The Voynich Ninja

(11-07-2019, 01:41 AM)-JKP- Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Wow, I'm already concerned after reading the second sentence...

"Based upon our findings, the language of the Voynich Manuscript is a Vulgar Latin dialect, likely affected by a contemporary Italian dialect."

If the VMS was created c. early 15th century, how could the text be affected by a contemporary Italian dialect? They were still speaking medieval Italian. Even 17th-century Italian is different from modern Italian, and 15th-century Italian is quite a bit different.

I read that as Italian contemporary to the vms, not modern Italian.

(11-07-2019, 11:48 AM)nablator Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

(11-07-2019, 03:50 AM)-JKP- Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Deure is not Latin.

Yes it is.
2nd person singular present active imperative of deuro: to burn up, consume, destroy
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I made an effort to try to find it in medieval Latin transliterations before posting. I've learned that just because a word theoretically exists as a tense or declension doesn't mean it was used.

I stand corrected if someone can find a medieval use of it.


The Catalan deure arose sometime in the mid- to late-medieval period, but not from Latin deure, it is said to be via Old Occitan via Latin debeo (via vulgar debere at an earlier time). It is very common for medieval Catalan words to have dropped consonants (I imagine it may have been a very round and sonorous language).

Deber in Spanish ; dever in Portuguese, devoir in French, etc. It's pretty similar in all the romance languages. The RAE says it comes from Latin débére, to owe.

I haven't read the paper and had only a quick glance through this thread, but re "contemporary" Italian, the author surely means "contemporary to those times" (e.g. to vulgar Latin), not the modern Italian of course.

Quick update: Marco noticed that Dr. King was going to have a talk at Stanford, SRI International's Artificial Intelligence Center (You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.) on July 11. I attended and took some notes, which I paste here below. They are "as-is", so please excuse any errors and lack of coherence. I am sending an email to the authors of the paper with a link to this thread, in case they want to correct my notes and/or address your feedback.
The talk lasted 1 hour.

- There were many attendees
- The research lasted ~2 years
- Example of writing systems recently cracked: Teotihuacan hieroglyphs. Dr. King and another person in the room worked on the team that cracked them
- Dr. King taught archeo-astronomy at Stanford
- Stephen Bax started coming up with the sounds. Here are the sounds we propose based on his.
- Let's look at some starts in the VM constellation maps
- Here are some examples of translations
- The language seems to have lost the G sound, e.g. cygnus -> cynus/cinus
- Plants are usually represented as flowering, as they are easier to recognize, but belladonna (1v) is represented at the end of its life cycle, it's yellowing, that's because it's when its extract(?) is more powerful
- There are many words starting with EVA:d and many ending in EVA:y. You can see that when a word in 1v needs to break because of the figure, it's truncated with EVA:y and then it continues after the figure with EVA:d
- EVA:y has a sound (n) but it's also used as punctuation (virgula suspensiva)
- EVA:d has a sound (t?) but it's also used as &
- Proposed translation of 1v. EVA:daiin is translated as hardship. the page talks about expelling the hardships (e.g. kidney stones?)
- ius/iure means broth, English 'juice' might derive from this word
- There are no geminate consonants. If you look at Italian dialects, the one north of the La Spezia - Rimini line lose double consonants in many words
- Looks like the t has shifted to a d in the language used in the manusrcipt
- Introduction to Tironian notes
- Paper was expensive, so people would use shorthands. Tironian system took years to learn
- Some Tironian symbols (just the consonants) were adapted (e.g. rotated, added serifs)
- Vowels not always included, e.g. 'e' (e.g. EVA:r could be 'r' but also 'er' and 're')
- EVA:y is seen as abbreviation in many other manuscripts. It's used as a "marker", maybe since it sounds like 'n' it's use as punctuation derives from what we called hesitant(?) in linguistic, like when we say "hmm" when thinking
- Examples of how some characters were combined to produce other characters (e.g. ch+s = sh)
- Stephen Bax was the first to assign sounds  
- We are the first ones to show how the characters evolved and were combined. Our work is an extension of his work
- For a while we thought we were reading ancient Italian, then team, especially Alessandra, who is a polyglot, started recognizing lemmas/roots. Then Julian told us that it's Latin, as he was good at Latin in high school. We realized it's Latin just a few months ago
- There is a tiny difference between vulgar latin and archaic Italian
- There are many people in Italy, e.g. lexicographers, who are more qualified to work on this. We are not qualified, we just set the foundation
- I wasn't very familiar about the Voynich at first and don't know if we are the first to propose some of these theories, but Bryce(?) in our team is. He is the "Voynich historian" in the team. Bryce is a student who stopped me after a class to tell me that Bax was starting to make some sense of the manuscript and so I got interested
- Shows a picture of a castle from the VM. Shows that there are 'merli ghibellini'. We looked at a lot of photos of castles from the area we think the manuscript is from (Veneto) to identify the ones that match
- There are just two castles with merli ghibellini, on a hill, with walls: Castello Scaligero di Soave and Castello di Marostica
- Castello di Soave(?) also has a central tower that is rotated 45 degrees, like in the VM
- We have already booked flights to the area to check them out in person, see which one matches up the most, talk to people, look at inscriptions, etc
- There are a lot of hotsprings in the Verona/Vicenza area. Alessandra has been translating a full manuscript talking about the Terme di Giunone. The book says that their water are good for pregnant women, etc.
- Shows more translations. You can see there are some shifts, e.g. odun -> udum and e -> i, done to get to Latin, but it's pretty similar
- When I started working on this I emailed Bax and he gave me some pointers. I was uncomfortable telling him that we were already reading from the manuscript
- Bax's website is great. Months ago I checked it and found out he is dead. I felt bad. I really want to thank him. He was right and he was first
- On Monday, July 15 at Foothill College there will be a public talk with more material
- If you want to share notes from this presentation, it's fine
- Slide with websites used as sources: stephenbax.net, voynich.nu, edithsherwood.com, jasondavies.com, beinecke-library.yale.edu, perseus.tufts.edu, online-latin-dictionary.com, tlio.ovi.cnr.it

(11-07-2019, 12:14 PM)Linda Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

(11-07-2019, 01:41 AM)-JKP- Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Wow, I'm already concerned after reading the second sentence...

"Based upon our findings, the language of the Voynich Manuscript is a Vulgar Latin dialect, likely affected by a contemporary Italian dialect."

If the VMS was created c. early 15th century, how could the text be affected by a contemporary Italian dialect? They were still speaking medieval Italian. Even 17th-century Italian is different from modern Italian, and 15th-century Italian is quite a bit different.

I read that as Italian contemporary to the vms, not modern Italian.

Hey Linda, this is Tim.  The term "contemporary" means contemporary to the Vulgar Latin of the manuscript, not contemporary to now.

(11-07-2019, 05:32 PM)-JKP- Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

(11-07-2019, 11:48 AM)nablator Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

(11-07-2019, 03:50 AM)-JKP- Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Deure is not Latin.

Yes it is.
2nd person singular present active imperative of deuro: to burn up, consume, destroy
You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

I made an effort to try to find it in medieval Latin transliterations before posting. I've learned that just because a word theoretically exists as a tense or declension doesn't mean it was used.

I stand corrected if someone can find a medieval use of it.


The Catalan deure arose sometime in the mid- to late-medieval period, but not from Latin deure, it is said to be via Old Occitan via Latin debeo (via vulgar debere at an earlier time). It is very common for medieval Catalan words to have dropped consonants (I imagine it may have been a very round and sonorous language).

Deure: present imperative second person singular (the only surviving conjugations of the imperative in Vulgar Latin is second person singular and plural) of deuro: to burn up, consume, wither.  Note how they are using terms that denote heat.  Google translate does not count as a source for Latin.  The secret is reading the footnotes: I answered many of the questions you may ask in them. This will help: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

(12-07-2019, 04:18 AM)Tim King Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

(11-07-2019, 05:32 PM)-JKP- Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

(11-07-2019, 11:48 AM)nablator Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

(11-07-2019, 03:50 AM)-JKP- Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Deure is not Latin.

Yes it is.

2nd person singular present active imperative of deuro: to burn up, consume, destroy

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

I made an effort to try to find it in medieval Latin transliterations before posting. I've learned that just because a word theoretically exists as a tense or declension doesn't mean it was used.


I stand corrected if someone can find a medieval use of it.



The Catalan deure arose sometime in the mid- to late-medieval period, but not from Latin deure, it is said to be via Old Occitan via Latin debeo (via vulgar debere at an earlier time). It is very common for medieval Catalan words to have dropped consonants (I imagine it may have been a very round and sonorous language).

Deure: present imperative second person singular (the only surviving conjugations of the imperative in Vulgar Latin is second person singular and plural) of deuro: to burn up, consume, wither.  Note how they are using terms that denote heat....

Did they use it in medieval literature? Did this exist in medieval times? Usually when I encounter Latin words I can find them fairly readily in medieval Latin documents. I wasn't able to find this one. There are many theoretical declensions and tenses that don't actually show up in any Latin documents because they weren't used, or they had gone out of use by the end of the Roman era.

Plus, I was only using this as an example. There are many proposed words (and a great deal of grammar) that are questionable Latin. I didn't have time to go through them all so I grabbed this one.

Quote:Google translate does not count as a source for Latin.

That was my point. I was trying to determine if "deure" came from actual manuscripts or Latin printed texts. When I couldn't find it in Latin texts, I tried Google translate because I was wondering if that might have been the authors' source. Many of the proposed solutions that we have seen have used Google translate to determine their "Latin" words, so it seemed practical to check if that might have occurred here too.

Quote:From the authors' talk (posted by Gioynich)


...

- Stephen Bax started coming up with the sounds. Here are the sounds we propose based on his.

This is nonsense. There have been MANY proposed sound substitutions before Bax and his substitutions were not Latin, they were Arabic.

Quote:- Plants are usually represented as flowering, as they are easier to recognize, but belladonna (1v) is represented at the end of its life cycle, it's yellowing, that's because it's when its extract(?) is more powerful 

Many of the VMS plants appear to be in seed. I haven't done an actual count, but there's definitely a mixture of flowers and seed.

But more importantly, how do the researchers know it's belladonna?

What if it is Hypericum? Belladonna doesn't have red and green leaves. Hypericum does. The leaf shape and color matches Hypericum better than Belladonna and several species of Hypericum have berry-like fruits. There are other candidates, as well. It's possible it is Belladonna, but the researchers haven't substantiated or proved this via their translation.

Quote:- EVA:y has a sound (n) but it's also used as punctuation (virgula suspensiva)

Bax's choice of the "n" sound value for y was based on Arabic. Word endings in Latin are quite different from Arabic.

Quote:- Proposed translation of 1v. EVA:daiin is translated as hardship. the page talks about expelling the hardships (e.g. kidney stones?)

If daiin turns out to mean "hardship", I will take the authors to a fancy restaurant and pay the bill.

Quote:- Paper was expensive, so people would use shorthands. Tironian system took years to learn

- Some Tironian symbols (just the consonants) were adapted (e.g. rotated, added serifs)

1) Tironian notes go back a long way. Central Europe didn't regularly use paper for writing until later in the 14th century and the 15th century. Paper production wasn't up to speed until the late 15th century. Parchment was expensive and shorthand saved time and space. Yet even though parchment was expensive, there are proportionally very few manuscripts written in Tironian notes compared to those written with Latin script.


2) The shapes of r ch s m y g are standard Latin abbreviation symbol shapes derived from Greek scribal conventions, not specifically from Tironian notes.

Quote:- EVA:y is seen as abbreviation in many other manuscripts. It's used as a "marker", maybe since it sounds like 'n' it's use as punctuation derives from what we called hesitant(?) in linguistic, like when we say "hmm" when thinking...

It is correct that the Latin y abbreviation was, so common that they sometimes added it to the end of the alphabet in pen tests.

But are you saying it is used as a marker in Latin or in the VMS? It is not a marker in Latin so I'll assume you mean in the VMS. If it's a marker, why has it been used in this paper to represent numerous sounds?

Quote:- Stephen Bax was the first to assign sounds 

Completely wrong. Substitution solutions have been around since long before 2014. In fact, the most common way the VMS is "solved" is with substitutions.

Quote:- We are the first ones to show how the characters evolved and were combined. Our work is an extension of his work

Well, I have to admit, a dozen words in four years is definitely in need of extension.

If you do a search on this forum, look at the Latin translation paper by Julia May, which is a good effort to try to translate the VMS into Latin. It predates your work by several years. There have been many attempts to translate VMS text into Latin.

Bax's work was based on Arabic. The authors' work is closer to "solutions" based on Latin in the way some of the glyphs are interpreted (e.g., r).

Quote:- Shows a picture of a castle from the VM. Shows that there are 'merli ghibellini'. We looked at a lot of photos of castles from the area we think the manuscript is from (Veneto) to identify the ones that match

It's quite possible that the VMS is from the Veneto. A high proportion of manuscripts with drawings of plants were from the Lombardy/Veneto region (in the mid-medieval period Lombardy stretched farther south to include Rome and Florence). It goes without saying that the Veneto (and nearby region) should be considered as possible origins.

Quote:- There are just two castles with merli ghibellini, on a hill, with walls: Castello Scaligero di Soave and Castello di Marostica

There were numerous castles, towers, and castle walls with Ghibelline merlons. Some have been destroyed or rebuilt, but you can occasionally find the merlons on old maps, and in manuscript illuminations (including herbal manuscripts). Since Ghibelline had a strong political connotation at the time, it is unlikely that these drawings were frivolous inventions.

Quote:- There are a lot of hotsprings in the Verona/Vicenza area. Alessandra has been translating a full manuscript talking about the Terme di Giunone. The book says that their water are good for pregnant women, etc.

I spent about 3 years researching hot springs and various natural spas that were in operation in the medieval period, and there are literally hundreds of them. I was stunned at how common they are. Eastern Europe also has many also that have been turned into modern spas. The spas in Naples were destroyed in in a post-VMS eruption.

Quote:He was right and he was first...

Bax said the text was Arabic. You are saying the text is Latin. Many people have offered Latin translations.

Bax was not the first to propose a substitution system. Numerous people did so before him and some of the systems were similar to his. There are certain patterns that show up time-after-time, regardless of the language chosen, for example making various vowel substitutions for c, a, and o shapes that are essentially the same as those proposed by the authors.

Many thanks to Gioynich for telling us about the paper and the talk and to Tim for stopping along!

The discussion seems to be focussing on Step2, i.e. the Latin words on which the authors base their translation. My impression is that Step1, the output of the phonetic mapping, is also worth discussing. I am particularly interested in the question of whether text in Step1 qualifies as Latin. If one considers the first four lines of f1v, there are three Latin words: iure, ede, duce (two of which are repeated twice): less than 20% of the text is Latin.

aequiren iaduure eseselion iure piure uren
ineloon iure arein edie sacaedn aequedeure ieden
ede aquin aquieaquin sin ed aequacioon ilin aequeelieden duce
duce iaequoa duura deuren useionu iaequeeden

Also, if one compares Step1 and Step2, it turns out that most of the about 60 edited characters affect word endings. Latin grammatical structure is mainly conveyed by particles (like prepositions and conjunctions) and suffixes. Recognizable Latin particles are absent in Step1, and suffixes are systematically altered in Step2. This suggests that the possible presence of Latin grammar in the text does not derive from a phonetic mapping of Voynichese, but from editing by the authors of the paper.

But I must say I am not a palaeographer. Our best hope is that this paper comes to the attention of Lisa Fagin Davis and she gives her authoritative opinion, as she did for other proposed translations.