The Voynich Ninja

On You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. there are two vords written on a leaf, half way down the right hand side. Right up against the trimming; it is possible that a glyph might have been trimmed away here.

You would expect such an annotation to be one of three things:

1. Scribal instruction (green leaves; smooth edge; out of paint; etc)
   
2. Plant name
   
3. Plant characteristic (poisonous leaves;good for nausea; etc)
   

In this post alone I shall refer to these vords as an instruction, to distinguish it from a label or text piece. The reason I call it an instruction is because I think we can discard (2); if this were a name, the two vords would be unlikely to act as they do below.

Let us look at the instruction.

yto ailch

yto appears five times (You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.):

• f1r: daicthy [line break] yto shol    daicthy yto shol
  
• f37v: chocthey [line break] yto chol  chocthey yto chol
  
• f67r1: yto daiir    (label?)  yto daiir
  
• f67r2: yteoor yto ykor  yteoor yto ykor
  
• f69v: chese yto odair  chese yto odair
  

ailch does not appear in the manuscript according to Voynichese.com (however, the instruction in question isn't included in the transcription used there!)
What if we separate the suffix ch? ch appears as a suffix You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. in the text. It is unusual as a suffix - it either appears as a difficult word (chfaikch etc) or as a unique / almost-unique vord. IE, lkch You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.; lk You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view..
Can ch be a stand-alone word? It appears You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. as a vord.
Therefore, I treat ch as another vord and continue.

ail likewise You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. (drop the ch), all in the text heavy section at the back:

• f105r: dor ail cheky
  
• f105v: okeed ail kchey
  
• f106v: chodar ail dal dar
  
• f108r: ar ail odaiin
  
• f115v: shor ail chodaiin
  

ch has You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.. Yes I am aware there is an argument for saying that ch by itself is nothing but a pre/suffix that the scribe didn't join up and so the transcriber assumed it was a vord, but we can also postulate that it is a floating modifier (which fits in with its function as a pre/suffix).

• f68v1: okeey ch ek chekeys
  
• f72r3: okar ch ches
  
• f76r: fchedy ch sal
  
• f100r: cthdaoto ch qeos
  
• f108r: qokar ch okeey
  

Now for the fun bit!

In theory, if this is an instruction, one vord will be a verb (predicate) and the other will be a noun (subject).

I started by assuming that there were two vords - it now appears likely there are three vords. We thus have a noun, verb and modifier (subject, predicate).

Given that yto appears in a label on f67r1 and twice at the beginning of a line, and ail always appears in the middle of sentences, we can assume (for a thought experiment) that yto is the noun. Futhermore, the well-know attributes of ch (acting as a common prefix suffix) lends itself to it being a modifier.

Noun: yto
Verb: ail
Adverb: ch

Imagine this says something like "leaf paint not" or "plant venomous much" or "Joe ate, dead [now]".

But we must leave any attempt at translation to one side for the minute. Already, my assignation of noun, verb and adverb is nothing but supposition and hearsay.

QUESTION & NEXT TASK: Are there similar examples of apparent "instructions" (not labels) elsewhere that can be examined in a similar fashion? Although we cannot expect a translation from this approach, if other "instructions" appear to follow the same N_V_A approach, it could be a crib towards identifying possible underlying language families.

This is both interesting and tricky inscription.

First of all, I would say that ch was written some time after yto ail. This follows from its somewhat smaller size and the change of the direction of its baseline. The appearance is as if ch had to be fit into the little space to the right of ail. Now, if the right margin of this folio has ever been trimmed, this Voynichese ch was inserted after the trimming. Which is interesting implication in itself.

If so, then the whole interesting chain of events expands: someone proficient in Voynichese was inserting important (if of no importance, noone would bother to fit the ch in there) additions at the period of time when the MS already began to undergo trimming.

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BTW, note the stain in this very region common for f2 and f3

It could be a "CL", too faint to be sure.

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No, it's definitely ch, wrtitten at roughly 20 degrees counterclockwise to the baseline

The only other possible option is sh

(09-08-2021, 04:54 PM)Anton Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.First of all, I would say that ch was written some time after yto ail.

A most interesting observation, it hadn't occurred to me. That would lend more credence to the thought that it is some type of modifier or intensifier.

(09-08-2021, 07:48 PM)Anton Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.The only other possible option is sh

Now that you said that i can see it