The Voynich Ninja

That's what English Wikipedia says, though it then contradicts itself by saying the straircase in the front was finished in 1447. This is more consistent with that Italian Wikipedia says, which puts the beginning of the construction in 1447, which means the stair case in the front would have been the first to be finished, and the end of the construction in mid 16th century.

The fact remains that they only started building merlons like these in certain areas after the VM was made. This is not nitpicking, it's an important point of reference we have for localization.

Of course, the line does not run like this. But to search and control further east, you need a drifting reason. It is merely a line.
But now there is a second clue.
This is the roadblock for customs and tolls. But it was also a safe place to spend the night. Mostly in front of passes. Walls are difficult to see today.
You don't build something like that in the lowlands, you could simply bypass it.
[attachment=9296]
So I rule out the whole Po Valley (mostly marshland) and the lowlands of Slovenia. The south is bordered by the German language. There's not much left now. The edge of the Alps or in the Alps themselves. I exclude the western part of northern Italy on the basis of the dialect (Welsh German) and the crown (Habsburg /Zacken) and not Italy (Kleeblatt).
That's how I see it. And now you need serious reasons to consider another region.
[attachment=9297][attachment=9298]
There are about 100 such barriers (Klausen).

Translated with DeepL.com (free version)

(30-09-2024, 01:21 AM)Aga Tentakulus Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I exclude the western part of northern Italy on the basis of the dialect (Welsh German) and the crown (Habsburg /Zacken) and not Italy (Kleeblatt).
That's how I see it. And now you need serious reasons to consider another region.

My theory is not built on flowers, nor on castles and the shapes of merlons, but rather on the language which is definitely not German, nor Latin. I do not need any reason to consider another region, because the author I have in mind, could have been influenced by the Swabian language and culture, being a native of Strasbourg. The northern Italian fashion was also characteristic of some Slovenian regions. 
If your line implies the border between Alpine region of Slovenia and the Pannonian Plains, this does not correspond with the natural geographical location, nor with historical political divisions, which did not just move the borders, but also create islands of different feudal estates. The green colour on the map does not mean that there were no mountain passes east of your line. Before the tunnel was built in Trojane, there was a mountain pass  with significant historical name, and there was no way around. Many crusaders took that road, as did Roman soldiers centuries before them.
As I said, the language is the most reliable clue and comparing it to the present day Ladin is even worse than to compare it to the present day Slovenian. The language is a living, changeable thing. Did you know that Slovenian was also spoken in Carinthia, Southern Tyrol and Northern Italy in the 15th century.  Canadian linguist Tom Priestly spend several decades studying how Slovenian language was changing over time in the Austrian village of Sela valley. When in the 16th century, first Slovenian books were printed, one third of them were distributed among Carinthians Slovenians, which means that they were able to read and understand the Dolenjska dialect, since the first Slovenian printed books were written in Dolenjska dialect.  As a matter of fact, the only copy of the first Slovenian translation of the Bible was preserved in the Sela in Austria, while other copies were confiscated and burned.  Sela are still the largest Slovenian speaking region in Austria, but the Slovenian minority there is gradually dying out. 
The spread of Protestantism in the 16th century would not have been so swift among Slovenians in Catholic Austria, if people were not conditioned and prepared for the Church reform and different interpretation of the Bible. 
The illustrations in the Voynich Manuscript are much different than the Catholic religious art at the time, which is good indicator that the author had a different view.

I'm just saying what the VM book says. Based on this data, it looks like this.
Which language do you mean? The only one you can really identify is German, and that's almost certainly in the Bavarian dialect.
Otherwise you can assign it however you like. If you think otherwise, that's OK, but you will lack the evidence.
Your example of the tunnel in Trojane is a bad example. These are hills, not mountains. But if you find a barrier wall there, that would be very interesting for me, because it's absolutely useless.

It is not the language that is wrong, but the method to convert the Voynich text to any language.

The method: 'simple substitution with some unclear adaptations and variations' does not only make it impossible to convert to Latin or German, but also other romance, germanic and indeed slavionic languages. And a whole lot more.

[quote='tavie' pid='61795' dateline='1729451188']
My own headcanon is that final m is an abbreviation for more than one final cluster, but that it's a less desirable abbreviation used predominantly near line end or image breaks because it has lower information content, and that radical transformation is going on elsewhere in the word ... if (and that's a big 'if') the assumption below holds.     

Tavie, what makes you believe that the percentage of certain letters are missing? In the highly inflective verbs, the mood dictates the percentage of verbs containing certain suffix. 
I can show you how that works in Slovenian, where the information about number, gender, person and mood is contained in a suffix, comprised of one or two letters.

You can imagine different section of the VM being written in 1st person singular with predominant verbal ending -m, or in the past tense with predominant -al, il suffix, or the writing in imperative mood, such as is used in prayers and instructions, with predominant -y, dy ending.
 
If this were the case for the entire section, certain letters of the suffix would be far more common at the final position.  

A similar verbal patterns apply for all the Slavic languages (although a suffix might be different, like -o instead of -l). 

First person singular, present tense, indicative mood:
In the morning, I get up, drink my coffee and go to work. I work four hours, then I go home, stop at the store, buy a few things to cook lunch.

Slovenian:

Zjutraj vstanem, se umijem, popijem kavo in grem na delo. Delam štiri ure, potem grem domov, se mimogrede ustavim v trgovini, kupim nekaj stvari, da doma skuham kosilo. (am is EVA aiin)

First person, singular, past tense, masc. Gender, indicative mood:

Zljutraj sem vstal, se umil, popil kavo in odšel na delo. Delal sem štiri ure, potem sem šel domov, se mimogrede ustavil v trgovini, kupil nekaj stvari, da sem doma skuhal kosilo.

Second person singular, present tense, indicative mood:

Zjutraj vstaneš, se umiješ, popiješ kavo in greš na delo. Delaš štiri ure in greš domov in se mimogrede ustaviš v trgovini, kupiš nekaj stvari, da doma skuhaš kosilo. (š is EVA sh)

First person plural, present tense, indicative mood:

Zjutraj vstanemo, se umejemo, popijemo kavo in gremo na delo. Delamo štiri ure in gremo domov. Mimogrede se ustavimo v trgovini, kupimo nekaj stvari, da doma skuhamo kosilo. (mo is EVA iino – not found in VM)

First person plural, past tense, indicative mood (dialectal without final i )

Zjutraj smo vtal, se umil, popil kavo in šli na delo. Delal smo štiri ure in šli domov. Mimogrede smo se ustavil v trgovini, kupil nekaj stvari, da smo doma skuhal kosilo.(The sufix -il is EVA -m).

Second person singular, imperative mood:

Zjutraj vstani, se umij, popij kavo in idi na delo. Delaj štiri ure in idi domov. Mimogrede se ustavi v trgovini, kupi nekaj stvari in doma skuhaj kosilo.

Changing i and y to Voynich like writing:

Ziutray vstany, se umiy, popy kavo y ydy na delo. Delay štiry ure y ydy domov. Mimogrede se ustavy v trgoviny, kupy nekay stvary y doma skuhay kosilo. (Note the visual high frequency of the y suffix!)

[quote="pfeaster" pid='61811' dateline='1729547465']
[quote="Koen G" pid='61796' dateline='1729455228']



It's hard to imagine [m] functioning in a simple substitution cipher as anything but a null, abbreviation, hyphenation, punctuation, or ornamentation.  But if the script works in some other way, I could imagine [m] serving a real purpose linked to some situation that happens to occur mostly at the ends of lines -- something beyond just marking or embellishing them.

Let's imagine just for the sake of argument that Voynichese is designed to encode text in blocks of two plaintext letters, and that plaintext words are never split across line boundaries or image intrusions.  If the quantity of plaintext characters in a line (or before an image intrusion) is even, there's no problem.  


I apologize for inserting some of my ideas into this post, but I believe the discussion about VM alphabet should not ignore Slavic grammar and the possible Slavic language of the VM.
I suppose this puzzle would not be solved as long as the VM glyphs (EVA m and g) are referred to as m and g, which automatically makes our brain think of Latin m and g. Since many VM glyphs resemble Latin letters, as suggested by many researchers, the first logical step would be to see which Latin letter EVA m represents. There are several clues in the VM text, among them the separately written letters i and l, which look exactly like Latin letters i and l (as well as EVA). Considering EVA m as ligature il (connected from the top of i to the bow in l), we get the reading -il, except that the l has extended tail. In a similar way, EVA g looks like Latin d (8-like shape being frequently used interchangeably with d, or for different sound of d). I believe that the 'tail' on both letters stands for missing semivowel at the end, which is pronounced, but not written.
Assuming that EVA m cannot be equivalent of Latin m, we need to find the Latin m in the VM. That, too, is not difficult, since the three minims have already been used in the 15th century for the Latin letter m, and two minims for n. The flourish on the last minim in the sequence of three minims might or might not be important, since the flourish was used inconsistently; some scribes used upward flourish, some shape it as downward 'tail', and some made the last three minims even. 
If the EVA m stands for il, we are faced with the question why the scribe felt he needed to form a ligature. The answer to this question can be found in Slavic grammar. In Cyrillic writing, iotated L had a special letter to indicate proper pronunciation. Slovenians would say 'ludi' (people), Serbians would say 'ljudi'. 
The iotation is a grammatical term for the sound change when L comes in contact with j like sound and acquires a lj- like sound. The lj in this case would be a diphthong. In the 16th century Slovenian writing, the final y was often replaced by ji or ij, but eventually, the final j was dropped.
Like -im, -am, -om (EVA -iiin, -aiin, -oiin), -al and -il  and -ol are among the most common inflectional suffixes. Such iotated l in -il, -ilj is always pronounced as -il. This suffix is used in verbs after the stem ending on i (hodi - he walks, je hodil - he walked, bo hodil - he will walk, bi hodil - he would walk). When the stem is ending on a, like in tola (Old word for he saves, he appeases), the past or future participle is tolal (for 3rd pers. sing. masc.), while the suffix for the first person singular is -tolam. A similar Slovenian word talal has means 'he was sharing', 'he was dividing'. EVA otalalg looks like otalald (supine), where a slight tail indicates non-written semivowel at the end.
I suppose the scribe had difficulty differentiating the pronunciation of final l, which in some words was pronounced as u or w, and in some words as l. Sometimes, the same word in different grammatical form is pronounced differently. 
Example: DAR (gift) - DARIM (I am giving gift) - SEM DARIL/SEM DARIU/SEM DARIW (both pronunciation were used in medieval Slovenian) - SO DARIL (phonetic for 'they were giving gifts'.  In this case, the proper infinitive would be DARILI (in VM darily), hence the final y was replaced by some scribes as y, and dropped by others.
The iotated il is also found in some nouns of neuter gender where final ending is dropped, like DARIL (instead of DARILO), KADIL (instead of KADILO). In these words, the final L cannot be pronounced as u or w.

Cvetka: please do not insert your theory into other threads. I understand you are passionate about this, but so are many other people about their own theory and if they'd all start pulling conversations towards their preferred solutions, this forum would turn into a bunch of deaf people yelling at each other. You are free to post in your theory thread what you like, including references to other threads.

(28-01-2025, 06:46 PM)cvetkakocj@rogers.com Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.No, definitely not. There may be some difference in conditional entropy, between highly inflected languages and less inflected langauages, but these differences are not significicant, and the conditional entropy of the Voynich MS text is way lower than that.

If the conditional entropy is low when the letter O can be predicted to follow P (like in Slovenian prefix used to form perfective verbs), or in -suffixes  -dam, or dy, transcribing them only as such eliminates other possible biglyphs and increases rigidity.

I think one way to check if would be to take something like Universal Declaration of Human Rights (or whatever text you prefer) and artificially replace all prefixes by "po" and all verb endings with "-am" (i.e., conjugate all verbs to be in a 1st person present singular). Something like this:

Quote:Vsi ljudje se rodijo svobodni in imajo enako dostojanstvo in enake pravice. Obdarjeni so z razumom in vestjo in bi morali ravnati drug z drugim kakor bratje.

Quote:Vsi ljudje se porodim svobodni in poimam enako postojanstvo in enake pravice. Podarjeni so z poumom in povestjo in bi moram ravnam drug z drugim kakor bratje.

I think the overall consensus here is that even this degree of mangling won't be enough to decrease h2 down to Voynich levels (recall that h2 measures not just regularities in prefixes/endings, but also regularities in the roots, which are more "random" in Slavic languages), but it would be interesting to actually check.