The Voynich Ninja

(19-01-2020, 03:20 PM)Anton Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view....

What's also interesting but possibly coincidental is that 7 of 8 occurrences of alam are line-end.

...

I don't think it's coincidental.

In Latin, the m character is frequently used to mark "-ris" at the ends of words, and is also used at paragraph ends and sometimes line ends. It is also sometimes used to denote "etc." "osv." "and so on" or however you want to say... "and more of the same" (which is frequently at the end of a line or paragraph).

In the VMS, this character is similarly placed.


In other words, it follows the same patterns (in terms of Latin conventions) as the y glyph in terms of where it is positioned. In Latin the [font=Eva]y[/font] abbreviation is usually at the ends of words, sometimes at the beginnings of words, and only occasionally within words. Same with the VMS. In Latin, the [font=Eva]m[/font] character is usually at the ends of words and sometimes at the ends of lines and paragraphs. Same with the VMS.

I've posted some examples here on my blog:

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That's why I keep saying it's not just the glyph-shapes that are based on Latin, the positions of some of the ones that are used in Latin as abbreviations, are also based on Latin scribal conventions (in a number of languages).

Here in You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. we have three m-ending vords in a row. Could that provide a clue? Is there another place in the VMS where three or more consecutive vords end with m?

... a quick glance shows that there are. E.g. f3r, line 2: dam qotcham cham

A name of the plant is not absolutely necessary. Let's think back a little. Rene has written what the word "Madesüss" means, and he has also placed a link.

In the applications it says that it was used to sweeten drinks and food.

If the author knows the plant, he might write "just to sweeten", but that's all it takes if the plant has no other use for him.

It's worth checking if this plant is featured in the Pharma section. I think Wladimir has the answer...

(19-01-2020, 03:44 PM)Linda Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.That second occurrence is not the same as far as i can tell. Looks like otccam or otcaim or even otcccim but there seems to be an extra c in there compaired to otaim

oteaim is my call for the vord on You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. that David is comparing in his original post. I agree with you about Voynichese.com, Linda. I double check any reading that that page gives me, and find a lot of them are disputable at the very least.

I find myself searching on Voynichese.com for vords that begin with the same characters, and are substantially the same except for the last one or two characters, and/or only a Grove gallows or a [q] at the beginning. My reasoning for doing this is that if Voynichese represents either a natural language in the plaintext or a constructed language, then taking into account the rigid arrangement possibilities of characters in a vord, it likely contains some type of inflection. Thus, when I search for otea*, it returns such interesting results as otear as a zodiac label on f70v1. You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. becomes a very interesting page for this search: it contains one otear, one qotear, one oteaiin, and three close occurrences of oteal. Could these be different grammatical forms of one root word? Or related words with related meanings?

I see a potential foothold for attempts at decipherment in vords that are neither common nor unique, and have between 2 and ~20 tokens. The reason for this is that it's easy to keep track of and compare the different tokens' occurrences. Vords that start with otea-, for example, show a striking preference for zodiac labels, and for one particular all-text page (f103v). This feels slightly better than clutching at straws.

(20-01-2020, 12:59 AM)Anton Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Here in You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. we have three m-ending vords in a row. Could that provide a clue? Is there another place in the VMS where three or more consecutive vords end with m?

Just to give another reference in Latin (since VMS glyph arrangement is often so similar to Latin). I have seen the name "cistus" for the Rock Rose flower written gm (imagine a tiny little foot on the left downstroke of the second character to change it from "r" to "t"... this name is perfectly legit and readable in Latin).


In other words, even though VMS glyphs might not mean the same thing they do in Latin, many of them are PLACED the same as in Latin and they MIGHT be abbreviations or ligatures rather than single characters.

Renegadehealer i agree the middle one is the most likely looking, but the font joined the c's at the tops, if it hadn't they might have looked a little more like the original.

I like to look for commonalities too. So far i haven't tried a lot, sometimes i feel like the labelese is positional somehow, but i have not figured out anything that works consistently.

I realize that nonsense is a possibility for the text but i can't see it being worth the trouble to invent hundreds of pages of it so prefer to think there is method to the madness and perhaps it was only the creators who were to understand it, but that it can be understood.

JKP i think you are likely right about the abbreviations. I sometimes feel like voynichese is a commentary on reading various manuscripts wherein confusion is found in the various abreviations used, and that this is what the crafted language of voynichese is made up of, misconstrued letters or groups thereof (  a    vs   ci  )  (for instance), various abbreviations, pronunciations, alternate spellings (affrika vs aphrica), etc. What better way to develop a system meant to be misunderstood than a collection of misunderstood markings collected over time.

Anton there is a root on You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. that looks the same colour, three lobes, similar shape as the tubers...hard to say if it is meant to be the same. Maybe a couple of other possibilites.

I did not find a direct correspondence of the elements of this plant in “small plants” (even in the application drawings).

But there is another interesting point on this page. If we look at the scan f58v, which makes up a single bifolio with f65r, we see that part of the leaf of the plant turned out to be 58v. Given the existing page numbering (lack of bifolio), we can say that the pattern is made before stitching. And the absence of green pigment on the crosslinking twine indicates that the green coloring also occurred before the Quire 8 crosslinking, which now exists.
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I don't know if anyone has already proposed for the last  word the reading alatus - winged? If so, so much the better!