@Helmut,
If you have abbrev. Latin or parts, I can cross check that with similar or the exact same parts in any language;
based on several (software automated) results you can quickly see if it holds.
This means for example if you have the two words for example, god & kraut
we can see based on position and adjacent words & letters if these could be valid in placement.
Me, I have another angle on the text, which assumes it does not directly represent a language.
But if you need help anywhere, I will gladly assist where possible.
@ David
Thank you very much, but I am not even sure, what some of the abbr. mean. Look at the 9 - cum example JKP gave, another one is the 8, which could be d, s and the numeral. In fact, at present I suspect the same glyph can mean different things.
Hm, that sounds like I was thinking once: What if, the endings are flexible.
When I write a sentence in my memory book, I use also mnemonics similar to those from the medieval scholar,
the endings of words are abbreviated but I use "flexible" rules. This means that and ending 9, x or y does not have a particular fixed meaning
if I use the example line:
"When I write a sentence in my memory book, I use the same mnemonics, something like a flexible shorthand"
becomes like, where there's a underscore _ there is an abbrev. and my brain will figure out what it says
if you replace for example anything with _s, by s / anything with _n & _m by n and all other endings by 9.
But, again those rules are not strict.
Whe_ I write_ a senten_ce in m_y memor_y book, I use _the same_ mnemonics
will look like:
Whn I wri9 a sentn in m9 memo9 book, I us9 the sam9 mnemonics
Still, in relation to the VMS there are big problems:
* the rules of letters frequency and the words initial letters still comply (and the vms text does not)
* the amount of unique resulting letters is still too high (vms has a lower count)
* difficult words, such as names, foreign names, must be written in full (and there are none in the VMS)
..and some other measure-able things.
Even when you remove (delete) the first letters of words, or the letters that you do not want (to get finally about 17 different letters), these problems are still there.
@ David
You got the idea, but you have to begin to think like a medieval scholar, not like a modern mathematically minded scientist. The VMs writer did not construe a ciphre, but developed out of the medieval abbr. system, which was very flexible anyway in the 15th c., a kind of personal shorthand. And I think the problems you are adressing are pseudoproblems, no one, for example, knows anything about the statistics of an abbr. medieval Latin text, especially since the statistics must vary with every single ms.
(20-03-2019, 07:41 PM)Helmut Winkler Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.@ David
You got the idea, but you have to begin to think like a medieval scholar, not like a modern mathematically minded scientist. The VMs writer did not construe a ciphre, but developed out of the medieval abbr. system, which was very flexible anyway in the 15th c., a kind of personal shorthand. And I think the problems you are adressing are pseudoproblems, no one, for example, knows anything about the statistics of an abbr. medieval Latin text, especially since the statistics must vary with every single ms.
Helmut, we may disagree with each other on a lot of details, but I agree with everything you say here 100%. In particular, ***think like a medieval scholar, not like a modern mathematically minded scientist***. Yes, exactly!!! Also, ***no one knows anything about the statistics of an abbr. medieval Latin text***. And further, ***the statistics must vary with every single ms.*** Yes, yes, and yes again. Exactly.
Now I happen to believe the ms is written in what I describe as late medieval Byzantine quasi-Judaeo-Greek. You believe it is simply some kind of combinations of medieval Latin abbreviation symbols. (By the way, it is not impossible that a scribe had the idea to write Byzantine Greek using medieval Latin abbreviation symbols.)
But the point is, in either case, the statistics will not necessarily look anything like any printed text. In the other thread I mentioned the example of Chaucer: just the famous word "soote" alone, the last word of the famous first line of one of the best-known works in English and world literature, is not among the *seven* most common ways to write that word *even in Middle English*! If we have to go to the 8th choice for a common word just to be able to read the first line of the Canterbury Tales, how much more so will we have to consider an extremely great variety of obscure variations of words, to be able to read substantial amounts of text of an obviously much more obscure work?
You know, there was an actual special form of printed type, developed in the 18th century, called "Record type". It was designed in order to publish a printed form of the Domesday Book that would represent the actual original script of the work as precisely as possible. I attach a couple examples of "record type" to this comment. Technically, accurate statistics on medieval texts would have to be done on this type of text!
(Rene will make the point that in these types of texts, the entropy values, etc., will be much, much higher, due to the great variety of abbreviations and combinations, and that they do not resemble the Voynich MS text, which has low entropy values because it has a very small and limited number of types of characters and combinations. This is true.)
In any case, the point is that a medieval ms by its very nature is very different from any type of printed work of any kind.
(20-03-2019, 06:47 PM)Davidsch Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view....
the endings of words are abbreviated but I use "flexible" rules. This means that and ending 9, x or y does not have a particular fixed meaning
...
Even in Latin, they don't have fixed meanings.
The 9 characters typically stand for con or com at the beginnings of words, but they can also represent homonyms. The same is true at the ends of words. They usually mean us or um, but they can also be is or im or em, just depending on context. At the end of words, they can stand for almost anything, as long as they are used consistently within the context of the document.
For example, the rotated-m symbol that looks like a z was used by most scribes to mean "em" but some scribes also used it for "rem" and "rum" and other endings.
In other words, the rotated-m was used collectively for three different endings that were USUALLY written with three different abbreviation symbols, but the text was still readable.
So.. the IDEA of a general-purpose ending (one that is even more flexible than usual) wasn't far from the way scribes thought about things.
Now I know I've been looking at medieval manuscripts too long. I can read pretty much every abbreviation in the excerpt Geoffrey posted. Unfortunately, I can't read the VMS... yet, and that was the whole idea.
There is absolutely no reason to think that the effect of abbreviating a text, either by leaving out characters, by replacing frequent combinations by a single sign, or a combination of that will:
- reduce the entropy in any significant manner
- introduce the word patterns we see in the Voynich MS text.
The first point is a simple mathematical consideration.
Mathematics is just a tool. There is nothing wrong with applying modern tools to old artefacts.
We can look at manuscripts through large magnifications.
We can analyse the composition of the materials with techniques that did not exist 100 years ago.
We can apply maths to analyse the text.
The problem always arises (in all above cases) when trying to draw conclusions from these observations.
The problems arise when you look at an object with unsuitable tools, a good example is when you look at an object through a microscope with the wrong magnification, you will not see anything
Of course.
But one cannot make generic statements about it, and it is not the fault of the tool.
It doesn't require a degree in physics to use a microscope, but it does, to design the apparatus to perform radio-carbon dating.
To correctly interpret what one sees through a microscope requires considerable knowledge about the materials that make up the object (e.g. an old manuscript). This is best composed of both theoretical knowledge (education) and practical experience.
When Joe Barabe looked at the MS through a microscope, he looked at the pigments. I had a look too, and thought it was very pretty. He, of course, learned things from it.
When a group of conservators looked at the MS through a microscope, they looked at the binding composition. I had a look too and it didn't tell me anything particularly useful. They found all sorts of interesting details. (Note that this is rarely possible with old manuscripts, as one really does not want to break up the binding to look inside).
The advantage with this MS text is that it is *very* long, which favours the use of statistics.
Still, not all statistics are equally reliable, because some depend on subjective interpretations of the handwriting. Also here, it is difficult to make generic statements.
The correct way for all presentations of statistics is to clearly state the assumptions that were made to derive them.