The Voynich Ninja

(11-09-2024, 12:00 PM)nablator Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

(10-09-2024, 06:17 PM)cvetkakocj@rogers.com Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Together with o, it forms one of the most frequent Slovenian prefixes PO- which among other things is used to form perfective verbs, which can be in present, past and future tense. Such prefixed words can also be used for derivates, such as adjectives and nouns.

Yes, but there are far more entries in this dictionary (dated 1781) for words starting with PA, PE, PI, PL, PR, PU, PY. This is exactly what Koen's video is about: the next letter given the current letter is much more predictable in Voynichese than in any European language. I haven't seen any evidence that P is almost always initial in some dialect of 15th century Slovenian, that it does not use (or rarely uses) A E I L R U Y after initial P or that most of them can be written O without loosing meaning. Why would they even consider doing that in a supposedly unenciphered/unobfuscated text? Compressing the alphabet does help reduce the entropy but it is not a reasonable option.

 Hi, Nablator, let me first apologize for incorrectly spelling your 'name' and thank you for the entropy calculator which is of great help to me. I am using it to compare my transliteration of VM and ZL transliteration to see what changes increase or decrease the entropy.
Because the style of writing  creates many predictable by glyphs (the writing in the first person present tense would have much more -am, -im suffixes, the past and future tense would have more -l suffixes, the imperative mood more -dy suffixes) the larger text is required for the correct entropy. I am still working on that, comparing different Slovenian text from the 16th century with the VM.  Slovenian one-to-one translation comes about to h 2,5, and I was able to raise the ZL to about 2.4 with find and replace button. Both transliterations require further adjustments that could only be made manually. I am still working on that.
The Voynich manuscript has a very limited vocabulary, taken mostly from the peasant everyday language, which is comprised of short one syllable roots  and suffix, and in many words also the prefixes. Many one-syllable words even contain root and suffix, like DAM, DAL, DA, DAS (inflectional forms of DATI- to give). Othervise, the most one syllable words are conjunctions, pronouns, prepositions.  There are no articles in Slovenian language, because the information about number, gender, case, verbal tenses, conjugations, etc. is contained in the suffixes.
 
I hadn't fully analyzed the words starting with p, or po, but I did find a few words starting with py, pe, pu, however in that small percentage of word starting with p, but not followed with o, most are followed by an unwritten semi-vowel which would not normally follow the letter p in Slovenian language. I suppose the reason why O was not dropped in the prefixes is that the prefixes originate from preposition, and that the author was aware of that. In other words, where PO represent intitial two letters, like POT (path, road) and POT (sweat, perspiration) the vowel O is long, but slightly differently pronounced.
The letter P is not limited to the initial position in the word but to my surprise, I did not find the word where I felt the letter P was missing. I found many words where G was missing or where k was used for g sound. Perhaps this was caused by limited vocabulary and by one syllable roots, like in the word POK (pokati – to split), or the VM word POPOKAL (he popped).  In the best standardized 16th century text, containing 6500  words, I found only three different words where p was in the middle of the word, and non as final. In Trubar's writing from 1550's, I found only three words where p was not initial (excluding prefixed words) – gospudi,Sastopnishe,  hlapez. Neither of these words would be expected in the VM. Even in my own contemporary Slovenian writing I only found 3 words containing p that is not a prefix. It is strange that I became aware of that after I started investigating in order to give you the answer. I suppose my brain did not found that unnatural.
The vocabulary of 1781, written by the Slovenian author is the first dictionary where Slovenian words are listed first and is intended for the Slovenian writers. He greatly expanded the existing vocabulary with new words by using more versatile prefixes and combined words.
I am sending you two grammar articles to show you the consistent grammar patterns.

EVA QO and other weird features of the VM language found in Slovenian medieval texts

I have typed some medieval Slovenian texts for the comparison with the VM. Besides the peculiarity of QO-PO, which in all texts is mostly limited to the beginning of the words, except in the words that were created later for the purpose of Bible translation and other religious texts. There are other statistical similarity, like correspondence of some letters with the VM, including low or non-existent j, g, f. The first file contains original texts, the second contains some of my notes and calculation and the text ready for analysis, and the 3 file contains the copy of the Slovenian phonetic words written in Italian spelling convention. In the introduction the author from Apulia explains for which sounds he used Latin letters or combination of letters.
While the language s basically the same, the text show the changes in the language that look some complicated cipher. While some Voynich words, transcribed with EVA or with SLO-VA can be found in these texts, many adjustments are needed, because some words remained in one dialect, some in others, which means that they are spelled differently, but have the same meaning.

I am sorry, I forgot to post the third file with the Italian explanation of Slovenian medieval language. I hope Marko can study it.

(06-10-2021, 03:24 AM)cvetkakocj@rogers.com Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I had not lived in Slovenia for fifty years so I am not aware that the youth in Ljubljana had adopted this 'pudgurski' speeč, spoken in my youth, and even before me for hundreds of years.

I may be wrong and it may be a feature of the Lower Carniola dialect rather than Ljubljana. My father was from Ribnica but I don't recall how he pronounced "ljudje". So you may be correct on this one.

Quote:You say, there is no Slovenian suffix -or, how about major, kolodvor, zapor, odpor, napor, prapor .... I don't think Slovenians used the word DARITELJ in the 15th century, so the foreign writer who wrote VM, would have to invent the word for the one who gives offering from the word DAR.

Yes, but that's not an -or suffix, and also not of shared etymology. "Major" is from Latin where -or is a productive suffix, it's a comparative, the rest are Slavic, and are derivatives of the verbal suffix -perti. But it hasn't been a productive suffix probably ever since Proto-Slavic split into all the various dialects.

Quote:The imperative for DAJ was most likely DJ which a foreign writer would write as DY, because J was not yet in use. The vowes in such phonetic words were inserted later.  There were no books written in Slovenian before the VM, and the Stična Codex was certainly not in public display.  No peasant in Dolenjska would even today say DAJ.

But it has a vowel in literally every other languag and most other Slovenian dialects - day in Russian and Ukrainian, da in Italian (from Latin dā), daj or dej in the Littoral or Primorska dialect of Slovenian spoken here in Koper but also in Gorica, etc. The vowel also appears in all the other verb forms, including in Slovenian, eg. dati, Russian dat', Latin dō.

Quote:I am not discussing Venetic language, but the medieval Slovenian language, which was close enough to Czeck, so that I could understand most of the manuscript, written in Czeck in the middle of 15th century.  There is a lot that there that could help me understand certain things in the VM, that for today sound strange, like the absence of letter G.

Only some dialects of Slovenian back then had h instead of g, and their descendants today retain that feature. One example is the Gorica dialect spoken by our current Prime Minister Dr. Robert Golob, hence why he's been nicknamed "Holob", which sounds very close to the Czech "Holub" which was the family name of one of my classmates and good friends ijn primary school.

Now, given the Ghibelline merlons in the Voynich manuscript, there's a distinct Italian influence, if the Voynich Manuscript is indeed in Slovenian, then I'd put it in the part of Slovenia with at the time the most Italian influence - the municipalities of Koper (Capodistria), Izola (Isola), and Piran (Pirano), then in the Most Serene Republic of Venice, where the towns were majority Italian but the surrounding rural henterland was majority Slovenians. Now, some rural dialects here retain the h instead of g still today, but the Imperative of dati is daj or dej, never dj or dǝj. In fact, the traditional Littoral dialect coalesces the /e/ and /ɛ/ into /ɛ/ and /o/ and /ɔ/ into /ɔ/, and most dialect also coalesce /ǝ/ into /ɛ/, giving us /pɛs/, /tɛrst/, etc. So the imperative in question would be /daj/ or /dɛj/, with a strong preference for the former due to the influence of "dai" from Italian.

The other likely area would be the area around Karst and Gorica, there, /ǝ/ is indeed common, in fact, there's a lot coalescence into it, I recommend listening to Iztok Mlakar's pronunciation to see a very good example of that kind of speech. But given how common /ǝ/ is there, I would expect it to be written down. The reason Slovenian doesn't write the /ǝ/ before the r, is because we adopted the Gaj alphabet which never had a letter for that, but we did very clearly write it down in the earlier Bohorič alphabet, where it was written down as "e": Terſt, pert, zhert, pervi, terk, peſ, etc. I wouldn't even exclude, based on this, that it was, in fact, pronounced /e/ or /ɛ/ at some point, which would make the Adriatic Sea Coast speech more archaic in that regard - in Czech, for example, except for before the r (where they have syllabic r instead), they do have e there - pes, etc. But the Slovenian Gaj alphabet does still write the /ǝ/ when it's not before r - we write pes, not ps.

Now, in old Slavic, this was short i (ĭ / ь) and short u (ŭ / ъ) - pьsъ, pьrvъ, etc. So the reduction is a subsequent development mostly limited to Czech, Slovak, and the South Slavic languages. Polish has pies, pierwszy, etc., Ukrainian has pes, pershyj, Russian has pyos, pervyj, etc.

So specifically for Slovenian, I would expect that the older a written document is, the less reduced the sounds would be. The next step from there is identifying the most likely area of origin, what dialects are spoken there today, and therefore, what the dialects spoken there at the time were most likely to sound. And from what I see, the only match to your criteria (h instead of and dǝj instead of daj) and the Italian influence seen in the manuscript itself, are the Gorica and Karst dialects.

(12-09-2024, 01:57 AM)cvetkakocj@rogers.com Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.In other words, where PO represent intitial two letters, like POT (path, road) and POT (sweat, perspiration) the vowel O is long, but slightly differently pronounced.

Again, only in in some dialects, such as Ljubljana and Gorenjska. Over here, both are quite assuredly /pɔt/, and the same goes for Styria / Štajerska, and in the Gorica dialect, both are /puat/ or /puǝt/. In the Carinthia / Koroška dialect, they are distinct, but it retains the nasal vowels, so there, it's /pǫt/ and /poːːːːːːː:t/.

(26-09-2024, 05:55 AM)Battler Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

(12-09-2024, 01:57 AM)cvetkakocj@rogers.com Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.In other words, where PO represent intitial two letters, like POT (path, road) and POT (sweat, perspiration) the vowel O is long, but slightly differently pronounced.

Again, only in in some dialects, such as Ljubljana and Gorenjska. Over here, both are quite assuredly /pɔt/, and the same goes for Styria / Štajerska, and in the Gorica dialect, both are /puat/ or /puǝt/. In the Carinthia / Koroška dialect, they are distinct, but it retains the nasal vowels, so there, it's /pǫt/ and /poːːːːːːː:t/.

Hi, there,
I am glad you are having a second look at Slovenian theory, and I appreciate your corrections of your previous statements.
Let me get to your last statements:
1. At the time of my youth, the dialect in Lower Carniola was well preserved because there were no compulsory schools until the end of the 19th century in my village (Brusnice, Gaberje). Also, the Vlachs on the other side of Gorjanci provided the buffer for peasants to stay on their side. The word LJUDJE was declined as follows: ldje/aldje, ldi /aldi, ldjem/ldjem, ldi/aldi, prldjeh/peraldjeh, zldmi/zaldmi. There were some peasant phrases where the word LJUDJE was pronounced as LUDI, like 'kulker ludi, tulko čudi'. The old people in Suha Krajina also used the word LDJE/ALDJE.

2. It is true that the suffix -or is not Slavic, however we must not forget that the Slavic lands in central Europe were mostly Germanized after the expulsion of Methodius' Slavonic priests. The liturgy was Latin so it would be reasonable to expect that the foreign writer would  use the Latin suffixes to Slovenian words to form nouns, if there was no Slovenian word for them. Because of the akanje, some -or suffixes remained in Slovenian language as -ar. In the linguistic 'clean-up' in subsequent centuries, Latin and other suffixes were changed to Slavic, like SVEČAR to SVETNIK or SVEČENIK.

[attachment=9275]


3. DY – DEJ – DAY –DY is one of the most complicated by-glyph in the VM because of its great frequency. This is also one of the reasons why the entropy does not work (too many dy-byglyphs). It is true that DAL and DEJ are spelled with a vowel in all Slovenian documents, however the author of the VM did not see Freising Manuscript, nor Stična Codex, so he was writing the words as he heard them. He used the y for initial and final letters as a substitute for the OCS half-sounds yat and yer, for which two different letters existed, so that the sounds they capture were i, j, ij, ei, ai, ji. When Latin letters began to be used for Glagolitic letters, the semi-vowels were left unwritten, so that DY could be pronounced as dej, daj, di (which of course complicates Slovenian translation). On top of that, the foreign writers also had difficulty distinguishing between T and D sounds, so that DY in the VM also stands for -TY suffix in many words, but not exclusively.
In my dialect, we had the distinction how the e is pronounced in dam or in daj (where aj is pronounced as diphthong).
The clue that my explanation of DY is correct could be found in the way some imperatives of combined words were pronounced, not just in different dialects, but in the same dialect, different from person to person.
POGLED + DAJ – pogledaj – look!
POGLED + DEJ – pogledej – look!
POGLED +DY – pogledi!  - look!
POGLED + I – pogledi (n. Pl.)
POGLED + I - poglej!

POVED + DAJ – povedaj – tell!
POVED + DEJ – povedej – tell!
POVED + DY – povedi – tell
POVEJ – tell!


G – H controversy: At the time Ottokar was Bohemian king, he extended his kingdom all the way to the Adriatic coast, which means that Slovenians were under Czech rule and cultural influence. The Mainhardiners with the seat in Gorz had most direct cultural connection with Czecks, which could be the reason why the dialect retained h for g sounds. At some point, this pronunciation must have been in Štajerska as well, otherwise POHORJE would be called POGORJE. The use of vernacular languages was promoted also by Emperor Charles from Luxembourg/Premyslid dynasty in the 14th century. The author of the VM could have been influenced by the Czech monks in Jurklošter.
After careful analysis, I noticed that g is often left out, like in CHEAR (ČEGAR), or K is used for G (POKAN – POGAN), or 9-shaped y might have been used (like in Czech ).

4. It is also worth remembering that the dialects were not as localized as they are today, and that mixture of Croatian Glagolitic influence, most prominent in Koper, extended to Dolenjska as well by the Glagolitic priests, so that the VM is the mixture of peasant Slovenian pronunciation and in some words, particularly for religious terminology, the OCS, and Glagolitic influences of the coastal 'Schiavone' language are noted.
Your assumption' that the older the document, the less reduced the sound would be' is based on the assumption that the OCS had a lot of vowels. This is true, but when the scribes began to use Latin letters instead of Glagolitic or Cyrillic, they left out short vowels and semi-vowels in in many Slavic languages. The subsequent insertion of the vowels resulted in the spelling confusion and in dialects, which mostly differ by the way the vowels are pronounced.
Aa for POT (path, road) and POT (sweat, perspiration) – In our dialect, the pronunciation of these two words was all over the place. There are only a few such words in the VM, that is why I am not that concerned. However, the prefix PO is important, because it causes most headaches to the VM researchers. I noticed that by the 16th century, many Slovenian  PO- prefixes were changed to PRE- or PR-  which would reduce the PO by glyph and improve entropy.

5. Ghibelline merlons – The question is not even settled if the picture the researchers believe to be a castle, is actually a castle, and if the strange pattern is an allusion to the Ghibelline merlons. The trapezoid roofs with two-pronged metal poles on top of the towers is indicative of the alpine style, such as the roofs on Žiška kartusia or on the Celjski grad. 

By the way, let me also clarify my statement that the PAN was a Venetic deity. Your correction that he was the Greek deity is correct according to the Wikipedia, however, if you dig farther into the history, you can find that Pan was a deity of Venetic (Pelagonian) -Pelasgians settled from the Balkans in Greece before the Greece came into existence. He was depicted as a wild white man with goats’ legs. He was one of the oldest, pre-Olympian gods.
In Egypt, the sign for the Capricorn was depicted as a white or a brown goat with fish tail.

[attachment=9277][attachment=9278][attachment=9279]

I don't really want to go into detail here on the subject of battlements.
To point 5.
In fact, it could also be a palace. But as the construction stages show, it used to be much smaller.
The norm: residential tower approx. 1-2 storeys. Later a wall around it. Is it already a castle now? The beginnings were in the 900th century. What happened until the 1400th century? It is quite clear that it was a castle in the beginning.
Further, I know there are none north of the Alps before 1500, but how far east I can only guess. But from a political point of view, I would draw the line here. (picture).

As for the roofs, they were everywhere.
With the masts. Be careful between old flags and weather masts and modern lightning conductors.

(27-09-2024, 08:40 PM)Aga Tentakulus Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I don't really want to go into detail here on the subject of battlements.
To point 5.
In fact, it could also be a palace. But as the construction stages show, it used to be much smaller.
The norm: residential tower approx. 1-2 storeys. Later a wall around it. Is it already a castle now? The beginnings were in the 900th century. What happened until the 1400th century? It is quite clear that it was a castle in the beginning.
Further, I know there are none north of the Alps before 1500, but how far east I can only guess. But from a political point of view, I would draw the line here. (picture).

As for the roofs, they were everywhere.
With the masts. Be careful between old flags and weather masts and modern lightning conductors.

Hi, Aga, 
the line of the battlements in the present day Slovenia was not as straight as you imagine. The war of Welfs was going on for centuries and it had great effect on the medieval Slovenian speaking lands. It also had a lot to do with the Old Church Slavonic liturgy that was pronounced heretical by German bishops and with the 'heretical' religious fractions, such as Cathari in France, Patareni in Northern Italy (center in Milano), and Bogomils in Bosnia, where they enjoyed the status of the  state Church, separated from Rome, up to the middle of the 15th century, as well as with the Waldensians, English Lolards, and Bohemian Hussites. One of the main efforts of all these 'heretical' religious movements was to introduced the vernacular languages in liturgy.
 From the overall illustrations in the Voynich Manuscript, it is clear that the author was not focused on the Guelph party and its construction features, because his view on religion was different than the view of the Roman popes. It was more in view with Dante and his focus on genuine mystical religious tradition, on religious morality and simplicity and its return to genuine apostolic Christianity all those religious movement were advocating.  
Since Slovenians had no state of their own since ancient Carantania, their history belonged to German/Austrian, Italian, Hungarian, even Bohemian. While Slovenian language was preserved by peasant people who spoke no other languages, nobility was mixed, so that the search for pure ethnic roots would be pointless. 
I have tried to sort the historical information I was able to collect in regard to Welfs and Habsburgs and how they relate to the region of the present day Slovenia. I hope you can improve my notes, since most books on these subjects were written in German.

For what it's worth, the Praetorian Palace here in Koper also has the Ghibelline merlons:
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(29-09-2024, 04:13 AM)Battler Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.For what it's worth, the Praetorian Palace here in Koper also has the Ghibelline merlons:

This illustrates why some digging is required when collecting swallowtail merlons. According to the wiki, construction in this building began in 1452-1453, and it reached its current appearance during the 17th century. I don't know when the merlons were added, but it would certainly have been after 1450.