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I want to begin the discussion by thanking Rene for expressing a consolidated presentation of his critique of my (or any) proposed translation or reading / interpretation of the Voynich MS text. Such a presentation is helpful, whether we agree or disagree in our conclusions.
Naturally it will take me some time to respond to all of Rene's points in a methodical way.
Regarding the point that in recent cases of decryption of a document, "there was never any discussions whether it is correct or not": The obvious counterexample is Linear B. The initial reaction of the majority of scholars to Ventris and Chadwick's first major paper proposing their decryption of Linear B was widespread skepticism and disbelief. It took at least several years to convince the majority of scholars that they were correct. Of course I have not even written a paper yet, major or otherwise; I have just posted a number of readings and interpretations of passages of text to this forum.
I agree of course that tables are absolutely necessary: Greek -> Judaeo-Greek / Hebrew script, and Judaeo-Greek -> Voynich text. I did not want to construct tables prematurely, but I agree that it is clear that I need to present such tables at this stage.
To begin with in this first response, I can make a number of basic points about the method of my proposed decryption and about the original encryption process:
(1) The Greek -> Judaeo-Greek / Hebrew script step created the ambiguity in a large portion of the Greek vowels, since the Hebrew script does not have vowel letters per se, and since vowel diacritic dots are not written, certainly not by the final stage of the Voynich MS text.
For example, it is relatively clear that Greek iota -> Hebrew yod. Beyond that, the vowels are ambiguous for a number of reasons. Hebrew does also have the glide "vav", akin to "w", which would be a natural candidate for another language's "u" vowel. Unfortunately, here it is Greek that is ambiguous, because Greek upsilon always varied between an [u] pronunciation and a fronted [y] pronunciation (akin to the German umlauted "ü"). By medieval Greek, in many cases the pronunciation of upsilon had simply become [i], exactly the same as iota. But in diphthongs like "au" and "ou", the upsilon retained its original vowel quality [u].
It appears to me that the Voynich MS author was not entirely consistent in transcribing Greek upsilon. In some places the author followed the written Greek letter and transcribed it with Hebrew "vav". In other places the author followed the medieval spoken Greek pronunciation and transcribed it with Hebrew "yod". There may not necessarily be a consistent rule that the author followed in this variation of transcriptions.
Other Greek vowels are even more ambiguous than that, because Hebrew has no natural equivalent letters for them at all. Even worse, Hebrew has not one but *two* "placeholder" letters that can often stand where a vowel is intended to be: aleph and ayin. The original intention was for the letter to serve as a place under which vowel diacritic dots can be written, but in this text of course the vowel diacritic dots are not written at all. Although there was a historical distinction between Hebrew aleph as a glottal stop, and Hebrew ayin as a pharyngeal stop, these sounds had lost phonemic significance even in Hebrew for at least more than a millennium before the time of the Voynich MS, and probably longer than that. In phonetic/phonemic descriptions of Judaeo-Greek, both aleph and ayin are given the value [glottal stop / null] ! The glottal stop has no more significance here than it does in modern English, as an optional phonetic effect of pronouncing a stressed initial vowel with some emphasis. Essentially, in phonemic terms, both aleph and ayin have the value [null] in Judaeo-Greek. They are purely placeholder letters.
Thus, the choice of aleph or ayin could very well have been more or less arbitrary in the encryption from Greek -> Judaeo-Greek / Hebrew script. The content of the vowel quality would have been indicated in the diacritic dots, if at all. But by the final stage, the dots were not there.
I propose that in the second encryption stage, Hebrew aleph -> Voynich character [a], and Hebrew ayin -> Voynich character [o]. The phonemic distinction between them had actually been lost in the first stage, in the Hebrew script itself. This is why, by the final stage, any Greek alpha, any Greek omicron/omega, and many Greek epsilon/eta, could be represented by either Voynich [a] or by Voynich [o].
Regarding Greek epsilon/eta: I have seen cases in Judaeo-Greek / Hebrew script text, where this vowel is sometimes indicated with a following Hebrew yod, but sometimes only indicated with a placeholder aleph or ayin. In fact in Hebrew itself this variation exists, between the writing of the yod letter after the /e/ vowel, vs. only placing vowel diacritic dots beneath the preceding consonant letter. These ambiguous variations, which I did not invent out of whole cloth but which exist in Hebrew writing itself and in Judaeo-Greek writing itself, explain why a Greek epsilon/eta can show up in the final Voynich text as sometimes [e] (Hebrew yod), sometimes [a] (Hebrew aleph), sometimes [o] (Hebrew ayin), and sometimes nothing at all (Hebrew diacritic dots). It may be frustrating for us to interpret such a manuscript, but the ambiguity does arise naturally out of the long-existing spelling ambiguities of this vowel both in Hebrew and in Judaeo-Greek.
Regarding Greek omicron/omega, it is very similar to epsilon/eta: sometimes indicated with a following Hebrew vav, but sometimes only indicated with a placeholder aleph or ayin, and sometimes only indicated with diacritic dots. As with epsilon/eta, this leads to a great amount of ambiguous variation by the final stage of the MS text: Greek omicron/omega could thus end up in the Voynich text as sometimes [d] (Hebrew vav), sometimes [o] (Hebrew ayin), sometimes [a] (Hebrew aleph), and sometimes nothing at all (Hebrew diacritic dots).
To note just one specific example of the latter variation: In the other thread, Marco makes the critique that the Greek suffix of "monos" is altered in my Voynich reading to "monus". This is an example of the indication of omicron/omega by a following Hebrew vav, which then became Voynich [d] in the second encryption step. However, as I explain here, the Hebrew script does not by any means write the letter vav for all cases of Greek omicron/omega, so you are not going to find a consistent expression of omicron/omega in any text that has gone through the stage of the Hebrew script, as I propose this one has.
I hope I have at least *explained* the vowel ambiguities with this summary, if not satisfied you or removed the frustration of the resulting ambiguous text that is therefore difficult to interpret clearly in many places.
(2) As if the ambiguity of the vowels in the Hebrew script weren't enough, the second step of the original encryption process added a systematic ambiguity of the consonants as well. This I cannot ascribe to the Hebrew script; this was a decision of the author to encrypt the text in an even more ambiguous way. This is the main feature of the second encryption step from Judaeo-Greek / Hebrew script -> Voynich text.
Perhaps, if parts of the MS text contained Dionysian and/or Kabbalistic information, the author deliberately wanted the text to remain mysterious and difficult to read and interpret for the uninitiated (mission accomplished!).
The basic system of this ambiguation of the consonants in the second step of the encryption process I can explain as follows:
Both "l" and "r" liquid letters were merged to a single character, Voynich [r].
Both "m" and "n" nasal letters were merged to a single character, Voynich [l].
However, when this Voynich [l] is written as a ligature with Voynich [ch], it appears as the character [sh], but with a closed loop on top, not an open loop.
Also, in many cases, the author chose to encrypt final "n" with the alternate character Voynich [(i)in].
Both "s" and "z" sibilant letters were merged to a single character, Voynich [y].
Both "k" and "g" velar/guttural letters, as well as "kh" ("ch" in Latin/English), were merged to a single character, Voynich [t].
Both "t" and "d" dental/alveolar letters, as well as "th", were merged to a single character, Voynich [k].
Also, in many cases, the author chose to encrypt "t"/"th"/"d" with the alternate character Voynich [s].
When this Voynich [s] is written as a ligature with Voynich [ch], it appears as the character [sh], but with an open loop on top, not a closed loop.
Both "p" and "b" labial letters, as well as "ph", were merged to a single character, Voynich [p].
However, in most places outside of top lines of paragraphs and other prominent text, the author chose to encrypt "p", "b", and "ph" with the alternate character Voynich [d].
The author probably chose [d] as the alternate character in this case because he was already encrypting Hebrew "vav" as Voynich [d]. Hebrew vav can be the glide "w" or the closely related consonant "v". But in Hebrew as in other languages, the letter "b" (Hebrew bet) is also often pronounced "v", in many cases identical to the pronunciation of Hebrew vav when it is functioning as a consonant ! Moreover, the same process of the sound change from "b" to "v" famously occurred in Greek. Thus, based on both Hebrew phonology and on Greek phonology, the alternation of "b" (Voynich [p]) and "v" (Voynich [d]) is completely natural. Since the author in this second encryption step is merging all voiced/voiceless pairs, the original Greek "p" got carried along with "b" in this orthographic alternation in the Voynich script.
Also, in some cases, the author chose to encrypt "ph" with the alternate character [f].
This set of consonant merging rules accounts for virtually all consonants in all of my Judaeo-Greek readings and interpretations of various passages of Voynich MS text.
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Geoffrey Caveney