The Voynich Ninja

I know very little about this, but it looks like the parchment is a bit warped around this area, and the surface is strange. Maybe they just removed a part that was flawed?

I think Nick posted about this cut not long ago; he considers that something betraying the creator or the cipher technique might have been removed.

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By the way, it recently struck me, in view of the baseline jumps discussion, that You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. is an excellent example of a jump between the leading o and the gallows. It's really curious that there is such an explicit jump in a place with so little Voynichese text. Means that these jumps are not just accidental.

"thorn?" - it’s possible, "quōr" or "quod" (lat).

(15-10-2020, 08:42 PM)Anton Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I think Nick posted about this cut not long ago; he considers that something betraying the creator or the cipher technique might have been removed.

As I recall, that was at the end of Q17 or Q19.

I have a new observation about the Voynichese text above the German phrase "der mus del" / "der Mussteil" on You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. , so I will revive this interesting thread to do so.

Those who have read Koen's recent blog post You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. about You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. and my comments there about the name Judas and a certain vord combination that occurs twice in the first three lines there and nowhere else in the entire ms (see my other post You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. for all the relevant links) will have seen that I raise the idea there of a possible Schlesisch-Wilmesau Germanic dialect, which would have heavy Polish / Silesian influence. If you follow my system for the interpretation of those lines on You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. and apply it to the Voynichese text above the German phrase on You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. , you get the following reading of it:

EVA: [otcheo  daiin  chty  ykchscheg]

numerical: [11v][2][9][v]  [3][7b]  [2][11][#]  [#][10][2][14][2][9][18]

with "Judas" and other logical values of units: "bieh  cu  ipH  Htilie[18]"

My new observation is that by this reading, the first three of these four vords bear a striking resemblance to the phrase "bier zuip!", which I dare say may be recognizable to a number of readers of this forum.

It is notable in this regard that the Wilmesaurisch or Wymysorys Germanic dialect in southern Poland is well-known for its unusual significant Istvaeonic (Dutch, Flemish, et al.) and Low German features in a High German region. Local legend holds that this population is descended from Flemish settlers in the 12th century. While the influence of regional High German and Polish have certainly had a significant effect on this dialect over many centuries, it is striking that an unusual number of significant non-High Germanic features can still be found in this dialect to this day.

Geoffrey

(08-04-2021, 06:37 PM)geoffreycaveney Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.with "Judas" and other logical values of units: "bieh  cu  ipH  Htilie[18]"

My new observation is that by this reading, the first three of these four vords bear a striking resemblance to the phrase "bier zuip!", which I dare say may be recognizable to a number of readers of this forum.

Somehow I fell addressed :-)

Bier is a dutch word, and so is zuip. The latter is a vulgar word for drinking, but only in some tenses and for some persons. The combination "bier zuip" makes no sense. Nobody would ever say or write that. It is the wrong word order, and in case it is swapped, "zuip" becomes an imperative, and this is also not done (contrary to the German: sauf!).
I do not know when the Dutch verb "zuipen" (German: saufen) was first used.

The even bigger problem is certainly that it takes a lot of imagination and freedom to go from "bieh  cu  ipH" to "bier zuip".

Yeah, I appreciate the enthusiasm but this is really weird  And Middle Dutch spelling would be something like supen or suypen.


(For what it's worth, I am more and more inclined to believe that the VM does not encode any full words.)

@Koen
Opinions differ here.
For me, the German text is clear so far, and it also makes sense. (with small exceptions).
Bein Text I rather set on something like (turgid) poetry.
Example:
"Mit einem Krug aus Metall" als "mit einem Metallkrug"
"With a metal jug" as "with a metal jug".


Somehow it doesn't work in English
Irgendwie funktioniert das nicht auf englisch

To approximate your examples as closely as possible in English, I would write:

"With a jug of metal" and "with a metal-jug".

...but I don't know why we are talking about this

(08-04-2021, 08:28 PM)ReneZ Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

(08-04-2021, 06:37 PM)geoffreycaveney Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.with "Judas" and other logical values of units: "bieh  cu  ipH  Htilie[18]"

My new observation is that by this reading, the first three of these four vords bear a striking resemblance to the phrase "bier zuip!", which I dare say may be recognizable to a number of readers of this forum.

Somehow I fell addressed :-)

Bier is a dutch word, and so is zuip. The latter is a vulgar word for drinking, but only in some tenses and for some persons. The combination "bier zuip" makes no sense. Nobody would ever say or write that. It is the wrong word order, and in case it is swapped, "zuip" becomes an imperative, and this is also not done (contrary to the German: sauf!).
I do not know when the Dutch verb "zuipen" (German: saufen) was first used.

The even bigger problem is certainly that it takes a lot of imagination and freedom to go from "bieh  cu  ipH" to "bier zuip".

I appreciate Rene's and Koen's responses to my very tentative reading of this very short phrase. Of course I am not claiming that the language is Dutch itself, but rather I am suggesting the possibility that the words may have an Istvaeonic Germanic origin, to the extent that some Schlesisch-Wilmesau Germanic dialects exhibit Istvaeonic characteristics, and may be cognate to the modern Dutch and Middle Dutch words that Rene and Koen describe. However, the particular syntax, word order, use or non-use of the imperative form of this verb, etc., may be quite different in this dialect than it is in Dutch. In fact, this very topic is addressed in great detail in the reference work A Grammar of Wymysorys by Andrason & Król (2016). (The entire work is available here: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. ) The file attachment to this message contains this work's summary discussion of word order in Wymysorys on pp. 108-109, pointing out that due to Slavic influence its word order is much less rigid than that of other Germanic languages.

Now about the interpretation of "bieh cu ipH" as "bier suyp/zuip", I only see a few small regular and logical steps to get from one to the other. First, of course, we must accept that Voynich vord boundaries are not necessarily the underlying language's word boundaries, which explains why it is permissible to read "cu ipH" as one word. Second, we must either treat the "H" in "pH" as a null unit again in this instance, or we may hypothesize that "pH" may reflect a sound change that occurred between Proto-West Germanic / Old Dutch and this dialect, perhaps akin to the sound change observed in German "sauf". Third, we must treat "c" as this dialect's reflex of the initial consonant of this verb. To be fair, though, the spelling of sibilants can be quite inconsistent in Germanic languages as it is: in Dutch, as I understand it, "s" is the voiceless fricative and "z" is the voiced fricative, which are the normal phonetic values of those symbols, but in modern Standard German, initial "s" is the voiced fricative ("z" sound) while "z" is the voiceless affricate ("ts" sound)! So I dare say we should not attempt to impose a level of consistency on the representation of these sounds in the Voynich ms writing system that even the most standard and well-established Germanic writing systems do not maintain from one language to the other. Thus, I see all of these steps to interpret "cu ipH" as "suyp/zuip" or its equivalent in the dialect of the ms text as quite reasonable.

Finally, this leaves the interpretation of "bieh" as "bier". In support of this interpretation, I refer readers to my interpretation of the 2nd line of text on You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. that I provided in my comment on Koen's blog post: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. . There I read the line as "HieeH teehr [p+i]jas d'z Ju das" and interpret this as "Hie teehr, pijas dy'z Judas!" (Translation: "Hier zehr, Säufer / bösartiger du Judas!" or "Rot away here, you drunkard / wicked liar Judas!") I explain my understanding of the meaning of this interpretation in my comment on the blog post, but the relevant point here is that the Germanic word "hier"/"hie" is written in the ms as "HieeH" according to my system of reading it. So we have consistency across both cases, in that a laryngeal letter appears in the place of the standard Germanic final "r" in both "hier" and "bier". In the case of "hier", the alternative form "hie" is a well-attested archaic form of "hier" in German, still seen in the phrase "hie und da". There may not be a similarly well-attested written alternative form of "bier", but this does not mean that such a similar form may not have existed in some particular late medieval dialect, especially an unusual one. As such, I consider my parallel interpretations of "HieeH" as "hie"/"hier" and of "bieh" as "bier" to be both reasonable and consistent.