Yes, I have seen this.
It is one of the many solutions where, reading the proposal, there is nothing that causes this feeling of: "hey, there is something to this". It is very much the same-old same-old.
However, the author is a highly respectable scholar in his area of expertise (egyptology) with a deep knowledge of the languages that he is proposing, so one should be careful not to rush to dismissal if one has nothing concrete to base it on.
I don't believe that this is the right solution (and there isn't really enough proposed plain text to call it a solution just yet), but it is more serious than the meso-american proposals that are chronologically not acceptable.
The reason for comparing it with that is that it was also proposed by recognised scholars.
(16-06-2020, 07:04 PM)LisaFaginDavis Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.1) he distinguishes six, rather than four, gallows, distinguishing the variants of EVA-p and EVA-f in which the cross-stroke ends with a slight curl. Linguists: what do you make of that, in terms of frequency and word-position?
Here he is just following the v101 alphabet.
Thanks Lisa for the link! Interesting, although too spread out over 64 pages.
I really enjoyed reading "ycho" like "I", "ego" Greek, it's a good idea. The word "ar" as above or about is not bad too. On the other hand, it suffices to see the location of the words "sholdy" in the text to doubt that it is a soup.
The word "chor" as forgiveness does not make much sense to me. Then the author translates it as juice or syrup. Since this word is one of the keywords in the botanical section, perhaps, although I still believe that it is simply chor(tus), sometimes even the second part is present separated by the space.
In conclusion, I believe that we can continue to seek our solutions, a lot of things is to be done!
Quote:3) he mentions the directional problem only in a footnote without truly addressing why Voynichese, if it represents phonemic Hebrew, is written from left to right.
Some aljamiadas were written in this fashion.
(16-06-2020, 08:29 PM)LisaFaginDavis Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
... But the real question is whether there are six gallows or four...he distinguishes six, including EVA-p and EVA-f with a slight curl at the end of the crossbar. I'm curious what you all think of that, in terms of frequency and word-placement.
Lisa, I looked into this and one of my transcripts makes a distinction between them, but I will have to look back at my statistics to see if I came to any conclusions (or strong suspicions) about this.
(16-06-2020, 07:28 PM)LisaFaginDavis Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
He identifies Language A as "definitely Hebrew" but Language B as only "probably" Hebrew
This concerns me because the differences between A and B are not overwhelming. Many of the differences are systematic (in other words, one can change many of the A tokens into B with a simple adjustment).
In English, imagine writing honor and then switching to honour. I'm not saying the VMS dialects are as simple as that (or of that kind), it's just an example, but a number of A B differences have that general flavor, of being the same, just not exactly the same.
Overall, there is an almost disturbing similarity of VMS text from beginning to end. But I will look at it again from this proposed point of view.
It will be difficult for me to read the paper in depth before the weekend, but I'll try to give it a preliminary read this evening.
Hannig Wrote:Dies und andere Besonderheiten der Voynichsprache deuteten auf das Aschkenasische hin, eine lokale Variante des Hebräischen, die unter anderem in Südrussland gesprochen wurde.
I think he is referring to Yiddish. Aschkenasische is a more general term (at least it is in English). Yiddish was spoken in numerous Jewish communities in south and east Germany (more properly called Bohemia or southeast Holy Roman Empire at the time), not just Russia.
If he is saying it's Yiddish, that's linguistically different from Hebrew. Yiddish has a significant infusion of German loanwords and German grammar, even in the 12th century. It's not Hebrew in the traditional sense.
Here is a famous Yiddish example from the Worms Mahzor:
[font=FreightSans-Medium, Arial, sans-serif]“Gut taq im betage se vaer dis mahsor in beith hakenseth trage,”[/font]
[font=FreightSans-Medium, Arial, sans-serif]Gut taq = Guten tag; dis mahsor = dieser Mahzor, etc.[/font]
[font=FreightSans-Medium, Arial, sans-serif]Yiddish is frequently more German than Hebrew.[/font]
(16-06-2020, 11:31 PM)-JKP- Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Hannig Wrote:Dies und andere Besonderheiten der Voynichsprache deuteten auf das Aschkenasische hin, eine lokale Variante des Hebräischen, die unter anderem in Südrussland gesprochen wurde.
I think he is referring to Yiddish.
No, to You are not allowed to view links.
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Ashkenaz means German. Ashkenazim are German Jews (which was actually the HRE and Bohemia at the time, not strictly Germany).
Nablator, so you are saying this is a Hebrew dialect spoken by German Jews (and possibly also spoken by southeast Russians, Bohemians and Slavs by association) that is more Hebrew than Yiddish?
It would be reasonable to list them like this?
German • Yiddish • Ashkenazi-Hebrew dialect • Hebrew
I just looked at the Wiki for Ashkenazi. It describes traditional Hebrew with Ashkenazic pronunciation. So it's only a dialect in terms of sound? That would make it different from Yiddish, which has a strong infusion of German vocabulary and grammar.
What I'll do is assume Hannig is referring to a pronunciation-variant of Hebrew rather than Yiddish.
Regarding his chart...
Red flags went off for me when I saw that he transliterated K as "K" and T as "T", with the added dot denoting a variation in pronunciation (e.g., t and th). This is EVA transliteration, but I won't know why this was done until I read the whole paper.
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Also, this statement is not correct, as far as I know: "Bei dem hier wiedergegebenen Text handelt es sich offenbar um ein Zitat wegen des abgesetzten letzten Wortes,..."
This is out of character for the Middle Ages. They did not write quotations like that. I don't know if I've ever seen one like that.
When they were referring to work by a previous author, they would reference the "sage" in the main text and basically said, "According to..." or "By the words of..." or something along those lines. The convention to add it afterwards, and especially to put it on a separate line, came later. It's not a medieval custom to add the source-name separately (if anyone knows of an example, please post).
When words were added and indented on a separate line, it was usually a catchphrase OR, even more commonly, something like Amen or Grace of God, or other common expressions.
The method is always the same. First, the language is guessed. Secondly, a partial reading attempt is used as evidence that the identification of the language was correct. But this is not the way deciphering works. First, it is necessary to analyze the way the writing system works. If it was possible to identify some characteristic patterns in the first step, this patterns can be used to identify the language or the language family. Only this way it might be possible to find an entry point to decipher an unknown script using an unknown language.
In semitic languages some or all of the vowels were omitted. Hannig identifies the most frequently used glyphs as vowels and uses them as wildcard glyphs. If a vowel doesn't fit this doesn't matter in his eyes: "Die Vokal-Punktation des Hebräischen hat nur bedingt eine Entsprechung im Voynich. Den Platzhalter für einen Vokal repräsentiert das Zeichen 'o'." (Hannig 2020, 63). It becomes much easier to interpret some meaning into the manuscript if the most frequent glyphs can be discarded.
Hannig describes the way he used a dictionary to identify the words: "Daraus ergibt sich, dass die Suche eines Voynich-Wortes im hebräischen Wörterbuch also primär unter ..." (Hannig 2020, 12). Unfortunately it becomes more and more difficult for him to interpret something meaningful into the text: "Ab hier nehmen die Schwierigkeiten noch einmal deutlich zu, so dass an der Richtigkeit der Lesungen gezweifelt werden muss" (Hannig, p. 53). Therefore he is only able to provide a partial reading attempt. He even argues that it will become even more difficult to read the whole text: "Die Eigenart der Schrift, die gewöhnungsbedürftige Aussprache, die Eigentümlichkeiten und der Wortschatz aus jener Zeit werden selbst einem Muttersprachler des Ivrits größte Probleme bereiten" (Hannig, p. 55).
Hannig is certainly convinced that the Voynich manuscript is written in Hebrew. But if it becomes more and more difficult to interpret something meaningful into the text this certainly indicates that his guess wasn't correct.