15-03-2019, 06:23 AM
15-03-2019, 08:59 AM
I'm sorry to say, but this proposal shows all the classical signs of an incorrect solution:
- the translation table from Voynich text to plain text is vague and inconsistent
- the resulting plain text still has to be adapted in order to obtain real words
- the then resulting text is not grammatically sensible.
- the word patterns / low entropy are not explained.
One of the typical problems is that the 'translation' concentrates on the decryption part rather than on the encryption part. It is completely natural to map certain Voynich characters to different plain text characters in order to get some meaningful words out of it. However, this means that the person doing the encryption would have mapped several different plain text characters onto the same code character, which is not at all a natural thing to do.
- the translation table from Voynich text to plain text is vague and inconsistent
- the resulting plain text still has to be adapted in order to obtain real words
- the then resulting text is not grammatically sensible.
- the word patterns / low entropy are not explained.
One of the typical problems is that the 'translation' concentrates on the decryption part rather than on the encryption part. It is completely natural to map certain Voynich characters to different plain text characters in order to get some meaningful words out of it. However, this means that the person doing the encryption would have mapped several different plain text characters onto the same code character, which is not at all a natural thing to do.
15-03-2019, 02:45 PM
(15-03-2019, 08:59 AM)ReneZ Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I'm sorry to say, but this proposal shows all the classical signs of an incorrect solution:
- the translation table from Voynich text to plain text is vague and inconsistent
- the resulting plain text still has to be adapted in order to obtain real words
- the then resulting text is not grammatically sensible.
- the word patterns / low entropy are not explained.
One of the typical problems is that the 'translation' concentrates on the decryption part rather than on the encryption part. It is completely natural to map certain Voynich characters to different plain text characters in order to get some meaningful words out of it. However, this means that the person doing the encryption would have mapped several different plain text characters onto the same code character, which is not at all a natural thing to do.
I would appreciate it if someone could point out specifically and concretely, using actual examples of words and suffixes I have mentioned, particular examples of each of the general claims that Rene makes here. To say in general that my proposal is "vague", "inconsistent", "not grammatically sensible", without citing specific examples, is a vague statement itself. (I already addressed in detail the one specific and concrete question that Koen raised about "pan".)
Yes, the person doing the encryption would have mapped *two* different plain text characters onto the same code character. The only exception with more than that in my proposal is [d], which I have discussed and explained at some length and in some detail. Other than that, the general pattern is two plain text characters > one code character: "i" and "e" > [e], "k" and "g" > [t], "t" and "d" > [k], "p" and "b" > [p], "r" and "l" > [r], "h" and "j"/"i" > [ch], "u" and "v" > [d], followed by the additional step of [p] > [d] and [f] > [d] in many ms text contexts. [sh] is a special case because it has multiple forms, one of which I interpret as "t", and the other in fact very different character which I interpret as [m].
I do not see this system, which I just summarized concisely, as vague or inconsistent. It is just a two plain text > one cipher text system, that is all.
As for adapting the plain text to obtain real words, beyond the specific strict rules I listed above, the only adaptation so far has been slight changes in the Greek vowels, which again I believe is natural for 15th century late medieval Byzantine Greek, which would have been different from Ancient Greek, different from Koine Greek, different from Modern Greek, and in a language which is famous for its notable and distinctive vowel quality changes over time. Writing "skiais" as "skiois", "eipan" as "epan", and "oun" as "oan" are simply not that big a deal in the context of all the other historical changes in Greek vowel qualities occurring during this same period.
Regarding grammatically sensible text, I already in response to Koen raised the possibility of deliberate inversion of syllables in "geio-pan", which is a word play hypothesis that will need to be investigated systematically of course. After that we have "tis ipeirous otan skiais tis eipan oun". Is this not grammatical Greek? "When the continents are in the shadows, as they said." It is true that we have a medieval author employing archaic forms such as the Ancient Greek dative as a locative. It would be natural for such an author in such a situation to use a more modern Greek article "tis" in place of the Ancient Greek dative article "tais". I would be happy to have an in-depth discussion of the Greek grammar here, but if the only intention is to use every slight discrepancy of a 15th century text from the pure forms of Ancient Greek, Koine Greek, or Modern Greek as a reason to dismiss the entire interpretation as ungrammatical, that's not a good intention behind the discussion.
About the low entropy: I believe I mentioned in my original post that I think it would be interesting to take some simple Latin, Greek, French, and Italian plain texts, merge the voiced stops together with the voiceless stops, merge "r" and "l", merge "u" and "v" (as Classical Latin did!), merge "i" and "e" (as Modern Greek has done in pronunciation!), and then see what the entropy stats and bigram distribution plots look like.
About the word patterns: all those Latin and Greek suffixes appearing as the most common "words" will also need to be investigated systematically of course. This may bring us back to the word play hypothesis about deliberate inversion of syllables. At least this is a more precise and plausible procedure than the hopeless anagrams. As I mentioned in response to Koen, inversion of syllables has become the basis of an entire well-known slang argot of French, "Verlan".
Yes, the basic method here is two plain text letters > one cipher text character. Classical Latin did that with "u" and "v". The "betacism" sound change has done it with "b" and "v" in many languages. The "iotacism" sound change did it in the pronunciation of "i" and "e" in Greek. Thus I reject the claim that it is "not at all a natural thing to do". Yes, the Voynich author would have extended it to more pairs of letters in a form of cipher. I have proposed such a system here in a specific and concrete form which can be tested. Of course it can be adapted and adjusted and amended if the data proves it to be necessary.
During the investigation of Linear B, many researchers claimed that it was impossible for Greek to have been written in a syllabary script such as Linear A or B. It didn't fit the structure of the language! Nevertheless, it turns out that the Mycenaeans had indeed forced their language into the script that they had inherited.
Likewise, many Voynich researchers may claim that it is implausible for a cipher to merge each pair of plain text letters into a single cipher text character. Nevertheless, that is what the extremely restricted and limited Voynich character inventory and character sequence restrictions are pointing to. That is why the statistics keep pointing to Hawaiian as the most similar language: because Hawaiian has only 8 consonants! Three stops, two nasals, one liquid, v~w, and h. The most logical method to encrypt a European language to make its statistics look like Hawaiian, is to merge each pair of consonants into one consonant. My proposal here makes the resulting consonant inventory appear quite similar to that of Hawaiian.
15-03-2019, 04:38 PM
What we have here is a new instance of You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view..
1. Voynichese is mapped into the Latin alphabet by means of a conversion table
2. Resulting words are split/merged/altered in order to map them into similar words of the target language
3. Words are translated one by one, ignoring grammar
4. The result is reformulated into something meaningful
This is a very successful method: it literally can never fail. It is rightly popular.
Some other applications that were of course just as successful:
You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.: does "pyarsh" mean "commentary" in Hebrew? Not exactly, you have to change two or three letters, but as Yokubinas says: this is "not the current Hebrew of today, but an agglutinative root word base, mainly old testament Hebrew root words"
You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.. Does "agrosoriam" mean "to land" in Latin? No, but the manuscript is not "Classical Latin or classical Medieval Latin, and there is no need to kick at open door and compare them directly. Rather VMS is written in some form which mixes traits of Medieval, Vulgar and spoken Latin with artificial endings invented by the author." So, "agrosoriam" is fine!
You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.. Is "ororasa" documented as a word meaning "pray and pray again" in any Romance language? No, but the manuscript is written in "proto-Italic and the language is a late dialect of Vulgar or Koinê Latin, which marks the transitional point between Classical Latin and the Romance languages". Also "the MS 408 alphabet and grammar were too simplified to accommodate certain linguistic components, so the author was forced to improvise. Or, perhaps the author had very limited Vulgar Latin vocabulary, as a linguistic foreigner."
Does "skiiois tis" mean "in the shadows" in Greek? No, but "the early 15th century was very late Byzantine Greek, it would have been different from Ancient Greek, different from Koine Greek, and different from Modern Greek" and the author could have made mistakes and/or he was playing word games.
1. Voynichese is mapped into the Latin alphabet by means of a conversion table
2. Resulting words are split/merged/altered in order to map them into similar words of the target language
3. Words are translated one by one, ignoring grammar
4. The result is reformulated into something meaningful
This is a very successful method: it literally can never fail. It is rightly popular.
Some other applications that were of course just as successful:
You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.: does "pyarsh" mean "commentary" in Hebrew? Not exactly, you have to change two or three letters, but as Yokubinas says: this is "not the current Hebrew of today, but an agglutinative root word base, mainly old testament Hebrew root words"
You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.. Does "agrosoriam" mean "to land" in Latin? No, but the manuscript is not "Classical Latin or classical Medieval Latin, and there is no need to kick at open door and compare them directly. Rather VMS is written in some form which mixes traits of Medieval, Vulgar and spoken Latin with artificial endings invented by the author." So, "agrosoriam" is fine!
You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.. Is "ororasa" documented as a word meaning "pray and pray again" in any Romance language? No, but the manuscript is written in "proto-Italic and the language is a late dialect of Vulgar or Koinê Latin, which marks the transitional point between Classical Latin and the Romance languages". Also "the MS 408 alphabet and grammar were too simplified to accommodate certain linguistic components, so the author was forced to improvise. Or, perhaps the author had very limited Vulgar Latin vocabulary, as a linguistic foreigner."
Does "skiiois tis" mean "in the shadows" in Greek? No, but "the early 15th century was very late Byzantine Greek, it would have been different from Ancient Greek, different from Koine Greek, and different from Modern Greek" and the author could have made mistakes and/or he was playing word games.
15-03-2019, 05:08 PM
No one mentioned Ruby Novacna's blog yet? Check out the blogosphere reader for another Greek-Voynichese translation.
15-03-2019, 05:36 PM
Hello Jeffrey,
sure, I am critical, but I am equally critical of my own attempts.
I can be more specific:
On the vagueness and (especially) inconsistency, the translation table you provided is not complete, of course, but already there are a number of unclear associations:
Voynich-t can mean two different things, and so can Voynich-e.
At the same time, two different Voynich characters both map to Greek tau.
Voynich-d is particularly unclear. I think I understand that Voynich-p is not an alternative for Voynich-d, that can be used in the first lines, but Voynich-d is an alternative for Voynich-p that can be used in all lines (first and later).
Thus, Voynich-d can always mean two different things, of which one is a consonant (pi) and the other a vowel (upsilon) ?
Voynich-i also has a context-dependent meaning.
Stand-alone Voynich-a is a but when followed by Voynich-i it is ei.
Even more important I consider the second problem.
I am trying to put myself in the position of the author/scribe. What did he really write down and what did he mean?
If he meant to write:
skiais tais eipan oun
then why did he not do that, but wrote instead:
skiiois tis epan oan
The grammatical issue is something I cannot judge, so I can only refer to Koen's comment.
Finally, it is *much* more difficult to reduce entropy in any significant manner, than just removing the distinction between a few consonants. And again, the word pattern is not addressed at all.
This last point about the word pattern by itself is sufficient to reject the proposed "solution".
sure, I am critical, but I am equally critical of my own attempts.
I can be more specific:
On the vagueness and (especially) inconsistency, the translation table you provided is not complete, of course, but already there are a number of unclear associations:
Voynich-t can mean two different things, and so can Voynich-e.
At the same time, two different Voynich characters both map to Greek tau.
Voynich-d is particularly unclear. I think I understand that Voynich-p is not an alternative for Voynich-d, that can be used in the first lines, but Voynich-d is an alternative for Voynich-p that can be used in all lines (first and later).
Thus, Voynich-d can always mean two different things, of which one is a consonant (pi) and the other a vowel (upsilon) ?
Voynich-i also has a context-dependent meaning.
Stand-alone Voynich-a is a but when followed by Voynich-i it is ei.
Even more important I consider the second problem.
I am trying to put myself in the position of the author/scribe. What did he really write down and what did he mean?
If he meant to write:
skiais tais eipan oun
then why did he not do that, but wrote instead:
skiiois tis epan oan
The grammatical issue is something I cannot judge, so I can only refer to Koen's comment.
Finally, it is *much* more difficult to reduce entropy in any significant manner, than just removing the distinction between a few consonants. And again, the word pattern is not addressed at all.
This last point about the word pattern by itself is sufficient to reject the proposed "solution".
15-03-2019, 07:04 PM
First of all, thank you Rene and Marco for providing more detailed critical comments. I appreciate them and I think such critical discussion can be the basis for a deeper investigation, regardless of the ultimate evaluation of my tentative proposal here. For example, the idea of syllable transposition could be worth investigating, whether or not my particular character letter values or languages or interpretations prove to have any validity or not.
Marco, I understand your skepticism and your comparison to other attempts. I get it. At the same time, one could also say the following:
"Does "eraiwo" mean "olive oil" in Greek? No, but the author was using a script that had no /l/ and did not allow for word-final consonants, so he had to write "eraiwo" for "elaiwon" or "elaion"."
"Does "kono" mean "rope" in Greek? No, come on, that word is "skhoinos", surely you must be joking! Oh, but in this script the author cannot indicate "s" before another consonant, cannot distinguish /kh/ from /k/, cannot indicate the diphthong /oi/, and cannot indicate word-final /s/. So "kono" it is!"
"Does "karawe" mean "old men" in Greek? No, come on again, are you talking about "grawes", plural of "greus" = "old"? So this script does not distinguish /g/ from /k/ either? And it inserts a vowel in the middle of consonant clusters where there is none in Greek, and it omits word-final /s/ again? Does the creator of this theory really expect anyone to believe any of these proposals?"
These examples are far, far worse than my "skiiois tis" for "skiais tais" = "in the shadows".
And yet all of the above examples are from Ventris and Chadwick's correct deciphering of Linear B as Mycenaean Greek.
If someone brought Ventris' entire Linear B deciphering theory to this forum today, it would be laughed out of the discussion as another bad example of the "four-steps method", or something even worse than that.
I will respond to Rene's latest comments as well, which I very much appreciate, as I do Marco's and others' comments. But I do want to call everyone's attention to what the Linear B deciphering actually looked like, so that we can make a fair comparison with our current efforts, and so that we can have fair expectations for how "neat" or "messy" an actual correct solution may actually appear to be at the level of the details of individual words.
Marco, I understand your skepticism and your comparison to other attempts. I get it. At the same time, one could also say the following:
"Does "eraiwo" mean "olive oil" in Greek? No, but the author was using a script that had no /l/ and did not allow for word-final consonants, so he had to write "eraiwo" for "elaiwon" or "elaion"."
"Does "kono" mean "rope" in Greek? No, come on, that word is "skhoinos", surely you must be joking! Oh, but in this script the author cannot indicate "s" before another consonant, cannot distinguish /kh/ from /k/, cannot indicate the diphthong /oi/, and cannot indicate word-final /s/. So "kono" it is!"
"Does "karawe" mean "old men" in Greek? No, come on again, are you talking about "grawes", plural of "greus" = "old"? So this script does not distinguish /g/ from /k/ either? And it inserts a vowel in the middle of consonant clusters where there is none in Greek, and it omits word-final /s/ again? Does the creator of this theory really expect anyone to believe any of these proposals?"
These examples are far, far worse than my "skiiois tis" for "skiais tais" = "in the shadows".
And yet all of the above examples are from Ventris and Chadwick's correct deciphering of Linear B as Mycenaean Greek.
If someone brought Ventris' entire Linear B deciphering theory to this forum today, it would be laughed out of the discussion as another bad example of the "four-steps method", or something even worse than that.
I will respond to Rene's latest comments as well, which I very much appreciate, as I do Marco's and others' comments. But I do want to call everyone's attention to what the Linear B deciphering actually looked like, so that we can make a fair comparison with our current efforts, and so that we can have fair expectations for how "neat" or "messy" an actual correct solution may actually appear to be at the level of the details of individual words.
15-03-2019, 07:31 PM
There are several things wrong with that comparison.
It is an interesting question: "what defines a valid solution"?
Much has been written about it.
It is obviously not to be decided on one sentence, but on consistency.
And you know it, as this is exactly what you wrote in your "glossolalia" contribution.
I should add that, when it comes to both the first and the second points I raised, I have seen considerably worse cases than what you presented. But I daresay as soon as you start expanding the text for which you offer a translation, it will inevitably get worse.
Because this approach cannot work.
It is an interesting question: "what defines a valid solution"?
Much has been written about it.
It is obviously not to be decided on one sentence, but on consistency.
And you know it, as this is exactly what you wrote in your "glossolalia" contribution.
I should add that, when it comes to both the first and the second points I raised, I have seen considerably worse cases than what you presented. But I daresay as soon as you start expanding the text for which you offer a translation, it will inevitably get worse.
Because this approach cannot work.
15-03-2019, 07:42 PM
(15-03-2019, 07:31 PM)ReneZ Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.There are several things wrong with that comparison.
It is an interesting question: "what defines a valid solution"?
Much has been written about it.
It is obviously not to be decided on one sentence, but on consistency.
And you know it, as this is exactly what you wrote in your "glossolalia" contribution.
I should add that, when it comes to both the first and the second points I raised, I have seen considerably worse cases than what you presented. But I daresay as soon as you start expanding the text for which you offer a translation, it will inevitably get worse.
Because this approach cannot work.
I agree with Rene about a solution being decided on consistency. And I agree that the test will be the quality as the amount of text is expanded.
I am not convinced that the approach cannot work.
15-03-2019, 08:19 PM
(15-03-2019, 07:04 PM)geoffreycaveney Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.If someone brought Ventris' entire Linear B deciphering theory to this forum today, it would be laughed out of the discussion as another bad example of the "four-steps method", or something even worse than that.
I don't laugh at the four-steps method: several people enjoy it and I understand that the frustration of being unable to read the text can be difficult to accept.
From the little I know of Ventris' work, he spent several years collecting quantitative data and his decipherment was based on something similar to Voynich labels (names of places), rather than random sentences. For obvious reasons, working on labels is something that is not contemplated by the four-steps method.
Though, as I said, I am not familiar with Ventris' work, I am not sure that comparing it to the speculations of Cheshire & friends is entirely fair.