The Voynich Ninja

(26-02-2020, 06:23 AM)ReneZ Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.To me, this gives the appearance of a copy of a source text that also included special symbols, e.g. zodiac or planet signs.

One observation of Currier was: "The ends of the lines contain  ... little groups of letters which don't occur anywhere else, and just look as if they were added to fill out the line to the margin" (You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.).

The lines fill out the available space. This is even true for lines with holes (see folios You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. and f107v) or slanted and irregular lines (see for instance folio f108v or folios You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. and f112v). This means that the author of the text was able to choose the length of the words as needed to fill out the available space. Since the lines are irregular the knowledge about the length of each line was only available while writing the text. Therefore we know for sure that the text was generated during writing and that the scribe was also the author of the text (see also Timm 2015, p. 35).

I think it's quite possible that lines were "padded" (right-justified/double-justified).

f81r is not right-justified and stands out quite starkly as different, especially when its mate f81v (which is formatted with the same kind of drawing and looks like it was intended to be associated with f81r) has been double-justified.

This is a topic that probably needs its own thread.

(28-02-2020, 07:14 PM)Torsten Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.One observation of Currier was: "The ends of the lines contain  ... little groups of letters which don't occur anywhere else, and just look as if they were added to fill out the line to the margin"

Indeed, but until this day it is not clear to me what he meant, or what he saw.
The two characters that seem to fill this role are Eva-m and Eva-g, but they don't appear in little groups, and they also occur elsewhere.

(28-02-2020, 08:55 PM)ReneZ Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Indeed, but until this day it is not clear to me what he meant, or what he saw.
The two characters that seem to fill this role are Eva-m and Eva-g, but they don't appear in little groups, and they also occur elsewhere.

There is no doubt what Currier saw since he also gives an example: "The ends of the lines contain what seem to be, in many cases, meaningless symbols: little groups of letters which don’t occur anywhere else, and just look as if they were added to fill out the line to the margin. Although this isn’t always true, it frequently happens. There is, for instance, one symbol that, while it does occur elsewhere, occurs at the end of the last 'words' of lines 85% of the time" (You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.).

In his example Currier explicitly refers to 'words' ending in EVA-m (You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view., footnote 17). EVA-m occurs in 62% at the end of the last word of a line (see You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view., p. 18).

After Currier the scribe was able to select groups of letters or 'words' which fitted into the available space. With other words the lines fit into their margins because the text layout was made during writing. Currier probably calls them meaningless since someone writing meaningless dummy words can easily select words as needed for a given layout. 

D'Imperio also described a similar idea in her book 'The Voynich Manuscript: An Elegant Enigma':
A message concealed in a Longer Dummy Message "would explain the many strange repetitions of highly similar words in close succession; one of the words represents a part of the actual message, while the rest are nonsense sequences made up, like meaningless babbling, and inserted to conceal the true cipher string. The scribe, faced with the task of thinking up a large number of such dummy sequences, would naturally tend to repeat parts of neighboring strings with various small changes and additions to fill out the line until the next message-bearing word or phrase. This phrase would also explain the frequent illogicality and lack of consistent sequential structure in stretches of text which has so frustrated students" (You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view., p. 31). 

This way the strange 'rare characters' discussed in this thread are just further examples for the lack of consistent sequential structure.

Quite a number of the rare characters occur at the beginnings of lines.


Many of the ones that are frequent at the ends of lines (like EVA-m) are not rare.

I haven't done a tally (not enough time), but it might be worth getting the numbers.


I've mentioned this numerous times, but in Latin, EVA-g/EVA-m are used as paragraph-end markers and occasionally also sentence-end markers.

The observation by Currier is at best badly formulated, and at worst plainly wrong.

- It is already self-contradictory: he only identifies one character, it does not appear in little groups, and it does appear elsewhere
- Eva-m happily appears at the ends of labels, where there is no need to provide 'filler' material
- Eva-m is not a 'dummy' character (which is implied by its being a filler). It can be replaced by 'r' and result in a valid word. Leaving it out usually does not create a valid word
- This is not *at all* the prime mechanism whereby a (more or less) straight right margin is created.
- There are lots and lots of other manuscripts that have a straight right margin without using filler characters

This observation cannot be used to derive properties of the MS text.

Currier spoke about "groups of letters which don't occur anywhere else" and not about "some letters which don't occur anywhere else". He just uses the term 'groups of letters' as synonym for the term 'words' since in his eyes this groups of letters didn't behave like words.

I thought it was clear enough that the small group Currier was talking about was EVA am.

I think it says a lot about EVA that removing -m typically produces nonsense words, but removing -am or replacing -am with -ar does not.

I also think we're a long way from providing an account of labelese so comprehensive that it can answer questions about other variants of Voynichese.

Just to say it once.
When I read like this I get the feeling that you always fall back into a 1 to 1 translation, even if you don't want to.
I stopped giving the signs a direct meaning a long time ago. It is rather the sign where it has to fit into the system.
If I look at the picture, it makes sense.

Example:
Compared to other books where I look at it, (where I can read) it looks similar.
Often it starts with ( Item ). For me it is actually misspelled, in Zurich one would write ( Idem ). It actually means ( In the ). Same as "umen = around one" etc.
Now a lot can be formulated from this:
By cooking it, blah, blah, blah, blah.
In that I make it so bla bla bla bla.
In this case, take it like this blah blah blah. ( Here also "this").
What is a riddle for one person can already be logical for another.

The same applies to other characters or strings. Whether at the beginning or the end. It is important that they get a sense in the system.


Nur um es einmal gesagt zu haben. 
Wenn ich so lese bekomme ich das Gefühl man fällt immer in eine 1 zu 1 Übersetzung zurück, auch wenn man es gar nicht will.
Ich habe schon lange aufgehört den Zeichen einen direkten Sinn zu geben. Es ist eher das Zeichen wo in das System passen muss.
Schaue ich mir das Bild an, ergibt es durchaus Sinn.

Beispiel:
Im Vergleich zu anderen Büchern wo ich mir ansehe, ( wo ich auch lesen kann ) sieht es ähnlich aus.
Oft fängt es mit ( Item ) an. Für mich ist es eigentlich falsch geschrieben, in Zürich würde man (Idem) schreiben. Es heist eigentlich ( In dem ). Gleich wie „umen = um einen“ usw.
Jetzt lässt sich eine Menge daraus Formulieren:
In dem man das kocht bla bla bla.
In dem ich es so bla bla bla.

Das gleiche gilt für andere Zeichen oder Zeichenfolgen. Ob am Anfang oder Ende. Wichtig ist das sie im System einen Sinn bekommen.

To the German speaking
I looked at the English translation. And now after the website translator back into German.
Is it still understandable what I have written?


An die Deutsch sprechenden
Ich habe mir die englische Übersetzung angesehen. Und jetzt nach dem Webseitenübersetzer wieder ins deutsche.
Ist das überhaupt noch zu verstehen was ich geschrieben habe ?