The Voynich Ninja

This post is a follow-up to the "VCI" alphabetic interpretation of the script of the Voynich ms text, based on a verbose cipher analysis of the script. I posted about my VCI system You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view., and later modified it into a form I call "Slavic VCI" as described You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view., all of which I attempted to summarize You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.. 

The following table presents the 25 most frequent "vords" in the Voynich ms text, first in their standard EVA transcription form, and then in my "Slavic VCI" alphabetic interpretation. Please note, for example, in line with the verbose cipher analysis, that EVA [aiin] and [ain] = Slavic VCI <o>, EVA [ol] = Slavic VCI <z>, EVA [or] = Slavic VCI <w>, EVA [qok] = Slavic VCI <n>, etc., and EVA [y] is treated as a null character, marked as Slavic VCI <#>. 

The table then presents both Upper Sorbian and Czech words, suffixes, and syllables that appear similar to the Slavic VCI forms. For many of the Czech words it is also possible to include their rankings on a modern Czech word frequency list, which one can find You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.. Finally of course an English gloss is presented for each Upper Sorbian / Czech word or morpheme. 

Naturally the correspondences are not perfect in all cases, but I find the number and proportion of very close resemblances striking. It is most difficult to be precise about the distinctions between the numerous sibilant letters and phonemes in these languages: s, z, š, ž, c, č, ć, etc. Now if it were written in literary Czech, which is well known for its phonemically precise alphabet established in the early 15th century, and if we knew for certain that no diacritical markings had faded over the centuries in the copy of the Voynich ms that we have today, then we would indeed expect to see great precision in all of these details in the script of the ms text. But if on the other hand it were written in a dialect of Sorbian, which had little or no written history at that time, and if some diacritical markings in the ms may possibly have faded over the centuries, then a certain level of imprecision in the indication of these sibilant phonemes in the readable ms text that we have would be more understandable. 

Geoffrey

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Hi Geoffrey,

Do I understand correctly that concatenation of Voynichese sequences should map to respective concatenation of your proposed plain text sequences?

E.g. aror -> "alv", and olor -> "zv"?! But that does not look promising, does it?

(26-09-2020, 10:37 PM)Anton Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Hi Geoffrey,
Do I understand correctly that concatenation of Voynichese sequences should map to respective concatenation of your proposed plain text sequences?
E.g. aror -> "alv", and olor -> "zv"?! But that does not look promising, does it?

Keeping in mind that Czech "v" = Sorbian "w", I think it would also be natural and possible to interpret EVA [or] as the vowel "u" as well in some cases. Then it is possibly more promising to interpret these vords / sequences as "alu" and "zu".

Geoffrey, since you have managed to understand the most frequent words in the VM, I am waiting for the last step, the reading a sentence (line, paragraph, page) to see if your system works.

Of course "managed to understand" is an exaggeration of my claim. I would rather say that I have managed to develop a logical, consistent interpretation of the script that produces a rather significant number of largely consistent matches or near-matches between the most frequent Voynich vords and many very frequent Sorbian and/or Czech words. 

Even if you handed me a manuscript written in the plain in the Latin alphabet, written in a Sorbian dialect in the early 15th century, it would not be easy for me to read it correctly, and it would probably not be easy for very many other people to read it correctly either. I am proficient in reading and translating academic articles in modern Russian, and I completed a university course in Old Church Slavonic, so I am not going into this completely clueless, but neither does it make me an expert in medieval West Slavic documents either. For some perspective on the difficulties involved, recently a scholar who is an expert in this field wrote a book chapter, titled You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. (text not available at the link), with the following abstract:

"The West Slavic glosses in mediaeval Hebrew texts are an important source for the study of the early development of the West Slavic languages. Although the majority of glosses are often regarded as Old Czech, it is argued in this paper that some of these glosses are more likely to reflect a Slavic vernacular that was ancestral to modern Upper Sorbian. They form an important addition to the known corpus of mediaeval Sorbian. Some of the earliest phonological developments of Czech and Sorbian can be dated on the basis of the Judeo-Slavic glosses." 

The point is, even experts in the field are not in agreement about what is Czech and what is Sorbian in medieval West Slavic texts and documents. So even with a completely correct interpretation of the script, it is to be expected that it would still require a lot of work to read and understand such a text correctly. 

With all of that said, I am not opposed to making an effort to read some lines and attempt to interpret them. But both myself and others should be aware that it's quite possible my interpretation of the script could be correct, the language could be correct, and I could still read and interpret the meaning of the text itself incorrectly. 

Geoffrey

(27-09-2020, 03:38 PM)geoffreycaveney Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I am not opposed to making an effort to read some lines and attempt to interpret them

Wasn't that the goal of all these transformations?

May I suggest the outer text band of VMs White Aries. It has a structure, due to vord repetition, that is not present in other text bands in the VMs zodiac.

(27-09-2020, 07:56 PM)Ruby Novacna Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

(27-09-2020, 03:38 PM)geoffreycaveney Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I am not opposed to making an effort to read some lines and attempt to interpret them

Wasn't that the goal of all these transformations?

Yes, of course that is the ultimate goal. But a premature and mistaken reading of some particular line or lines, even if the overall system is largely correct, is not necessarily the most productive way to make progress. Nevertheless, I am working on a few such lines and I will be happy to post here when I have an interpretation that I feel is worth sharing. 

In the Sorbian interpretation, another complicating factor to consider is the possible presence and influence of some German dialect in the ms text. The Sorbian people live in southeastern Germany: The growing and spreading influence of German in the region, along with the receding area and influence of Sorbian, is a process that has been proceeding since the 10th century. Already by the early 15th century any educated Sorbian speaker would very likely be familiar with and influenced by German. It would be expected that German words, labels, expressions, etc., would make their way into a text written primarily in Sorbian. 

For example, note that I was unable to find a promising Sorbian/Czech word for EVA [dar] = Slavic VCI <cal>. It now occurs to me that this vord may represent the German word "Zahl", which is pronounced /tsa:l/, would be spelled "cal" in phonemic Sorbian or Czech, and means 'number'. Just as we use symbols and abbreviations such as "#" and "No." to represent the word "number", so it may have been natural for a 15th century author of a Sorbian manuscript to use the familiar German word "Zahl" to mean "number", rather than using a Sorbian word.

(27-09-2020, 09:19 PM)R. Sale Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.May I suggest the outer text band of VMs White Aries. It has a structure, due to vord repetition, that is not present in other text bands in the VMs zodiac.

I will be happy to take a look at it! I understand that you mean ms folio page f71r, correct? Please keep in mind that some passages of text may be more difficult to read and interpret than others, and if this particular passage of text is more difficult rather than less difficult, then it may take longer to correctly read and interpret this text than other text in the ms. But I will be happy to take a look at it and see what my Slavic VCI alphabetic interpretation produces for it.

Another point to consider regarding the Sorbian hypothesis is the following historical situation, as described by a scholar at the University of Leipzig (You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.):

"The steady decrease in the size of the area where Sorbian is spoken was brought about by the following factors: the Old Sorbian tribes' loss of independence in the 10th century, the subsequent rural settlement of their territory by the Franks, Thuringians, and Saxons, the expansion of German cities and trade, and the official ban of the Sorbian language that came into effect in the 13th century. The Sorbian language was completely eradicated from territories outside Lusatia." 

Perhaps this official ban of the Sorbian language in the 13th century is significant and relevant. Later the situation changed: "The Reformation promoted the expansion of Christian teaching in the vernacular, whereby it promoted the use of written Sorbian." However, the Voynich ms is dated to the period after the 13th c. ban of Sorbian and before the revival of Sorbian in the Reformation (16th c.). An author who wanted to write a manuscript in Sorbian in this period would have had a natural and powerful incentive to keep the identity of the language of the ms strictly secret and hidden from authorities who banned the language. This could explain the use of an unknown and mysterious script.