the abbr., I will publish some of them in the near future

(08-12-2023, 07:46 AM)Aga Tentakulus Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.@Rene
What do you want to do? Wait until you get the result?

The only generic description of an approach that I find promising is one that is used in cryptanalysis.
One has to attack the problem at its weakness(es).

Wherever there is anything unusual, or that stands out, this is where one has to start digging.
There is no shortage of this that are unusual at some level.

Just pretending they are not there, and continue with some variety of near-simple substitution will not work.