The Voynich Ninja

Zhe: all things individually might be possible, but I have some reservations.

1) When you turn English into abjad spelling (I'd really prefer to call it "dropping vowels" since abjads are something very specific), you notice that there are certain things you cannot do. For example, it's often very hard to drop initial vowels. The word "initial" would become "ntl", which is hard to revert properly. However, in his decipherment Geoffrey does take such liberties with adding vowels.
2) In isolation every aspect of Geoffrey's method works to some extent. But what if you combine them, especially consonant flexibility and vowel dropping? 

I'm not completely certain yet, but for now my impression is that it would be a one-way cipher. Flexibility is so great that the initial meaning is not recoverable.

(continued)

5. You gave a reason why a Jew did not use Hebrew letters to write their language. I’m not good at history, let alone world history, so I’ll leave this part to the others.

Anyway, this was the first question raised in my mind when I saw the theory you have proposed. No matter it is Yiddish or Judæo-Greek, Jews are famous for writing every language in Hebrew letters. That was why I did not considered much the possibility that VMS has any relation with Hebrew language or letters.

It’s nice that you have given an answer to this question, though I’m not capable of judging it.

Now I have some negative opinions about your theory. Starting from the next post.

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

(09-04-2019, 09:36 AM)Koen G Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.1) When you turn English into abjad spelling (I'd really prefer to call it "dropping vowels" since abjads are something very specific), you notice that there are certain things you cannot do. For example, it's often very hard to drop initial vowels. The word "initial" would become "ntl", which is hard to revert properly. However, in his decipherment Geoffrey does take such liberties with adding vowels.

This is where the (glottal) stop comes in. In our languages, these are not written. However (depending on the language and even the dialect) we may very well pronounce them. "Initial" has one. This is the right place where a text written using the Hebrew alphabet would use the Aleph character.

If the source text of the Voynich MS *really* was written in an unpointed Hebrew version of Greek, then there are two possibilities:
1) the person converting it to Voynichese did understand which vowel should be where
2) this person did not understand.

Now the Voynichese text (according to this theory) has vowels, in the right places, but not the right ones.
This does not fit with either option.

In response to number 5, it was very common for Jews to adapt the language of the community in which they were living, while still retaining some of their words, pronunciation (familiar sounds applied to unfamiliar words), and sometimes Hebrew letters.

It happened in Spain, France, Germany, northern Italy, and apparently also in Greece (I wasn't aware of Yevanic until Geoffrey started posting).

This might be partly because the Jewish communities were so fractured, always marginalized, always being ousted and having to re-establish themselves, and partly due to traditions that kept certain practices alive while others changed to adapt to a new environment.


Plus, in the medieval period, some languages were regularly written in many different scripts. Even now, some languages are written in three or four different scripts, usually Arabic, Cyrillic, Latin, and Greek (this especially happens in regions sandwiched between the east, the Middle East, and Russia). Often there was an additional script for liturgical writings.

Some African languages are written in both Arabic and Amharic/Ge'ez script, some in three scripts: Arabic, Ge'ez, and a local script.

(continued)

1. The omission rules are not stable.

You have used Linear B as an example where Greek could be written with a hugely different script. However, according to You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view., the omission rules seem quite stable and constant for me. For example:

Omission Rules:

1. Final -l, -r, -n, -m, -s and some diphtongs cannot be expressed in Linear B, so they are simply omitted.
   
2. Consonant clusters are sometimes expressed by inserting an adjacent vowel.
   
3. However, initial s in consonant clusters is usually omitted.
   
4. Linear B has only k/q, so k/kh/g are not distinguished.
   
5. Linear B has only p, so p/ph/b are not distinguished. Except a possible phu is used sometimes.
   
6. Linear B has d/t, so d/t are distinguished, but t/th are not.
   
7. Linear B has only r, so l/r are not distinguished.
   
8. Linear B has j/w, so they are properly used.
   

And let us see some example of words:

a-pi-qo-ro = amphiquoloi (1) (5) (7)
a-te-mi-ti-jo = artemitios (1) (6) (8)
a-to-ro-qo = anthrōquos (1) (6) (7)
ko-no = skhoinos (1) (3) (4)
ko-no-so = knōsos[/i] (1) (2) (4)
ku-ru-so = khrusos (1) (4) (7)
ku-wa-no = kuanos (1) (4) (8)
o-da-tu-we-ta = odatwenta (1) (6) (8)
phu-te-re = phutēres (1) (5) (6) (7)
pu-te = phutē (5) (6)
qo-u-ko-ro = guoukoloi (1) (4) (7)
ti-ri-po = tripos (1) (2) (5) (6) (7)
tu-ri-so = tulisos (1) (6) (7)

They all fit the simple rules above quite well.

As we know, without relatively fixed rules, it would be hard to interpret from defected script back into original script.

For example, last month, I heard a Japanese saying a new word I’ve never heard before: sokui. To figure out what it might be, I have done these things in my mind.

1. From context (The Sokui of the Emperor is going to be in May) I know it’s a verb-noun or noun, so adjacents are not possible.
   
2. The k is a short consonant, not long consonant, so this is probably a Sino-Japanese word or a native Japanese word, but almost impossible to be an English word.
   
3. If it is a native Japanese word, there is no way I could figure it out by guessing. Go on with Sino-Japanese word.
   
4. In Sino-Japanese word, each kanji corresponds to 1 or 2 morae, so so-ku-i must be at least two kanji.
   
5. I searched in my mind and found no Kanji could be read as kui, so soku-i is the most possible candidate. So-ku-i is also possible, but most Sino-Japanese words are 2-kanji words. We’ll come back later if soku-i fails.
   
6. Japanese i usually corresponds to wei in Mandarin Chinese, with 位 (seat, place) being very common. Because Chinese wei was transliterated into Middle Japanese wi, and then Middle Japanese wi became Modern Japanese i.
   
7. At this step, a Chinese word 即位 jíwèi (enthrone, enthronement) came into my mind. This word fits the context well.
   
8. I verified the Japanese reading of 即 and it is certainly soku.
   
9. Resolved the new word sokui as enthronement.
   

As you could see, there are many rules that helped me during the deduction.

However, in your You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view., you have to add arbitrary suffixes:

Quote:interpretation:
" ouk-ouden  an  [e]meis  kathar'[a]  ethelom[en]  autes  ti'-[o]poies  ekheis  ou  ethel'[ei]  oks[e]os "

" ουκ-ουδεν  αν  [η]μεις  καθαρ'[α]  εθελομ[εν]  αυτες  τι'-[ο]ποιες  εχεις  ου  εθελ'[ει]  οξ[ε]ως "

I’m not a professional in Greek, so I cannot be certain if these suffixes could be omitted in this way but still recognized by readers. I would place a question mark here.

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

First of all, I want to say 非常感谢你 to Chen Zhe simply for taking the time and effort to read, consider, and study all of my posts in this thread, and analyze and summarize my theory both as a comprehensive unified whole and in its details. Regardless of his or anyone else's final conclusions about the validity of my theory or lack thereof, Chen Zhe's careful study and effort to comprehend my theory clearly show through in every post he makes. It is gratifying to me simply to see that another researcher has put in such meticulous effort to study my work, and for that I am truly grateful.

Geoffrey

(09-04-2019, 08:27 AM)ChenZheChina Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.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

For the benefit of readers who do not know the Hebrew script, or who did not have time to read through the last line carefully, here is a transliteration:

" 'y dwnt t.ynq yw wwd hb mts dypyqlty rydng t.ys "

(09-04-2019, 09:36 AM)Koen G Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Zhe: all things individually might be possible, but I have some reservations.

1) When you turn English into abjad spelling (I'd really prefer to call it "dropping vowels" since abjads are something very specific), you notice that there are certain things you cannot do. For example, it's often very hard to drop initial vowels. The word "initial" would become "ntl", which is hard to revert properly. However, in his decipherment Geoffrey does take such liberties with adding vowels.
2) In isolation every aspect of Geoffrey's method works to some extent. But what if you combine them, especially consonant flexibility and vowel dropping? 

I'm not completely certain yet, but for now my impression is that it would be a one-way cipher. Flexibility is so great that the initial meaning is not recoverable.

Koen: I understand entirely the point about the difficulty of dropping initial vowels. In cases where the initial Greek vowel is essential to comprehending the meaning of the word, I have striven to avoid dropping it in the corresponding place in the Voynich word in my readings and interpretations. In fact, one feature that corresponds very well in Greek and in my Voynich theory is the frequency of initial vowels: Voynich [o] and [ch] are essentially Greek vowels in my theory, they are extremely frequent in word-initial position, and this corresponds well with the 40% of the pages of A Greek-English Lexicon devoted to entries with an initial Greek vowel, as well as the very frequent masculine and feminine nominative singular and plural articles which are vowels as well.

Elision of Greek vowels is of course another matter entirely, as you know. This occurs very frequently in Greek, and it certainly occurs frequently in corresponding places of Voynich words in my readings and interpretations.

But not all initial Greek vowels are necessarily essential to comprehending the meaning of the word. Let's take the example of ημεις "we", since it occurred in the line of my interpretation that Chen Zhe cited in his most recent post. Yes, in 5th century BCE classical Attic Ancient Greek, the initial vowel of this word is essential to comprehending its meaning. Strikingly, in this canonical dialect of the classical language, ημεις "we" contrasts with υμεις "you (plural)"! Yes, in this standard classical dialect it is clear that one cannot simply drop or omit the initial vowel!

But in fact, this contrast proved to be so unstable, as the sound system of Greek changed over the ensuing centuries and millennia, that Greek had to change its 2nd person plural pronoun forms entirely, just to make them distinctive and distinguishable from the 1st person plural pronouns! The point is, the distinctive initial vowels eta and upsilon both merged to be pronounced the same as iota. The words for "we" and "you (plural)", as well as the genitive forms ημων "our" and υμων "your (plural)", had become homophones.

Thus, at some stage of post-classical Greek, the 2nd person plural pronoun forms were changed entirely, to εσεις (nom.) and εσας (gen.). The 1st person plural pronoun forms became εμεις (nom.) and εμας (gen.). You can see clearly that after this paradigm shift, the distinction lies not in the initial vowels at all, but in the first consonants that follow them. In fact, the initial vowels are now so insignificant in these forms, that there exist common "weak" forms of the genitive/accusative that do indeed drop the initial vowels! These forms are μας and σας.

Surely then, it is not such a stretch or a reach or an excessive liberty to drop the non-distinctive initial vowels in εμεις and εσεις as well. That is the only minor thing that I have done to the word [η]μεις / [ε]μεις in my reading and interpretation of this word in this line.

Geoffrey

P.S.: Koen, I do hope that you will be so kind as to read and comment on the set of six plant root and leaf category labels on 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. that I interpreted in my post the other day, as you had asked me to attempt to do with my method. I do understand that it may take some time for you to do so. Thank you.

(09-04-2019, 09:46 AM)ChenZheChina Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.5. You gave a reason why a Jew did not use Hebrew letters to write their language. I’m not good at history, let alone world history, so I’ll leave this part to the others.

Anyway, this was the first question raised in my mind when I saw the theory you have proposed. No matter it is Yiddish or Judæo-Greek, Jews are famous for writing every language in Hebrew letters. That was why I did not considered much the possibility that VMS has any relation with Hebrew language or letters.

It’s nice that you have given an answer to this question, though I’m not capable of judging it.

Chen Zhe: This is a good question and a difficult question. I have suggested a possible explanation for it. JKP has mentioned some other possible explanations for it. Different groups and sects of Jewish people may have had different views about the sacrosanct nature of the Hebrew script and the inadmissibility of writing anything in any language in any other script. In certain historical situations, Jewish people may have justified the writing of a text in a different script if and when some extraordinary circumstances were seen to justify it. In the Jewish religion, even the many restricted activities that are traditionally banned on the day of the Sabbath (Shabbat) are explicitly allowed when such activities are seen as necessary to save a human life. This principle is called "pikuach nefesh", meaning "saving a life" in Hebrew.

Alternatively, perhaps now is an appropriate moment to mention one other possibility. This is just a speculative suggestion for now. I do not want it to become the main focus of my theory, which I want to remain on the language of the MS text, which I conclude is a form of Greek. But I will mention this here: Recently I have come to consider the possibility that the Voynich MS may have been written by a woman. Traditionally, the study of the Hebrew language was almost exclusively the province of boys and men in Jewish culture. Consider the following evidence in the case of Yiddish:

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

"[font=arial, helvetica, sans-serif]Women in the Ashkenazi community were traditionally not literate in Hebrew, but did read and write Yiddish. A body of literature therefore developed for which women were a primary audience. This included secular works, such as the Bovo-Bukh, and religious writing specifically for women, such as the צאנה וראינה‎ You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. and the תחנות‎ You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.. One of the best-known early woman authors was You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view., whose memoirs are still in print.[/font]

[font=arial, helvetica, sans-serif]"The segmentation of the Yiddish readership, between women who read מאַמע־לשון‎ mame-loshn but not לשון־קדש‎ loshn-koydesh, and men who read both, was significant enough that distinctive You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. were used for each. The name commonly given to the semicursive form used exclusively for Yiddish was ווײַבערטײַטש‎ (You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view., 'women's taytsh', shown in the heading and fourth column in the adjacent illustration), with square Hebrew letters (shown in the third column) being reserved for text in that language and Aramaic. This distinction was retained in general typographic practice through to the early 19th century, with Yiddish books being set in vaybertaytsh (also termed מעשייט‎ mesheyt or מאַשקעט‎ mashket—the construction is uncertain).You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.[/font]"

Thus, consider the situation of a Jewish Greek-speaking woman in medieval Europe. The study of the Hebrew language was not meant for her. She spoke Judaeo-Greek, and perhaps if she was motivated and intellectual and linguistically talented, she could make the effort to find the opportunity to learn to read and write in Judaeo-Greek. But she would be excluded from the main body of Jewish literary culture in Hebrew, which circles were only open to boys and men. She would have to make most of the effort on her own, quite possibly in a certain amount of isolation.

It makes a certain amount of sense to me, to consider the possibility that such a person, under such circumstances, may have had the motivation to invent her own fanciful script for the language that she knew and spoke and even read and wrote, but which was isolated from the primary focus of literary culture in her community, which was reserved for a different language and for people of a different gender.

Like I say, it is just a speculative idea for now. But it may explain certain things, and I think it is a possibility that is worth considering.

Geoffrey

(09-04-2019, 10:25 AM)ReneZ Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

(09-04-2019, 09:36 AM)Koen G Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.1) When you turn English into abjad spelling (I'd really prefer to call it "dropping vowels" since abjads are something very specific), you notice that there are certain things you cannot do. For example, it's often very hard to drop initial vowels. The word "initial" would become "ntl", which is hard to revert properly. However, in his decipherment Geoffrey does take such liberties with adding vowels.

This is where the (glottal) stop comes in. In our languages, these are not written. However (depending on the language and even the dialect) we may very well pronounce them. "Initial" has one. This is the right place where a text written using the Hebrew alphabet would use the Aleph character.

If the source text of the Voynich MS *really* was written in an unpointed Hebrew version of Greek, then there are two possibilities:
1) the person converting it to Voynichese did understand which vowel should be where
2) this person did not understand.

Now the Voynichese text (according to this theory) has vowels, in the right places, but not the right ones.
This does not fit with either option.

It depends how you define "the right ones". As I have already pointed out previously, in Judaeo-Greek the Hebrew letters Aleph and Ayin have identical phonetic values:

[attachment=2787]
[attachment=2788]
[attachment=2789]

Thus, if Voynich [a] represented Aleph, and Voynich [o] represented Ayin, the author could have used either of them, interchangeably, in any place where either of them could be written in Judaeo-Greek, in free variation, without having any effect on the pronunciation of the underlying text.

Geoffrey