The Voynich Ninja

(25-05-2023, 09:07 AM)Helmut Winkler Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.1) The problem I have with all these observations, beginnimg with Currier is that no one can give me an explanaion

That's because they are unexplained.

Even without the word length statistics by Elmar Vogt, with debatable data and interpretations, there are a lot of observations, for example these two are extremely well known:

• m and g are mostly line-final (noticed by Prescott Currier). Could these be truncation marks, instead of -tis and -cis?
  
• The distribution of the first letter of the first word of paragraph lines is quite different from other words' first-letter distribution. Link to Emma May Smith's blog: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
  

There are many other statistical observations on lines discussed here and on blogs, including Patrick Feaster's "rightward" statistics: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

A few anti-patterns:

• Paragraph lines never start with cK or cF, never end with k.
  
• n never starts a word, unless it is alone, at the end of a line: not a normal behavior for the Latin abbreviation. Then, and only then (3 instances) it is written with a kind of serif, curved instead of slanted: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. like... a letter 'i' with macron. What does this suggest?
  

[attachment=7371]

You had a nice example on the link.

Sometimes it seems like there is no meaning behind it.
But if you write out the abbreviations, it can make sense.
The great thing about simplicity is that it always works.
So "avis" can become "vis" where there is only one "is" at the end. It's easy to understand, isn't it?


I've been hunting the fox for a long time.

I am struggling to follow your post and picture above.  
It reads as if you are saying "ad ust" is unabbreviated Latin for "to another", but this would be Google Translate being put to a purpose it isn't intended for.

It does.
"o8" = (ad), and "98" = (us t).
"9" can be (um) and (us).
Example: her9 = herum/around and Glar9 = Glarus. Normal use.
You can't blame Google here, the words are the same in other dictionaries too.
These combinations, no matter how you arrange them, always work and make sense.
Correctly written: "89 8'9 o8 98".  tum d'um ad ust

T and D are very distinct phonemes. I am sure that languages can be found where this is not the case, but I am equally sure that they are distinct in the majority of languages, and minimal pairs can be found.

Just as an example, in Thai there are even three phonemes:
- unvoiced aspirated
- unvoiced, not aspirated,
- voiced
and the words t(h)a, ta, and da all exist and have different meanings.

Allowing one voynich character to mean both d and t as the occasion needs, is a strong indication that the system using this 'does not work'.

OK, let's turn an "ad" into an "at".
I would certainly agree with you, but when I go through the old books, I also notice that both are present.
One pronounces it hard, the other rather soft. That's what makes the difference in the t/d application. Today that is certainly no longer possible. But what was it like around 1400 and, above all, where?


Latin and german. Item or Idem ?

(26-05-2023, 11:38 AM)Aga Tentakulus Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.It does.
"o8" = (ad), and "98" = (us t).
"9" can be (um) and (us).
Example: her9 = herum/around and Glar9 = Glarus. Normal use.
You can't blame Google here the words are the same in other dictionaries too.
These combinations, no matter how you arrange them, always work and make sense.
Correctly written: "89 8'9 o8 98".  tum d'um ad ust

I'm not blaming Google. It's trying its best when being used for a purpose it isn't intended for.  If you give it a bit of sensible Latin, it should give you an accurate translation in English; it's got a lot better at that in recent years.  But if you give it nonsense, it will try to make sense of it even if it results in an incorrect "translation". You can test it by plugging in your phrase de unum ad ust and then changing ust to uwe, uee, urt, uyt, uut, uit, uot etc and it gives the same answer. 

You say you found the "ad ust" meaning in other dictionaries - could you please share this? My Latin is admittedly rusty but I do not know this phrase  and it does not sound Latin to me. Nor does it come up in any dictionaries I can see.  I have seen "ad alius" used occasionally in certain contexts but that is very different from yours, especially as you say ad ust is the unabbreviated version.

May I offer a Slavic perspective to the T/D confusion. I believe you are both right. The T/D spelling causes many spelling mistakes even by Slovenian speakers, and with foreigners, even more. Only Slavic people can spell my name correctly, but others most often spell it as SUEDKA. You can imagine how much more confusion it was in the Middle Ages.
There are many Slovenian words that are spelled the same and have different meaning. There are words that are pronounced the same and spelled differently: this would be most frequent mistakes in the VM since it is written in phonetic orthology. Slovenian speakers can understand the meaning from the context: When POD (pronounced as POT) is followed by a noun, it cannot mean granary - POD (also pronounced as POT), nor POD - floor, bottom (also pronounced as POT).  Various grammatical suffixes could be tried to figure out etymology, like POD (POT - floor) and PODEN (alternative for POD/POT - like German Boden). POT spelled and pronounced as POT could mean perspiration or path, road. POT POTITI means perspire, PO POD/POT PODITI means 'chase on the road'. 
The reasons for this confusion are the sound changes that often affect the root (making voiced D into unvoiced, or voiced T into Unvoiced), and the similarity of the pronunciation of those sounds, causing spelling mistakes (even consistent one) [attachment=7372]

Understanding etymology is also very important. Slovenian word TROSTAT is in fact Slovenicized German TROSTEN -  Trost + (geb)EN  (consolation give)  thus became Slovenian TROST + (D)AT.   In a similar way, German THAILEN  became TALLAT in Slovenian. The alternative Slovenian word for divide is DELIT (DEIL is like German THAIL) + suffix -IT. By adding suffix -i to a verb DELIT/DELID, we get DELIDI (Latin Y was changed in Slovenian to either i or j). It is possible that this mistaken rationality, based on phonetic, is the reason for all those VM suffixes -dy, since there seems to be no suffixes -t or -ty (for infinitive). There are also many Slovenian suffixes for different Slovenian grammatical forms, that could result in so many EVA -dy endings.

The copied words are taken from the 4-way German, Latin, Slovenian and Italian dictionary, and the darker pictures from the German Slavic Etymology book.

@Helmut
I don't know if you are addressing me.
But I distinguish between abbreviations like "RIP or PN" and "d' or v' and 9".
The abbreviation theory will not work for the whole VM text. It's just too much for that. Ergo no.