The Voynich Ninja

LingBuzz has a new preprint on the VM by Pardis Motiee: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view..

Here is the abstract:

Quote:The Voynich manuscript is an old illustrated book, hand-written in an unknown writing system. Even though it is studied by many, the book still closed its secrets. The drawings suggest that the manuscript is an herbal book and it may contain valuable information thus decoding it may increase human knowledge. This study has presented, a decipherment for Voynich manuscript and examines if it conveys any meanings. It states that, Voynich is written in codes and in fact there are hidden text with meanings in a natural language. The final results demonstrated the existence of words in sentence structure. Furthermore, it gives an insight into the first lines, which is a description of an itinerary like story; the mysterious book speaks of a person named Homer Jattari who passes a long distance from Pars to Parete, in search of amazing attars. The finding will prove the book to be a code and not a hoax.

The article contends that the VM can be decoded into a form of Persian, which I am not able to evaluate.

I read a few pages of the paper. Seems like another, "cut out some of the text, squint at the remainder, and it looks like a language I happen to already know."

In their defense, the resulting translation looks a bit less weird than what we're used to. Still somewhat random, but less so. But I cannot judge any of the preceding steps.

I haven't had time to read it all yet, but I glanced through the first eight pages and what I noticed is that the author is not familiar with medieval Latin. He has assigned some very common Latin characters to the more dubious category of Brahmic scripts.

At the very least, some of the characters should be in both categories (not specifically one or the other).

(15-02-2021, 07:14 PM)Koen G Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.In their defense, the resulting translation looks a bit less weird than what we're used to. Still somewhat random, but less so. But I cannot judge any of the preceding steps.

One of the preceding steps is to find lookalike glyphs in Latin, Greek, and Brahmi, then use those to assign values to the Voynich script. Any researcher either needs to demonstrate a solid connection between the Voynich script and another before using it to assign values, or demonstrate potential glyph values by other means. The method of assigning glyph values by visual comparison (or worse, by using EVA transcription as sound values) is unlikely to be correct.

(It is unfortunate because most decipherers don't know that even assigning a partial value to a single glyph, but doing it with a solid logical argument, would be more progress than most researchers have ever made.)

I took a break and went through the paper. If I understand it correctly, some of the common letters and patterns are removed before attempting a translation (e.g., terminal y, leading o, dar). What is left is treated as a mixture of Sanskrit (95%), Arabic, and Persian derivatives from Arabic.

Quote:The grammar was rhetorical. In this way, the components of speech are shifted at the discretion of the author and for greater impact (Shirzadeh Taleghanki, 2013).

I can't comment on the basis of language because I don't know enough about Sanskrit/Arabic/Persian to judge. I do know that when I was trying to find a natural language that was as close to Voynichese as possible (on one of the challenge threads), I chose an example from Sanskrit because of the prevalence of repetitive short phrases (somewhat syllabic) and the vowel "a" but going from natural language to Voynichese is easier than going from Voynichese to natural language because you can pick-and-choose the phrases.

I don't have time for it right now, but one of the first "litmus" tests I do to gauge a translation is to look at letter frequency and position in the language of choice and see how that compares to the letter frequency and position in the solver's translation. This test does not require an in-depth knowledge of the specific language, only a basic knowledge (the ability to recognize basic words and grammar). If there is substantial deviation between the two, then the discrepancy needs to be explained by the person offering the solution.

(15-02-2021, 07:14 PM)Koen G Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.the resulting translation looks a bit less weird than what we're used to

Or perhaps you are gradually getting more used to weird plain texts?

As soon as someone comes up with a translation along the lines of:
"here begins the first book of ... "
I think we are in business.

(15-02-2021, 07:28 PM)-JKP- Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I haven't had time to read it all yet, but I glanced through the first eight pages and what I noticed is that the author is not familiar with medieval Latin. He has assigned some very common Latin characters to the more dubious category of Brahmic scripts.

At the very least, some of the characters should be in both categories (not specifically one or the other).

Hi. Sorry for the delay. I had problems in registration./ What would a five year old child do if you give her a puzzle? Imagine a bowl of puzzle pieces . Naturally ,would get some and see which joins better. What I did was like that. Starting from two years ago I applied all similar alphabets I could ,made a list and updated it based on meaning relevance to pictures, continued the process till some months ago. The final set were from those languages I mentioned. The picture only shows where they were picked from and that they are somehow similar to Voynich signs./

(15-02-2021, 08:18 PM)-JKP- Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I took a break and went through the paper. If I understand it correctly, some of the common letters and patterns are removed before attempting a translation (e.g., terminal y, leading o, dar). What is left is treated as a mixture of Sanskrit (95%), Arabic, and Persian derivatives from Arabic.

I don't have time for it right now, but one of the first "litmus" tests I do to gauge a translation is to look at letter frequency and position in the language of choice and see how that compares to the letter frequency and position in the solver's translation. This test does not require an in-depth knowledge of the specific language, only a basic knowledge (the ability to recognize basic words and grammar). If there is substantial deviation between the two, then the discrepancy needs to be explained by the person offering the solution.

I don't have the skill, but you can see four paragraphs You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. ./ Vocabulary are present in Farsi and Persian Languages, 95 percent. Some words have roots in Sanskrit : The name pat is widely used as plant in every page I checked. Some Arabic verbs and Arabic derivatives in Farsi also can be seen. The vocabulary is old style, some had to be checked in dictionary./ Person of verbs known as shenaseh and grammar were almost same as Farsi./ I couldn't find any record similar to the manuscript. In general, I call it Persian and Persian has different varieties. The people I read it for are able to understand meanings./