The Voynich Ninja

(06-07-2021, 12:04 PM)Mark Knowles Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I wonder whether, even if we could hypothetically understand the inner logic of Voynichese, it would be that easy to read. Even knowing and understanding the language/cipher of Voynichese one would still be left with the same questions as to whether a character is an "a" or an "o". It is certainly true that if one understood the underlying "language" it should, I would think, make it much easier to work out what the intended characters were in a given instance. Nevertheless it might still be difficult to read even one knew the fundamental system of Voynichese.

If we understood the logic of Voynichese, it's also possible that the question of whether a glyph is [a] or [o], or [s] or [r], etc., would turn out not to be meaningful as such.  In this snippet from f7r, I sense somehow that asking whether the second glyph in the top and bottom vord is [a] in each case, and whether the last glyph in the bottom word is [s] or [r], might take us in the wrong direction. 
 
Rather, it looks as though the second glyph is closed off in each case with the first in a sequence of four mutually similar strokes, concluding with the same kind of flourish, producing two vords that are identical except for the shape of the repeated "hatchmark" stroke: think [o(////)] versus [o(\\\\)].  If Voynichese were meant to be parsed according to some logic like that, the "ambiguities" that frustrate EVA transcription efforts could be things of our own creation.  Maybe Voynichese is *easy* to parse on its own terms, whatever they are.

I agree this is worth exploring. And Eva-a is to the start of the minim cluster what EVA-n is to the end. Something like "ar" could just mean "two minims". I don't know what to do with this though, apart from trying to read it as a numeric system. (And then?)

(19-10-2021, 10:45 PM)Koen G Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I agree this is worth exploring. And Eva-a is to the start of the minim cluster what EVA-n is to the end. Something like "ar" could just mean "two minims". I don't know what to do with this though, apart from trying to read it as a numeric system. (And then?)

I don't know that a hatchmark-and-flourish approach to parsing the script would, in itself, need to go hand in hand with any particular interpretation, any more than other approaches to parsing it do.  If we read something like [o-(-\\\\-'] instead of [o-a-ii-r], that could still leave open as many interpretations of [(], [\\\\], and ['] as there are of [a], [ii], and [r].  There's nothing about [\\\\] that would inherently keep it from having, say, a phonetic value in Turkish or Slovenian.

But it does strike me that "ambiguities" can very often be traced to the shapes of hatchmarks, such that a hatchmark-based approach would have the advantage of isolating them more effectively from the comparatively "unambiguous" parts of the text.  A few other examples may be in order.  The following is from f4v:



Is that [olain], [olaeb], [olcheb], or [oleeeb]?  I'm torn.  But there's no question that the three hatchmarks look the same as each other, even if it's unclear what EVA category they should all fit.  So if we read the vord as [o-l-(-|||-~], where [(] is the first stroke of EVA [a] and [~] is the flourish on EVA [n] and [b], we could isolate the uncertain part as [|||].

On f6v, we have:



Here, after [ch] and the first stroke of [a] there are two hatchmarks that look like [i], followed by two other hatchmarks that seem to be drawn in a contrastive way that's neither an obvious [i] nor an obvious [e].  But the final flourish is clearly the one associated with EVA [s] and [r], so *it* is not ambiguous.

On f107v, we have:



Here there are two hatchmarks that look like [i], and a closing hatchmark that looks like [e] (elaborated with a flourish into [s]), but with another hatchmark in between that looks vaguely transitional between the two.

If we treat the second stroke of [a] as a hatchmark, then the continuum of forms leading from [a] to [o] could also be bound up in differences in the shape of that hatchmark -- i.e., sometimes it was nicely rounded off, but sometimes it was written with a motion of the hand that could better transition to drawing additional hatchmarks afterwards, and sometimes it fell somewhere in between.

Overall, I'm left with the impression that flourishes were consistently written in ways that can be clearly differentiated from one another in reading (except for cases of deterioration or shortcomings in the scans), but that hatchmarks were not.  It can be hard to tell [r] from [s], but not [r] from [n] or [s] from [b].  It can be hard to tell [y] from [l], but not [l] from [r] or [n].  And so on.

I don't pretend to know what this means, but I suspect it may offer some insight into the logic and priorities of the script itself, rather than just being a practical annoyance to those of us who'd like an unambiguous transcription to analyze.  If the writer(s) took care to differentiate flourishes but often let the shapes of hatchmarks slide (or let them be determined by the physical mechanics of writing), that could be a useful data point.

That seems to me like a very attractive way of thinking about Voynichese. Would I be right to deduce that for this system, you would go as far as not differentiating at all between EVA [e] and [i]? So the only information conveyed by the glyphs we are talking about is the number of marks and the connection of the flourish?

(20-10-2021, 04:40 PM)Koen G Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.That seems to me like a very attractive way of thinking about Voynichese. Would I be right to deduce that for this system, you would go as far as not differentiating at all between EVA [e] and [i]? So the only information conveyed by the glyphs we are talking about is the number of marks and the connection of the flourish?

I guess that would take this line of speculation to its logical extreme -- maybe as the "strong" version of a hypothesis that also has a "weak" version.  There are certainly contexts in which [e] or [i] is much more probable, but the same could be said of, say, [ſ] versus [s] in early modern print, so perhaps that's not a decisive counterargument.  There do seem to be cases in which differently shaped hatchmarks seem to be written so as to contrast purposefully with each other, e.g., any vord containing [eai].  But maybe the salient point is the contrast itself -- much as either \\\\// or ////\\ could indicate "4,2" as opposed to just "6," even if \ and / "mean" the same thing.
 
For what it's worth, it does seem as though any system of Voynichese that required the reader to be able to distinguish clearly by eye between [e] and [i] should often have failed in practice -- and that somehow feels important.