The Voynich Ninja

A new article by You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. : You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

I've been talking to her via Facebook Messenger. She joined the forum a few days ago.

(My summary) She relies on an original system of abbreviations/brachigraphy to compress Latin plaintext into Voynichese.

What worries me is that the system is complex and ambiguous. Also I am not sure if it is possible to decrease the entropy while compressing text. Maybe there is a way because of omission.

Helmut Winkler may be interested, I would very much like to read his comments.

It's spelt brachygraphy, not that it matters I suppose. It's an early version of shorthand. I don't understand why she's using the term.
I'm impressed that it only took her 35 days from "stumbling across" the manuscript for the very first time, to deciphering and publishing a paper on it.

I take a word at random (end of first paragraph) from a random page (f19v)- cthor

I look up the glyph correspondences in the article quoted:
cth

Quote:letters composition: c+T+t = cert… (word root), cum + t…(word initial)+t … (word final) compl… (word root)+ t …( word final) complet …(word root) letter composion c+T+c = com + pl(e) + c = complect…(word root)

I'm not entirely sure how to understand this, it's not very clear.

o

Quote:o, ob, od, mod, mon, pon, no (letter with a disambiguation role)

r

Quote:Li , Le, Les, Lem when the diacritical mark is long

Put this together we get:
complect | o, ob, od, mod, mon, pon, no | Li , Le, Les, Lem (I don't think diacritic is long so it's not plural)

complectoli 

Might it be Complecto or, if we change li to r, complector? (You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.)

OK, so we get a word, although we have to be ambiguous about the last glyph's meaning.

But the cth is a popular glyph. In the line above we have:
cthol
chocthy

The first word would be transliterated as complect | o, ob, od, mod, mon, pon, no | l, i 
And the second as : curt, curti | o, ob, od, mod, mon, pon, no | complet | us, um

The first word basically brings us back to the very first word, despite having a different glyph, because there isn't a strong Latin transliteration.
The second word is nonsense, or at least I can't find any combination in the Latin dictionaries.

(16-10-2021, 09:59 PM)davidjackson Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I'm impressed that it only took her 35 days from "stumbling across" the manuscript for the very first time, to deciphering and publishing a paper on it.

35 days ! Simply not good enough. Cheshire did it in 2 weeks.

Are the results linguistically correct? The person is 100% sure, and I do not understand anything of the mentioned method. If you have enough Latin knowledge, please check first paragraph of folio 6v. Thanks.

iol problema è che il glifo che hai esaminato ed esaminato non corrisponde a quello che ho descritto io
Quello che indichi ha suono C + que + t =
Cum que + parola che inizia per T
Cumque (parola) + T (iniziale della parola che segue) 

Poi ricordati che devi tenere conto che è brachigrafia, (stenografia +abbreviazione), quindi devi andare a cercare nel 'Lexicon abbreviaturarum " di Adriano Cappelli se le lettere che seguono, se non forma una parola di senso di significato di significato sono un' abbreviazione o un verbo . 
Se il risultato è una parola latina inesistente è un verbo all'infinito 
 : il sistema indica semvre una vocale disambiguante.in quest'ultimo caso

Prima regola : imparare a distinguere i glifi
Possono apparire uguali ma non lo sono. 

Inoltre, nell'alfabeto EVA i glifi sono troppo standardizzati.

Per es. Non tiene conto delle varie curvature dei segni diacritici

There are more detailed explanations, again for f1r:
You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

I don't have time this week, but a comparison with a sample from a very heavily abbreviated Latin manuscript would be interesting. I'm not sure if the ambiguities and the "filling in the gaps" are nearly at the same level. If there are too many, we go into "creative writing" and "one-way cipher" territory.

Maria, all posts to the forum must be in English. It is okay to use a translator like Google Translate before posting.

You shouldn't confuse the glyphs, of course this does not correspond to my explanation,

Questo è: C  Que t = cum que t.... 

and not  c T t

1st rule : don't confuse the glyphs
2nd rule : its brachigrafy ( stenography+ Latin abbreviation)

The glyphs are 2 or more latin letters merged toghether 

Ex. The glyph you have reported here is :
Q+e, latin pronounce fo Q  is : qu

In this manuscript Q is triangular shaped, so it's well recognizable.

---

Non dovresti confondere i glifi, ovviamente questo non corrisponde alla mia spiegazione,

Questo è: C Que t = cum que t.... 

e non c T t

1° regola: non confondere i glifi
2a regola: la sua brachigrafia (stenografia + abbreviazione latina)

I glifi sono 2 o più lettere latine unite insieme 

Ex. Il glifo che hai riportato qui è:
Q+e, la pronuncia latina fo Q è: qu

In questo manoscritto Q è di forma triangolare, quindi è ben riconoscibile.

The glyph that you are indicating as Li, is another problem of the EVA alphabet, it doesn't make any difference between ti, li, ri... In the manuscript you can see the differences in the hand writing.

(19-10-2021, 04:20 PM)Koen G Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Maria, all posts to the forum must be in English. It is okay to use a translator like Google Translate before posting.

Ah, our Anglo-centric world. English is my first language and so I tend to take it for granted that every thing online is in English(except of course in my Voynich research which revolves around latin and Italian). I suppose having a lingua franca is vital and important. And as an accident of history in 2021 that lingua franca is English. It wasn't always the lingua franca and it may not be in the future. Nevertheless I can sympathise with those who don't want this language imposed upon them. However I do agree with the forum administrators that it helps if posts on the forum are all written in the same language. Also Google Translate does a reasonable job of making comprehensible translations.