22-01-2021, 11:15 AM
Hello everyone,
I'm new to the forum and this is my first post, although I have been fascinated by the VMS for several years.
Sorry if this has either been done before, or something similar - I have been looking through past posts on the forum and couldn't find anything that matched, so wondered if you guys thought this was an interesting concept.
Basically, I am quite a visual person, and while lots of people have listed tons of "rules" as how the words are formed and what order the letters generally fall in, I find it hard to process it all. Instead I have tried creating spider diagrams with the 'words' from the VMS, (or should I call them vords on this forum?) to give myself a visual representation of how these vords are formed (I think I'll call them words - predictive text keeps changing vords to voids). Attached is a picture of what I've been doing, a map of the '8' (or B or D character) for several of the "recipes" pages.
You may notice I haven't been using common EVA letter assignments. This is purely for my purposes and could be easily changed, but I found it easier to type what the shape looked like, rather than follow EVA, because when notating, I tend to mutter what I'm seeing in the VMS until I transfer it into the chart ("okay, the next word reads...O, H, A, I, I, 8, G..." etc.)
1) all paths start with a grey colour. If another voynich word follows the same path, the colour becomes pink. Then blue if a third follows that path. Then light blue, etc, through the colour wheel of the programme i am using until I reach red. After this point I think of this as a "very common path".
2) If a word starts with the same few letters as another, but then ends with a new sequence, I will colour the first few letters to show the path has become more common, but then make a new offshooting "branch" at the point of the change, which will be coloured grey until another word matches.
3) If a word ends after several letters, but another word follows the same pattern, with several more letters at the end, the shorter words last letter will become a diamond shape. This indicates that it is possible for the word to end at this point.
4) Gallows are listed as H, h, P and p, depending on shape. As I said before, this is only because that's how my mind sees the shape, and it made for quicker transcribing to the chart than trying to remember which EVA character this represented. I could change these back later (or even better, put a picture of the actual glyph onto the diagram!) Gallows with the joined C shape become CHC, CpC, etc.
Once completed, it may be possible to simplify the trees by identifying paths which are the same, but omit a single letter. Instead of two separate branches at this point, you could group the two together but draw a line around the omitted letter, joining the path up again at the following letter. Other simplifications may be possible, but the diagram would need to complete before these simplifications were made.
So far, I have only mapped several pages of the "recipe" section, and it is slow going. But my thoughts were, if I could map each word in this way:
1) popular word patterns would be immediately visible, without needing to remember word rules, simply by looking for the Red paths.
2) you could instantly see if any words were "unique" because their paths would be still in grey.
3) by comparing the diagrams of different starting letters simultaneously, we might be able to see if any have similar "routes", or even branches of routes, and possibly make links we haven't before.
4) It would be quite fun to have charts with which you could use to create voynich text yourself, knowing that by following the paths you would be making pre existing words
5) It may show up possible new words which should theoretically be possible, but which don't appear in the VMS.
6) We may be able to use the ending of all the branches and work backwards through the tree too, and identify easily what makes up endings, and if these endings identify more with some starting letters than others.
7) shorter word paths may match with larger paths in several other diagrams, identifying that path as a possible word "portion" rather than a full word. (Sorry, I'm explaining badly...)
8) if a certain tree was identical to another, with the only difference being that one tree had an extra letter at the start, it would immediately identify that letter as a definite "starting" letter, and the trees could be merged. (Again, I'm explaining badly what I mean. I am better at visuals than explanations!)
As I say, the word structure has been studied countless times before, but sometimes you can see patterns and links between things if it is visual, rather than someone simply stating all the rules in written form.
What does everyone think? Waste of time? Pointless exercise? Good concept, but very poorly executed? Any ideas welcome.
Also, I'm making these diagrams by reading the original VMS because I can't find anywhere an actual word document, or other file which lists all the possible word sequences, and the number of times that word appears in the VMS. Does such a file exist? I've searched the interwebs for ages, but perhaps I am looking in the wrong places.
Anyway, nice to be part of the community, and enjoying reading the other posts.
G.
I'm new to the forum and this is my first post, although I have been fascinated by the VMS for several years.
Sorry if this has either been done before, or something similar - I have been looking through past posts on the forum and couldn't find anything that matched, so wondered if you guys thought this was an interesting concept.
Basically, I am quite a visual person, and while lots of people have listed tons of "rules" as how the words are formed and what order the letters generally fall in, I find it hard to process it all. Instead I have tried creating spider diagrams with the 'words' from the VMS, (or should I call them vords on this forum?) to give myself a visual representation of how these vords are formed (I think I'll call them words - predictive text keeps changing vords to voids). Attached is a picture of what I've been doing, a map of the '8' (or B or D character) for several of the "recipes" pages.
You may notice I haven't been using common EVA letter assignments. This is purely for my purposes and could be easily changed, but I found it easier to type what the shape looked like, rather than follow EVA, because when notating, I tend to mutter what I'm seeing in the VMS until I transfer it into the chart ("okay, the next word reads...O, H, A, I, I, 8, G..." etc.)
1) all paths start with a grey colour. If another voynich word follows the same path, the colour becomes pink. Then blue if a third follows that path. Then light blue, etc, through the colour wheel of the programme i am using until I reach red. After this point I think of this as a "very common path".
2) If a word starts with the same few letters as another, but then ends with a new sequence, I will colour the first few letters to show the path has become more common, but then make a new offshooting "branch" at the point of the change, which will be coloured grey until another word matches.
3) If a word ends after several letters, but another word follows the same pattern, with several more letters at the end, the shorter words last letter will become a diamond shape. This indicates that it is possible for the word to end at this point.
4) Gallows are listed as H, h, P and p, depending on shape. As I said before, this is only because that's how my mind sees the shape, and it made for quicker transcribing to the chart than trying to remember which EVA character this represented. I could change these back later (or even better, put a picture of the actual glyph onto the diagram!) Gallows with the joined C shape become CHC, CpC, etc.
Once completed, it may be possible to simplify the trees by identifying paths which are the same, but omit a single letter. Instead of two separate branches at this point, you could group the two together but draw a line around the omitted letter, joining the path up again at the following letter. Other simplifications may be possible, but the diagram would need to complete before these simplifications were made.
So far, I have only mapped several pages of the "recipe" section, and it is slow going. But my thoughts were, if I could map each word in this way:
1) popular word patterns would be immediately visible, without needing to remember word rules, simply by looking for the Red paths.
2) you could instantly see if any words were "unique" because their paths would be still in grey.
3) by comparing the diagrams of different starting letters simultaneously, we might be able to see if any have similar "routes", or even branches of routes, and possibly make links we haven't before.
4) It would be quite fun to have charts with which you could use to create voynich text yourself, knowing that by following the paths you would be making pre existing words
5) It may show up possible new words which should theoretically be possible, but which don't appear in the VMS.
6) We may be able to use the ending of all the branches and work backwards through the tree too, and identify easily what makes up endings, and if these endings identify more with some starting letters than others.
7) shorter word paths may match with larger paths in several other diagrams, identifying that path as a possible word "portion" rather than a full word. (Sorry, I'm explaining badly...)
8) if a certain tree was identical to another, with the only difference being that one tree had an extra letter at the start, it would immediately identify that letter as a definite "starting" letter, and the trees could be merged. (Again, I'm explaining badly what I mean. I am better at visuals than explanations!)
As I say, the word structure has been studied countless times before, but sometimes you can see patterns and links between things if it is visual, rather than someone simply stating all the rules in written form.
What does everyone think? Waste of time? Pointless exercise? Good concept, but very poorly executed? Any ideas welcome.
Also, I'm making these diagrams by reading the original VMS because I can't find anywhere an actual word document, or other file which lists all the possible word sequences, and the number of times that word appears in the VMS. Does such a file exist? I've searched the interwebs for ages, but perhaps I am looking in the wrong places.
Anyway, nice to be part of the community, and enjoying reading the other posts.
G.