(09-04-2019, 07:36 PM)ReneZ Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. (09-04-2019, 05:49 PM)geoffreycaveney Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. (09-04-2019, 10:25 AM)ReneZ Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.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:
[ there was a figure here that did not survive my copying ]
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.
But this is not at all what you are doing. I just went to the first example of a translation that I could find:
Quote:first two lines of You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. 1 in the Voynich ms text:
[t]eeodaiin shey epairody osaiin yteeoey shey epaiin oaiin
[font=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]daiir okeody qoekeeg sar oeteody oteey keey key keeodal[/font]
my Judaeo-Greek interpretation of this text:
[]ei[A]pan tis ipeirous otan skiiAis tis , epan oAn
par' Atous &Atees tAr(a) oikous o(u)k-eis(i) tees , tes []ei[A]pan
Now "normalizing" this Judaeo-Greek text into a more standard Greek form:
eipan tis ipeirous otan skiais tis , eipan oun
para autous & autes tora oikous ouk eisi tes , tes eipan
So starting with the Greek text, we have lots and lots of vowels.
In the Judaeo-Greek version, they all survive somehow. That does not fit with an unpointed Hebrew text.
Just some examples (to keep it simple):
tis should have become ts.
para should have become pr.
tora should have become tr.
tes should have become ts.
[ etc ]
eipan could have become Apn (with A the Aleph). There are three of them in this short text.
But two end up as: eiApan
and the third as: epan
and finally in Voynichese they are all different:
[t]eeodaiin
epaiin
keeodal
I am glad that Rene has brought up this example of these lines and these words, because my explanation of them in response will be very instructive and helpful for Chen Zhe, Koen, and any other interested researchers to follow my method more clearly.
First of all, one technical correction: Rene is quoting an early version of my reading and interpretation of these lines, which is fair, since I posted it, but I do want to clarify that I have amended one significant detail in a later version (also posted): I now read and interpret the last word of the second line (this is all from the top of page You are not allowed to view links.
Register or
Login to view. 1, as Rene notes), [keeodal], as "t-eipan", with the prefixed "t-" representing a prefixed pre-verbal clitic object pronoun, which is a distinctive characteristic of Greek as part of the Balkan sprachbund. "t-" simply represents the word "to-", meaning "it", and the vowel is elided before the initial vowel of "eipan". The whole word "t-eipan" means "they said it".
Now about the main issues that Rene raises:
My hypothesis is that the author did make
some effort to indicate
many of the Greek vowels in
some way in the MS text. Not every vowel, and not in a 100% entirely consistent way throughout the text, for better or worse. But some effort to indicate many of the vowels in some way. And yes, in the system that was used for these vowel representations, I do indeed observe certain connections with the Hebrew script and letters. But the connections are complex. It will take some time and effort to explain the system, and it will take some time and effort to comprehend the system.
The basic general principles that I observe in the author's system can be summarized in the following way:
1) Where front vowels, especially /i/, are indicated, the author uses any of the Voynich characters [ch], [e], or (i) (not part of [(i)in]) to do so. [
Once again, please note that I cannot write (i) in square brackets because that is a symbol for formatting the entire following text of this post in italic type.]
2) Where back vowels, and sometimes short /e/ without a following y-glide, are indicated, the author uses either of the Voynich characters [a] or [o] to do so.
3) Where rounded vowels are indicated, the author uses the Voynich character [d] to do so.
Unfortunately, this system creates some potential overlap in the representation of "e", which can fall under either category (1) or (2), and in the representation of "o", which can fall under either category (2) or (3). It also creates some ambiguity in the representation of Greek
upsilon, because it was pronounced as /i/ by itself, but still as a /w/ glide as part of the diphthongs "au" and "ou". Thus it could end up in either category (1) or (3), and due to this inherent confusion in its phonetic value, the author may sometimes have used a Voynich character for one category, when the actual pronunciation of the letter in the given context would appear to indicate the other category.
This is not a perfect system, and it is not an unambiguous system. But it is a system nonetheless, and it is the system that I have observed in my reading and interpretation of the MS text.
Vowel principle (1) is at least consistent with the "iotacism" tendency of post-classical Greek for many vowels and diphthongs all to become pronounced identically as /i/. It is also consistent with the existence of the Hebrew letter
yod, which represents the glide /y/. I identify Voynich [e] as the purest equivalent of iota/yod, but [ch] is a very frequent alternate representation, which I consider to be often related to the Greek "rough breathing" pronunciation of an /h/ sound before many initial vowels.
Vowel principle (3) is consistent with the Hebrew letter
vav, which represents the glide /w/. Elsewhere in this thread I have explained at some length and in some detail how both Hebrew
vav and Voynich [d] can indicate the vowel sound /u/ or the consonant sound /v/, and how I believe the author thus came to use [d] to represent Greek
beta as well, since Greek
beta and Hebrew
bet can both also be pronounced /v/. Since voiced and voiceless consonants are not distinguished, Voynich [d] thus came to represent /p/ or /f/ ("ph") as well.
Vowel principle (2) covers the Hebrew letters
aleph and
ayin that I described in the previous post. In general, they can show up where various different Greek vowels do,
but they are definitely not preferred for /i/ or a /y/ glide, for which Hebrew has the letter
yod, nor are they preferred for /u/ or a /w/ glide, for which Hebrew has the letter
vav. For anything else, either
aleph or
ayin is "fair game", so to speak, and in this MS text, the Voynich characters [a] or [o] are likewise "fair game" as possible representations of any other vowel,
if the author felt it necessary to represent a particular vowel at all.
You may not like these 3 vowel representation principles of the system that I observe. You may think they are too ambiguous. Be that as it may, they are the vowel representation principles that I have observed in my reading and interpretation of the MS text.
And following these 3 principles, I can indeed explain the instances that Rene cites:
"tis" remains "tis", not "ts", because Hebrew has a perfectly good letter
yod for the /y/ glide which corresponds to this vowel /i/. And indeed it shows up in this word of the MS text as the corresponding Voynich character [e].
"para" becomes "par", not "pr", because the author did want to make
some effort to indicate
some vowels in some way. The author did not choose to employ nikkud dots for this purpose, but as an alternative in some places in the text, such as in the middle of this word, the author used the equivalent of Hebrew
aleph, the Voynich character [a], to represent the Greek vowel sound /a/. Neither Hebrew
yod nor
vav work for this vowel, so
aleph or
ayin were the options the author had, and in this case he or she chose
aleph, that is, Voynich [a].
"tora" becomes "tar", not "tr", for the same reason as "para" becomes "par", not "pr". I find that the author did not frequently represent Greek /o/ with Voynich [d], although it may occur occasionally. More often the author includes Greek /o/ in "vowel category (2)" above, rather than vowel category (3). So for better or worse, I find in this text that Greek /a/ and /o/ were usually not distinguished from each other.
"tes" remains "tes", not "ts", because the author felt it important to indicate this vowel in some way in this word. In this particular case the author chose to emphasize that it is a front vowel, not /a/ nor /o/ for example, and so he or she here treated this /e/ as "vowel category (1)" rather than category (2). Thus it is represented here with the equivalent of Hebrew
yod, that is, Voynich [e].
Now about the three "eipan"s in these two lines:
Hebrew has the perfectly good letter
yod for the /y/ glide, which is perfectly natural to use to represent the Greek vowel sound /i/. Now the Greek spelling remains "ei", but this entire diphthong is also simply pronounced /i/ due to the "iotacism" sound change of post-classical Greek. In these lines, in two cases the author wrote the vowel as the double letter Voynich [ee], but in one case as the single letter Voynich [e]. I do not see much difference in these two representations; some medieval spelling variations were simply arbitrary.
Likewise it is perfectly natural for the author to wish to indicate the Greek vowel /a/ in "eipan" in some way. In all three cases here the author chose Voynich [a] to do so, in line with the choice in the word "para" above.
I explained the [k] in [keeodal] above, and I note here that I consider the [t] in [teeodaiin] as a pilcrow, not a letter.
I have explained elsewhere how Voynich [d] and [p] may both represent Greek "p". I have explained Voynich [d] in more detail above.
I have explained elsewhere how Voynich final [(i)in] is an alternate representation of the same sounds as Voynich [l].
The most significant difficulty in explaining the vowel representations in these forms is the presence of Voynich [o] between [ee] and [d] in the first and third cases [(t)eeodaiin] and [keeodal]. The only thing I can say about this at the present stage is that I note the well-known (to Voynich researchers) distinction between "Currier A dialect", which almost never writes the combination [ed], and "Currier B dialect", which very frequently writes the combination [ed]. But Currier A dialect does use the combination [eod]. So these forms here appear to reflect the "Currier A dialect" style, avoiding the combination [ed].
Geoffrey