The Voynich Ninja

(08-04-2019, 02:05 AM)geoffreycaveney Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Koen has asked how my system works for labels such as those on You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. , You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. , You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. , and You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. , and Linda has asked about page You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. .

This post is my reply to both requests.

=======

Now to You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. , which Linda has asked me about.

For now I can only address the prominent letters running down the left side margin of the top half of the page:

4th line: [s]
6th line: [d]
8th line: [q]
11th line: [s]
14th line: [o]
17th line: [l]
21st line: [k]
24th line: [r]
29th line: [s]

Treating them as one word or phrase, we have:
[sdqsolkrs]

My reading:
"dukt-Ondrd"

My interpretation:
δυκτ[οι]/διακτ[οι]-ανδρ[ι]δ[ες]

Translation:
"women carried through pipes"

Comments:
The Greek adjective "διακτος" is found in Liddell & Scott's A Greek-English Lexicon, with the meaning "carried through pipes, of oils or unguents used at the bath". Citations include "τα κατ' ανδρα δ[ιακτα] IGRom.4.860 (Laodicea ad Lycum)." Such citations suggest late classical Greek influenced by Latin, and I note the Medieval Latin word "ductus", meaning "conveyance (of water); hence, a channel". Thus the first vowel "u" in this word may not be so surprising. I further remind readers that by the medieval period the Greek vowel letters upsilon and iota were pronounced identically.
The Greek word "ανδρις, ανδριδος" is also found in A Greek-English Lexicon, with the meaning "fem. of ανηρ" (the familiar root and word ανηρ, ανδρος "man"), "woman", and the citation "Sm.Ge.2.23."

Geoffrey

Thank you Geoffrey. I wouldn't have thought the letters down the side would spell something legible, i had assumed they were being given specific values, so that in itself is surprising. When i run the greek word διακτος through google translate, i get its meaning in English as 'lasting', is that somehow linked to the pipes meaning? Conveyance of water, though, is perfect in terms of what i see as the quire's topic.

(08-04-2019, 12:49 PM)Linda Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

(08-04-2019, 02:05 AM)geoffreycaveney Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Koen has asked how my system works for labels such as those on You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. , You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. , You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. , and You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. , and Linda has asked about page You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. .

This post is my reply to both requests.

=======

Now to You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. , which Linda has asked me about.

For now I can only address the prominent letters running down the left side margin of the top half of the page:

4th line: [s]
6th line: [d]
8th line: [q]
11th line: [s]
14th line: [o]
17th line: [l]
21st line: [k]
24th line: [r]
29th line: [s]

Treating them as one word or phrase, we have:
[sdqsolkrs]

My reading:
"dukt-Ondrd"

My interpretation:
δυκτ[οι]/διακτ[οι]-ανδρ[ι]δ[ες]

Translation:
"women carried through pipes"

Comments:
The Greek adjective "διακτος" is found in Liddell & Scott's A Greek-English Lexicon, with the meaning "carried through pipes, of oils or unguents used at the bath". Citations include "τα κατ' ανδρα δ[ιακτα] IGRom.4.860 (Laodicea ad Lycum)." Such citations suggest late classical Greek influenced by Latin, and I note the Medieval Latin word "ductus", meaning "conveyance (of water); hence, a channel". Thus the first vowel "u" in this word may not be so surprising. I further remind readers that by the medieval period the Greek vowel letters upsilon and iota were pronounced identically.
The Greek word "ανδρις, ανδριδος" is also found in A Greek-English Lexicon, with the meaning "fem. of ανηρ" (the familiar root and word ανηρ, ανδρος "man"), "woman", and the citation "Sm.Ge.2.23."

Geoffrey

Thank you Geoffrey. I wouldn't have thought the letters down the side would spell something legible, i had assumed they were being given specific values, so that in itself is surprising. When i run the greek word διακτος through google translate, i get its meaning in English as 'lasting', is that somehow linked to the pipes meaning? Conveyance of water, though, is perfect in terms of what i see as the quire's topic.

One has to be careful with Google Translate: If it doesn't recognize the word, it will just assume you misspelled some other word, and provide the translation of that other word. In this case, it gives "lasting" because it reads "διακτος" as a misspelling of "διαρκης", meaning "constant, endless" and thus also "lasting, durable", etc. With Google Translate one always needs to check for this by checking the reverse translation. If you do this in this case, you will see that for "lasting" it returns not "διακτος" but "διαρκης". When I use Google Translate I always double-check everything this way, and I further follow up by checking Wiktionary, Liddell & Scott's A Greek-English Lexicon, and other sources.

Here is a photo of the entry for "διακτος" in Liddell & Scott's A Greek-English Lexicon:

[attachment=2778]

Geoffrey

Thanks, good tip, i will try to remember to reverse check from now on.

I agree with Geoffrey. Use dictionaries, preferably medieval dictionaries.

I only use Google translate for a quick scan of the general idea in a large block of text. Otherwise, it can't be trusted. As Geoffrey pointed out, it will guess what you mean and give a translation for the closest thing it finds in its database.

The Liddell & Scott dictionary is available online at the Perseus site. The search box is quite convenient (you can search for exact matches, prefixes, suffixes, arbitrary parts of words):

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Hi Geoffrey,

It took me several days to finally read though the first post until the last post.

Here are some of my thoughts, based on my understanding of your posts. I may be misunderstanding you, so allow me to apologize for that first, in case it happens.

1. You have proposed the underlying language might be Greek, some variant of Greek, or a mixture of some variants of Greek. This is fine for me. It is natural to have words or phrases from different era or regions mixed together, especially in a large book that covers multiple fields.

Example: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

This is a novel written in the 18th century. Some paragraphs of the book use modern Chinese that I could read with few difficulty, but some other paragraphs use Literary Chinese that I could not read if I were not educated. The example simply shows that it is possible to mix multiple languages, in this case, classical variant and modern variant of a same language family, in one book and expect its readers to be able to read.

(This is long, so I’ll write in separate posts)

(continued)

2. You have proposed that the Voynich letters might be a further deduction of Hebrew letters, You have given an example where Judæo-Greek drops the original spelling of Greek words, but instead uses Hebrew letters to record the real pronunciation of by-then users.

This is also fine for me. I saw a lot of artificial phonetic letters designed to write English on Omniglot. By focusing on the real pronunciation, it is expected to see newly-developed letters being quite different than the original. This also happened to Chinese.

In Mandarin Chinese, there is a phoneme /ə/ which is actually pronounced [œ] [e] [ə] [ɤ] [o] [∅] dependently. For example, the syllable /x/ + /u/ + /ə/ + /ŋ/ actually   results in [xʊŋ]. In Wade-Giles (1892) and Bopomofo (1912), this syllable is written as hung and ㄏㄨㄥ (/x/ + /u/ + /əŋ/) respectively, both of which use /u/ for the vowel. However, in Gwoyeu Romatzyh (1928) and Hanyu Pinyin (1958), this is written as hong in both systems, using /o/ for the vowel.

There is another example of this phoneme. The syllable /f/ + /ə/ + /ŋ/ results in [fɤŋ] in Mainland China, and thus romanized as feng in almost all romanization systems including Wade-Giles (1892), Gwoyeu Romatzyh (1928) and Hanyu Pinyin (1958). In Bopomofo (1912), the syllable is also written as ㄈㄥ (/f/ + /əŋ/) without a doubt. However, in Tongyong Pinyin (1998), which is developed in Taiwan, fong is used instead of feng as the romanization of the syllable, to reflect its actual pronunciation in modern Taiwan.

The last example of the phoneme is one of the most simple syllables. The syllable /k/ + /ə/ results in [kɤ] in Mandarin Chinese. In Bopomofo (1912), it is written as ㄍㄜ (/k/ + /ə/). In Gwoyeu Romatzyh (1928) and Hanyu Pinyin (1958), it is also written as ge. However, in Wade-Giles (1892) it is written as ko. The difference between o and e might reflect the actual pronunciation of each era, but I have no way to prove or disprove them.

* What I am sure is, by the time of Bopomofo (1912) and Hanyu Pinyin (1958), there have already been clear difference between actual pronunciations of phoneme /ə/ when combining with different consonants. Both Bopomofo and Hanyu Pinyin use different letters for the same phoneme /ə/: ㄛ and o are used with labial consonants like bo [po], po [pʰo], mo [mo], fo [fo], while ㄜ and e are used with alveolar and velar stops like de [tɤ], ge [kɤ], ke [kʰɤ], he [xɤ].

Then why we know that all these o’s and e’s are of the same phoneme? First, old phonology books, analyzing old pronunciations, say so. Second, in Modern Standard Mandarin, there is  no minimal pair between the pronunciations, except interjections. That is, we won’t get other words if we pronounce [po] as [pɤ] or pronounce [kɤ] as [ko]. Minimal pairs exist only for interjections. Single [o] for affirmative, single [e] for doubtful, and single [ə] or [ɤ] for negative and hesitation. However, it is possible that “[e] for doubtful” comes from Japanese えっ and “[ə] for hesitation” comes from English um, er.

My example here is merely to show that, when people adopt a new script, how much freedom they could have when choosing letters to express phones, and ignoring traditional phoneme systems and spellings. Considering this, I think the freedom Geoffrey has in their system is still in a reasonable scope.

(This is long, so I’ll write in separate posts)

(continued)

3. You have given a comparison between Hebrew Alphabet and Greek Alphabet of the same sentence, to show that it is possible to write Greek in Hebrew letters and niqqud.




Let’s take the first line for an example. The line in Hebrew Alphabet is:


The line in Greek Alphabet is:


We could easily map syllables between sides:

קֵ - καὶ
אִי - ἦ
טוֹ - το
ן - ν
פְ - π
רוֹ - ρο
פִי - φη
טִי - τεί
אָה - α
קִי - κυ
רִי - ρί
אוּ - ου

And, more important, you have also shown that Hebrew Bet could be used to express /v/ as in the fourth line:

The line in Hebrew Alphabet is:


The line in Greek Alphabet is:


The mappings between sides are obviously:

אַ - ἀ
נַ - νά
שְׁ - σ
טָא - τα
פּוֹ - πο
רֶבְ - ρεύ
גוּ - γου

And the same υ, could be expressed by Hebrew Feh, if it sounds /f/ instead of /v/, as in the later part of that webpage.

The line in Hebrew Alphabet is:


The line in Greek Alphabet is:


The mappings are:

אָ - ἀ
נִי - νὴ
ר - ρ
פְּ - π
רוֹ - ρὸ
שׁ - ς
אֵ - ἑ
טֵי - ταῖ
רוֹ - ρο
ן - ν
אַפְ - αὐ
טוּ - τοῦ
פּוֹ - πο
רֶפְ - ρευ
טִי - τῆ
טֵי - τε

As we could see, when the writer choose Hebrew letters, they prefer real pronunciation over traditional spelling, etymology, orthography, or whatever we name it.

This is another reason that I think that your theory of Voynich letters being preferring pronunciation over orthography is acceptable.

(This is long, so I’ll write in separate posts)

Chen, I had hoped I could go through Geoffrey's posts and respond point by point as you are doing, but I wasn't able to find a big enough block of time to do it.

Thank you for taking the time to post your feedback in this informative and lucid way.

(continued)

4. You have shown that it is possible to find valid Greek word from consonants. You used נכרן as an example and found an valid word νεκρον (nekron). This looks also fine for me. It is not important what letters you could recognize from that unclear photo of hand-written scripts. What important here is whether you could find valid Greek word based on whatever recognized Hebrew letters. You found it, and that’s why I think it acceptable.

Yes, vowels are important for many languages, but it does not mean that we cannot write them with abjad alphabets. Don’t forget that there were, and still are a lot, a lot of non-Semitic languages written in Perso-Arabic scripts.

For example, in China, we have Uyghur language, which is a Turkic language. Vowels are essential for Uyghur language, but before the full-vowel orthography reformation, Uyghur language was written just like Arabic, with many vowels omitted.

Here are some examples from You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

Old: سلطان (S-L-T-A-N)
New: سۇلتان (sultan)
Meaning: Sultan

Old: يوسف (Y-W-S-F)
New: يۈسۈپ (yüsüp)
Meaning: Yusuf

Old: خلق (X-L-Q)
New: خەلق (xelq)
Meaning: people

Note that the new orthography of Uyghur uses a consonant letter ە (Arabic Ha) as a vowel letter for /e/. This is similar to how Latin uses a vowel letter Η (Greek Eta) as a consonant letter H, but in the other way.

Also, Hindustani is also an Indo-European language, which is written using Devanagari when self-claimed as Hindi, but written using Arabic Script when self-claimed as Urdu. I don’t have detailed information on this, but I saw somewhere before that Urdu is written in abjad instead of full-vowel. Correct me if I’m wrong.

Actlly, it’s possbl t wrt evn Englsh wthout most vwls and expct readrs t cmplt thm by thmslvs. Ths passg shld b stll readbl for most of you. Writng lk an abjd dosnt mn to omt vwls cmpltly, but to wrt vwls only whn ncssry. For exmpl, to tll betwn mnml prs lk son vs sun.

אי דונת טינק יו ווד הב מצ דיפיקלתי רידנג טיס

(This is long, so I’ll write in separate posts)