Statistical analysis is great, but it is not translation, neither is the ability to pull out the odd vord here and there. Translation is the ability to make sense of a body of written text.
If someone has actually done that for a page of the VMs, I have not seen it yet. Herbal matching in the large plant section has not made any connection with the written text. The recent astronomical 4 -1-1-1 sequence of the planets seems to demonstrate an ideological connection but does not yet show linguistic correspondence. Where is the linguistic connection?
Beyond the ability to apply methodology to randomly chosen texts, there might be some determination of particular pages or specific segments of greater interest. Certain segments might function on a different interpretative system from the general text. Certain text segments might be designated by visual devices.
Which parts of the VMs text should be investigated in greater detail?
(08-12-2023, 09:17 PM)R. Sale Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.If someone has actually done that for a page of the VMs, I have not seen it yet.
This has been done, but 'sense' is a subjective term.
Levitov has translated pages of text and so has Stojko. Their work is quite old and not readily available.
Most people here will not have seen it.
(08-12-2023, 09:21 AM)Koen G Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.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.
Hi, Koen, since it seems that I am the one who still refuse to believe that the VM language is Latin and am offering an alternative language, which was spoken in the region where many researchers believe the VM was created, I feel that your comment was directly aimed at me. I feel offended that you accusing me of delusion and nationalism. The fact that the author (or main author) I am proposing is German, should be a proof that I am not nationalistic. Besides, Austria was considered my mother's and my father's homeland, before Carniola became part of former Yugoslavia from which Slovenia separated in 1991. Now, that I am living in Canada, my national loyalty is further divided as my in-laws and grandchildren belong to various nationalities.
I am not delusional to see Slovenian words in the Voynich Manuscript and I am not using my own bias to confirm them. I found some of them even in the 10th century Slovenian writing, and even more in 16th century dictionaries and early Slovenian writing. I am comparing my transliteration to the LZ transliteration to avoid my personal bias in interpreting the letter-forms.
Since I know that any translation I would make at this stage would be rejected out right, I am working on the grammar to explain the peculiarity of the Voynich language, and on the vocabulary that would include the corresponding written Slovenian words in the same grammatical inflectional form that cannot be found in any dictionary. This means, that I have to read the medieval books and pick out the words, as well as many grammar books to find all the rules that explain the changes of the words from the medieval to contemporary.
I am willing to offer my material on Voynich to anyone who would be interested to examine it and see if it is really that nationalistic and delusional. The language should not be rejected, just because it is too difficult to research. I carefully research any theory that could potentially disqualify mine, and so far I did not find it. You might consider it an arrogance, or you might consider a possibility that I am on the right track. This is why I dedicated my seven years of research, not for money or glory.
For what is worth, I found many words in the VM that would confirm your spiritual interpretation. Keep on your research, but do not ignore the medieval mystics.
(09-12-2023, 09:12 PM)cvetkakocj@rogers.com Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Hi, Koen, since it seems that I am the one who still refuse to believe that the VM language is Latin and am offering an alternative language, which was spoken in the region where many researchers believe the VM was created, I feel that your comment was directly aimed at me. I feel offended that you accusing me of delusion and nationalism.
Oh, when I wrote that, I was thinking about a number of other researchers, like those who believe the MS to be Turkic, and indeed insist that the Beinecke must return the MS to its rightful home in Turkey.
Your motivations are your own, and it was not my intent for you to recognize yourself in this description. Though perhaps a broader, more neutral observation that naturally people are likely to form theories about things they are familiar with is still appropriate.
There's difference between searching for the language
in the VMS vs searching for one
behind the VMS. For the latter case, I agree that Latin would be one of the main choices, if not the foremost one - just for the reasons of the cultural context of the VMS.
For the former, I second what Koen says, very well formulated:
(07-12-2023, 02:51 PM)Koen G Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.If we ever find meaning in Voynichese, the first step will be to discover how it encodes information. How it can encode any information, in any language.
Any proposed interpretation of VMs text should take a random page or the forum suggestions and provide a demonstration.
Some form of Slovenian is certainly possible given the history of the HRE during the VMs C-14 era.
My interpretation of the status as of today is:
there are no statistics of the Voynich MS text that make Latin more likely than Slovenian, and vice versa.
The same can be said about Turkish, or Turkic.
Latin was of course much more used for writing, which is why it is more likely.
The way I see it is that if we view the problem as being like a painted egg then we haven't broken the shell yet. We have managed to document many aspects of the design on the painted surface of the egg. However we have not found a way to crack the egg open. There is scope for speculating what the yoke looks like as some are more likely than others, but there is no scope for certainly until the egg is cracked.
As I see it, and not for the first time.
When I look at the text on 116, some words can be directly assigned to Latin, even if they are only keywords. I just have 3 words in a row here. I don't even need a dictionary for the words "te and portas". Even "sis" has a large number of variants.
From this point of view, Latin is the first choice alongside German.
If I were to assume a third, unknown language now, it would seem more like an excuse than a possibility.
[
attachment=8017]
Now you can certainly say that these sentences could also have been written by someone else at a later date.
But there is a small catch. There are 2 words that are very similar or the same as VM.
If you look at the handwriting, it seems a little rough.
So I have to ask myself: Can another person write the 2 VM words so fluently the first time, even if he has never done it before?
(10-12-2023, 09:14 AM)Aga Tentakulus Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.If I were to assume a third, unknown language now, it would seem more like an excuse than a possibility.
As Rene and others said, there is no need to assume a specific language. In the last several decades, at least from Currier in the 70s to the recent Malta conference, properties that make Voynichese different from an ordinary written language have been pointed out (e.g. line-effects, consecutive similar words, word structure, low entropy, Feaster's positional patterns etc...). The task at hand is explaining those properties and anwering the question
"why is Voynichese so different from any written language?". Some of the Malta papers focussed on this (e.g. the two by Gaskell and Bowern). Good answers that explain how Voynichese can be related with any underlying natural language will also work for other ordinary natural languages. Latin, German, Slovenian, Turkic, Hebrew, Italian, Romani, Farsi... it does not matter at this point.