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"Example: the four-character word
kchsy is converted to a 10-character word"
What happens if only half of a character (EVA ch) is displayed?
Doesn't that make it 2 letters? That would make it 5 characters.
Sometimes we forget the diversity of the VM text.
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For example, the endings with an arc also mean more letters. And it is also not mandatory that they only have to be at the end of a word, as various texts in other books prove.
It is well known that (Eva 9) can also mean -us / -um. No matter whether German or Latin. That's 2 again.
Now there are already 7 letters. The thing is, once you have fixed it, it is difficult to change it.
Stay away from a one-to-one translation.
(21-02-2024, 04:58 AM)Aga Tentakulus Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Doesn't that make it 2 letters? That would make it 5 characters.
Possibly, but it still means that half the characters of the word (balaustiis) has been added 'out of the blue'.
Then, to make it worse, the first
k may not be a letter at all, but rather a start marker.
Also unusual is that the first word, the name of the flower, is in dative or ablative plural....
(21-02-2024, 07:10 AM)ReneZ Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Then, to make it worse, the first k may not be a letter at all, but rather a start marker.
Any solution proposal should try and match at least the most well-known properties of Voynichese, like:
- Multiple gallows glyphs
(k, t, f, p) are uncommon in Voynichese words.
-
f and
p occur mostly on first lines of paragraphs.
Mapping all gallows to letters of a language that has no such limitations makes no sense: many common Latin words that contain several letters among [bdgnpqvx], like "non", are ciphered with sequences of Voynichese glyphs that don't exist.
(20-02-2024, 07:54 PM)tavie Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.... and it would also be interesting to see what the gender balance of solvers is.
I hope Google made a mistake in translating.
(21-02-2024, 10:12 AM)nablator Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.- Multiple gallows glyphs (k, t, f, p) are uncommon in Voynichese words.
- f and p occur mostly on first lines of paragraphs.
Excellent points of course.
Davidsch's First Theorem comes to mind:
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It's interesting that not only translation attempts are all similar, but also the next steps are the same: more and more quantity with the same (lack of) quality; "I need a language expert to fix the tiny details that might be missing"...
Maybe it's linguistic pareidolia. Vord bunnies. In the attempted interpretation of this unknown language, it is only natural to see things in reference to what is known and preferred by the individual investigators. These are 'ivory tower" investigations. Generally, one person develops an idea, goes off on a self-selected feedback loop, and comes up with a proposed solution. René has the history.
Instead of waiting for the next proposed solution, how about taking a different approach based on the ninja community? What can be determined by a focused investigation on specifically selected text segments from the VMs?
(21-02-2024, 05:14 PM)Ruby Novacna Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I hope Google made a mistake in translating.
This is not the case in this thread, because Rustandi has been very polite and nice. But the behaviour of some "solvers", e.g. Cheshire, reminds me of the worst kind of mansplainers.
It takes a certain degree of self-confidence to believe that you can be - and indeed are - the one to solve it when so many people before you, including expert cryptographers and linguists, have failed. And to keep on at it when everyone else is telling you that you are wrong.
Women are often socialized to be less confident, to hedge our opinions, to second-guess ourselves, and to doubt and minimize our own abilities and expertise both to ourselves and others. A lot of threads or publications by "solvers" tend to display the opposite behaviour. For example, Cheshire claiming he succeeded where others failed because of his "special brain", and making basic mistakes in palaeography and linguistics while claiming experts in those areas were wrong.
Of course you will still get confident female "solvers" (we have seen them), and it's probably not possible to ascertain gender-based trends from the data, especially if there are intervening variables, but it would be interesting.
Perhaps one should first look for an explanation for Unusual.
For example, the letter "K" is also synonymous with "C".
In the Latin word "Kalenda", the "K" appears at the front, but hardly ever in the word. The letter "C" is usually used in the word.
From that point of view, it would now also be a starter.
Now it is suddenly no longer strange, now it is even a possible clue.
(21-02-2024, 10:59 PM)tavie Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Of course you will still get confident female "solvers" (we have seen them), and it's probably not possible to ascertain gender-based trends from the data, especially if there are intervening variables, but it would be interesting.
It's probably best to stop this discussion in public, tavie. No because it is not interesting, but because it can only lead to very unpleasant situations. If someone wanted to counter your argument, they would provide names of women who are being just as annoyingly overconfident as the male examples you mention. The next part of the discussion would be to see if there are actually more men displaying this behavior than women. This would require you to determine the total number of solvers first (there may just be more men overall, so also more difficult characters among them). This, in turn, would have you round up everyone who has submitted a theory, and then classify their behavior as "mansplaining" or "not mansplaining". (The use of the word "mansplaining" already introduces a certain bias in the way we'd observe people's behavior).
In short, before you know it, you'd be organizing a public tribunal about dozens of people's behavior (people of all genders) and it would lead to great bitterness.
A more objective thing you could research, is to see which percentage of people who are convinced they have a solution will change their mind when confronted with massive evidence against their theory. But I reckon the percentage is close to 0, regardless of gender...
(22-02-2024, 08:07 AM)Koen G Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.But I reckon the percentage is close to 0, regardless of gender...
I am not aware of any definite cases. I have experienced some cases where the person changed from one untenable theory to another one, and it is not clear if that was influenced by criticism received, or it was their own initiative....
Some of my best contacts are from both (traditional) sexes, and some of my worst as well.
Good idea to drop that aspect.