The Voynich Ninja

(24-04-2021, 05:46 PM)geoffreycaveney Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I hypothesize that it is most likely that the German marginalia was added later

On the contrary, it's unlikely, because there are the colour codes (e.g. "rot" for red), the "der mus del" stuff, and the aror sheey inline with "so nim gas mich o" in f116v.

(24-04-2021, 10:59 PM)Anton Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

(24-04-2021, 05:46 PM)geoffreycaveney Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I hypothesize that it is most likely that the German marginalia was added later

On the contrary, it's unlikely, because there are the colour codes (e.g. "rot" for red), the "der mus del" stuff, and the aror sheey inline with "so nim gas mich o" in f116v.

Ok, then I have to admit that I don't yet have a good hypothesis to explain this particular feature of the manuscript yet.

I appreciate the mention of "so nim gas mich o" in You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. very much, because either I had forgotten about that or somehow missed it before. 

Geoffrey

The You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. is most fascinating, I recommend it to your (and everybody's) attention.

Ordinarily I would not make a separate post about half a line of text, but in this case I must make an exception, for reasons which I think will become clear to readers below.

Of course after the identification of David Jackson's Welsh dragon devouring the Lancastrian king in the illustration in the center of folio page You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. as a reference to the Glyndwr (Glendower) Rising of 1400-1415 against Henry IV (Bolingbroke) of England, I had to study the center ring of text immediately around this illustration on this page.

I am pleased to be able to report that I can now make one additional provisional letter identification based on the analysis of the text below: the character combination represented as EVA [od] = "soft c" (pronounced like "s"). This particular character combination had not yet appeared in the center ring of text on You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. (David Jackson's House of York illustration page), nor in the first line of text in the Voynich manuscript on You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. , and no "soft c" appeared in the reading or interpretation of those lines of text either. (I have already provisionally identified the character EVA [d] alone as the letter "long s".)

The first word which caught my attention in the center ring of text on You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. is the 5th word (of 8 words in this ring of text): EVA [okechs]. The reading of this word according to my provisional letter correspondences is "deYl". This is notable because the 6th word (of 10) in the center ring of text on You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. (House of York page) is EVA [okees] or "deel". In the latter, York page, ring of text, this word is followed immediately by the word EVA [chory] = "YORK". Thus one would naturally expect the identification of the corresponding "name of the House" represented on the page to immediately follow the corresponding word on the "Welsh dragon devouring Lancaster" page You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. as well.

The three words which immediately follow EVA [okechs] = "deYl" in the center ring of text on You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. are the following:

EVA [chepchees aly oteodal]

= "YepYeel isK fecis"

The second of these three words is read backwards because it ends in the "K" character. The word is written backwards in order to make it end with the same character as the word "YORK".

Thus, these three words should actually be read "YepYeel Ksi fecis".

I interpret this phrase as "j'appelle quasi fecis". 

Thus, the last four words of the ring of text are "del j'appelle quasi fecis".

Modern English translation: "of the [House] I call (as) shit".

(Please pardon my Anglo-Norman.)

quasi (Latin) - "as if", "as (like)"
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fece (Middle English) - "(a) A sedimentary deposit; sediment, dregs, lees; (b) pl. excrement."
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plural form "fecis" in 4 attested examples:
"a1400 Lanfranc (Ashm 1396)169/16 : Þe vttere wombe in whiche ben lacertis, for to helpe putte out þe fecis & wijnd & vrine."
"a1400 Lanfranc (Ashm 1396)43/15 : Þe fecis of a litil wex..ben gode to a senewe þat is prickid."
"a1475 Bk.Quint.(Sln 73)4/7 : Rotun fecis of wiyn."
"a1550 *Ripley CAlch.(BodeMus 63)48b : By thy sight thow shalt well witt ffro feculent fecis when it is qwitte."

Geoffrey

fecis - feces

As a new working title for the Voynich manuscript text, I propose Henry IV, Part 3. I have a feeling this one will not end so well for Henry...

I would like to provide here at this stage a provisional explanation of the correspondences of some of the most common Voynich MS words with some common Middle English word forms. I must state upfront that I believe this "YORK" cipher creates many complications with making and recognising such correspondences: In many places the letters of "YORK" (EVA transliteration [chory] or Currier transliteration [SOR9]) may replace similar letters in words (e.g., "K" for "hard c", "hard g", "gh, "ng"), and certain words are written backwards in order to make their first and/or last letters appear the same as those of "Yorkist" words such as "YorK" or "MortiMer", or to appear in the opposite direction of hated "Lancastrian" words such as "BolingBroke". 

And I'm afraid that this may be just the beginning of the complications with this cipher. It appears to me at this stage that Language A of the MS text is primarily Middle English, while Language B is primarily Anglo-Norman French. But there is still plenty of English, French, and Latin in both Languages A and B. This makes comparisons of word frequency with known languages extremely difficult. 

Another complication is that I am seeing some evidence of what I might describe as "playing with the grammatical structures of English and French". It is like word play, but more complicated, by people who were interested in the differences between the structures of the two languages of the early 15th century English nobility, Anglo-Norman French and Middle English.

For example, I believe that in many places, the author of the Middle English Language A sections may have deliberately omitted many if not all articles. Likewise, the authors of the French Language B sections may have deliberately omitted the relative pronoun in some places, which is not normally allowed in French grammar but is a feature of English grammar. So these curiosities may have an impact on the frequency of the most common words in the target languages and in the MS text.

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With all of those cautionary notes stated and explained in advance, I may provisionally offer a couple examples as a representative sample of how this "YORK" cipher may have represented some common Middle English words with the most frequent words in Language A of the Voynich MS text. Of course this is a provisional work in progress. The point is that the nature of the "YORK" cipher combined with backwards writing of some words makes it possible for each Voynich word to represent a variety of forms of English words or possibly French or Latin words. It was a form of word play that the authors engaged in with the "YORK" cipher. It was not intended as a very practical means of regular communication, but I believe it does have meaning to the small group of authors who wrote the text for themselves and for their little group to share with each other. One may think of the text as a collection of rebus puzzles of a sort, with each line possibly representing a kind of little rebus puzzle.

Below I provide an example of the possible meanings of the most frequent Language A words EVA [daiin] (Currier [8AM]) and EVA [chol] (Currier [SOE]). 

EVA [daiin]  (Currier [8AM]) has an extremely high 5.28% frequency in Language A, but only 1.56% frequency in Language B. I believe this form mainly represented Middle English word forms, and there is enough English in the primarily French Language B for this word to appear relatively frequently in B as well, although it is almost 3.4 times more frequent in A than in B.

EVA [daiin]  (Currier [8AM])  :  "so" =
(5.28% freq. in Language A; only 1.56% freq. in Language B)
The following are a representative indication of the possible interpretations of this word. Not all of these meanings necessarily appear in the text, and there may be other possible meanings that are not yet included in the list below.
read forwards
1. so (Middle English) - "so"
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2. so (Middle English) - chiefly Northern dialectal form of "she"
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3. so (Middle English) - "vat, large tub"
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4. so (Middle English) alt. sp. of various forms of verb "seen" - "to see"
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read backwards
1. os (Middle English) alt. sp. of "us"
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2. os (Middle English) alt. sp. of "as"
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3. -os (Middle English) alt. sp. of "-ous" adjective suffix
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4. os (Middle English) - "bone"
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EVA [chol]  (Currier [SOE])  :  "YOs" = 
read forwards
1. -ious / -ios (Middle English) - "-ious" adjective suffix
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2. jus (Middle English) - "juice, sap, liquid extract, liquid herb mixture; body fluid; (fig.) the meaning or spirit of words", etc.
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3. use (Middle English) - "to use"
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4. use (Middle English) - "tradition, customary law"
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read backwards
?

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Again, I provide these examples simply as a representative sample of how I believe this "YORK" cipher may represent common Middle English words with common Voynich MS words in the Voynich script.

Geoffrey

Since I presented the half line of text in the center ring of You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. above, I wish to go ahead now and present my best reading and interpretation of this entire center ring of text on page You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. , which again features the illustration in the center which You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. as a Welsh green dragon devouring the head of a Lancastrian king holding his house's all-gold flower. I identify this as a reference to the Glyndwr (Glendower) Rising of 1400-1415 against Henry IV (Bolingbroke) of England.

As in the center ring of text on the You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. "House of York" page, I find that the base language of the text is primarily some form of French. French is far from my strongest language, so I particularly welcome any feedback and commentary about my interpretation of the French portions of such lines of text. 

EVA transliteration:
[ osaiin  chedain  oteey  chedaly  okechs  chepchees  aly  oteodal ]

Currier transliteration:
[ O2AM  SC8AN  OPCC9  SC8AE9  OFCS2  SCBSCC2  AE9  OPCO8AE ]

reading according to my provisional letter correspondences:
" Olo  Yeso  feeK  YesisK  deYl  YepYeel  isK  fecis "

My interpretation of this statement:
"olo oseille [a]vec cassis(e?) del [...] j'appelle quasi fecis"

Modern English translation:
"I smell sorrel with blackcurrants of the [House] I call (as) shit"

I note that the second, fourth, and seventh words of the line are written backwards so that they appear with the same first letter and/or last letter as that of "YORK":
Yeso = backwards oseY = "oseille"
YesisK = backwards KsiseY = "cassis(e?)" 
(I must suppose that the ending of this word as written is some plural or other form of the word that differs from the form of the modern French word.)
isK = backwards Ksi = "quasi"

olo (Latin) - "I smell; I am observed, betrayed"
> oloir, oler, olir (Old/Middle French)
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oseille (French) - "sorrel" (plant with acidic leaves)
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"Barbeau-Rodhe 1930: [ɔ-], [o-]. Att. ds Ac. dep.1694. Étymol. et Hist. 1. [Fin xies., mss xives.] bot. judéo-fr. oiseles «rumex acetosa» (Raschi, Gl., éd. A. Darmesteter et D. S. Blondheim, t.1, 746); mil. xiiies. osile (Glossaire de Glasgow, 157a ds T.-L.); ca 1393 ozeille (Ménagier, éd. G. E. Bereton et J. M. Ferrier, p.120, l. 3 et 10);"
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cassis (French) - "blackcurrant"
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Geoffrey

Since I have made several amendments to the proposed correspondences of Voynich characters and "Yorkist" letters since I last posted provisional lists of them, I am now posting here an updated table of provisional Voynich character : "Yorkist" letter correspondences. I may make a few observations about this table:

As I observed much earlier in this thread, there is a tendency to "favour" the end of the alphabet and "disfavour" the beginning of the alphabet in this cipher system. The logical motivation would be that "York" begins with "Y", near the end of the alphabet, whereas both parts of "BolingBroke", the Lancastrian king Henry IV's name, begin with "B", near the beginning of the alphabet. Further, the first two vowels of the word "Lancaster" are both "A". I now believe that the letter "a" may have simply been omitted from words wherever it occurred. (This is different from the "lipogrammatic" concept of not using any words that contain the letter "a" that I had suggested earlier and which was discussed in another thread.) The writing of the French preposition "avec" without the "a" in the center ring of text on You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. persuaded me to hypothesize the omission of the letter "a" as a general rule of the cipher.

Speaking of French "avec", I only checked this just now, but I find that the Voynich word I interpret as "avec" in You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. , EVA [oteey] or Currier [OPCC9], actually does occur with dramatically greater frequency in Language B sections of the manuscript than it does in Language A sections. Thus this piece of evidence is in line with my current working hypothesis that the base language of Language B is primarily some form of French, whereas the base language of Language A is primarily Middle English. 

I also observe that by writing the table, after the special letters of "YORK" and "M" (for "MortiMer", the Yorkists' claimant to the English throne against Henry IV), in backwards alphabetical order, it is noticeable that the characters with more basic or simpler forms tend to represent letters toward the end of the alphabet, whereas characters with more complicated forms tend to represent letters toward the beginning of the alphabet. Thus the consonants "t, s, p" have simpler forms than the consonants "f, d, soft c" which have more "verbose" character combination forms. This is also in line with the "backwards alphabetical" theme of the cipher design. It suggests that the designer of the cipher and script may have begun from the end of the alphabet and worked backwards in creating the characters.

[Note: Post and attached table edited to include EVA [sh] = "th".]

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[attachment=5476]

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Geoffrey

I can now present a reading and interpretation of an interesting line in the middle of the last paragraph of You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. , the 7th line up from the bottom of that page.

I focused on this particular line due to its first word, EVA [dtor] or Currier [8POR], which my system reads as "spOR". I was specifically searching for such a word in the Voynich manuscript text, because the famous English knight You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view., was killed at the You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. in 1403 leading a rebel army against Henry IV. Hotspur is quite famous for his role in Shakespeare's You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view., where the climactic scene features Prince Hal (the Prince of Wales), Henry IV's son and the future Henry V, killing Hotspur in single combat. (That part is a legend and not historically documented.) The English football club Tottenham Hotspur is also named after this historical figure.

We know from radiocarbon dating of the Voynich manuscript parchment that its earliest possible date is 1404. Unlike the ending date of the range (1438), this 1404 date is quite a hard limit on the timing of the composition of the manuscript: It is possible to argue that the ms text was written after the date of the parchment, but not before the date of the parchment! Thus, I was looking in the ms text for a possible reference to Hotspur's death by the Yorkist authors, who were allies on his side in rebellion against the Lancastrian king Henry IV (Bolingbroke). Hotspur married Elizabeth Mortimer (Kate, Lady Percy in Shakespeare's Henry IV, Part 1), older sister of the heir presumptive to Richard II, Roger Mortimer, who died in 1398, and thus the aunt of Edmund Mortimer, 5th Earl of March, whom the Yorkists supported as claimant to the throne against Henry IV (Bolingbroke).

Thus I was quite interested in this one line in the Voynich ms text where the word "spOR" appears. I find that I am able to read and interpret the line rather smoothly in Middle English -- folio pages You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. and You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. are thankfully (for me) written in Language A. Two new details regarding character/letter values -- additions, not changes -- can now be noted:

I find that the character EVA [q] or Currier [4] represents the letter "h". 

I extend the interpretation of the "YORK" letter EVA [o] or Currier [O] to now include the letter values "o", "ou", "u", or an unstressed "e" in grammatical endings such as "-er" or "-eth". Indeed even in modern English there is little actual phonetic significance between such endings as "-er" vs. "-or" or "-our", which are always unstressed and all pronounced identically. I find that the author of this text likewise alternates between "e" and "O" in such endings. 

Also, this line confirms a rule of the cipher that words that actually end with "-th" or "-n" are always written backwards. The Yorkist motivation for this rule of the cipher is that their characters' shapes are very similar to those of "Y" and "M" in the cipher, the first letters of 'York" and "MortiMer". Thus, in this way, the characters that look like "Y" or "M" will appear at the beginnings of the words rather than at the ends of words. 

With these refinements of the correspondence system and cipher rules, I can read and interpret this "Hotspur" line on You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. of the Voynich manuscript text as follows:

7th line up from bottom of You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. :

EVA transliteration:
[ dtor  sheol  qokor  sharal  ckhol  sholar  aiin  sheoctham ]

Currier transliteration:
[ 8POR  ZCOE  4OFOR  ZARAE  XOE  ZOEAR  M  ZCOQAJ ]

Yorkist cipher letter values:
" spOr  theOs  hOtOR  thiris  nOs  thOsiR  O  theOMiB "

My interpretation of this line:
" Spur soueth hotər : theiris son risəth o bimoueth "

[2nd, 5th, 6th, and 8th words written backwards so that characters with similar shape to "Y" and "M" appear first in the words, and "B" appears last.]

Modern English translation:
" spor ["Hotspur"] sows/begets hotter : their son rises, ever mocks [Bolingbroke] "

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Middle English words:

spor (ME) alt.sp. of spore - "spur"
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soueth (ME) 3.sg. form of souen - "afflict, distress; ache, hurt, suffer anguish or grief" ; "sow; scatter seed; beget"
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hoter (ME) - "hotter"
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theires (ME) - "theirs"
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theiris - sp. in Wycliffe Bible !
"(a1382) WBible(1) (Bod 959)Jer.44.28 : Whos sermoun be fulfild, myn or þeiris?"
"(a1382) WBible(1) Prol.2 Par.(Bod 959)1 : Evsebius, Jerome senden gretyng to þeiris in crist iesu, domynyon & rogacian."
"c1470 Bible F.(Cleve-W q091.92-C468)82/10 : Thinkith wel in Goddis handis lithe alle erthly powere and not in mannes handis; and enforce your bodies ayens theiris as to Goddis enemyes."

son (ME) alt. sp. of sone - "son"
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riseth (ME) 3.sg. form of risen - "rise", et al.
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o (ME) - "ever; forever; eternally"
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bimoueth (ME) 3.sg. of bimouen - "to mock"
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This verb is also in Wycliffe Bible! :
"a1425 WBible(2) (Sid 99)Prov.1.26 : Bymowe [Roy 1.C.9: Y schal scorne ʒou.](a1382) WBible(1) (Dc 369(1))Ps.2.4 : That dwelleth in heuenes shal scorne them; and the Lord shal bemowe [L subsannabit] them."
"c1475(?c1400) Wycl.Apol.(Dub 245)81 : I schal lawʒe in your deþ and bymowe ʒow, wen þis schal cum to ʒow þat ʒe dred."

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Geoffrey