Wow! this is my first post on this forum. How exciting to be part of the whole Voynich gang
So, please bear over with me, if my questions are trivial to this forum.
I've read the recent article(s) By Jessica Scott, but I can't make heads or tales of her voynich to Latin translation.
Then again, I'm no linguist, but it struck me that the folio in question (1r) contains some of the more common token-words found in the VM (including "Daiin", "or" and "shol").
If Ms. Scott has indeed translated the page in its entirety, it would seem we now have a Latin translation for these tokens.
I just can't figure out what this might be, from the article.
Also, Jessica Scott has translated a voynich word into "seed" ("semen"). I would expect this token-word to occur quite frequently in the botanical part of the book. Does anyone have a clue Which token she translates into seed ?
Welcome!
It seems difficult to figure out exactly how the Latin was produced. "Gestalt Perception" allows quite a lot of freedom of interpretation...
samen (not Latin) /semen is daiin, according to The Translation of The Voynich Manuscript: Folio 1r page 16.
I have browsed these two papers.
They are of decent quality, or at least better than many other proposed solutions that we have seen.
Still I believe it doesn't hit the spot.
The author doesn't present her results in any systematic way but she seems to believe that Voynichese isn't any unique cipher but just a collection of medieval ligatures and abbreviations, used in other works as well. So she browses through Capelli collections of ligatures, picks some that are similar to Voynichese words and that's it. If there is some abbreviation for "semen" in Capelli and some similar looking word in Voynich, then it's "semen". Simple, no frequency analysis or other stuff is required.
Unfortunately it's cherry picking. You choose a few words that fit you and leave 90% of other words unexplained. It was done in the past, with no good results.
I'm also not sure also about this "Gestalt Perspective", whatever it is. Actually it's not any common idea, Google returns nothing for that. There was Gestalt psychology dealing with human perception in early 20th century but how it relates to a manuscript written 500 years earlier is a mystery for me.
(16-07-2024, 02:04 PM)Rafal Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I'm also not sure also about this "Gestalt Perspective", whatever it is.
I think it means that words should be looked at as a whole, not analytically glyph by glyph.
"Gestalt theory emphasizes that
we perceive things as a whole rather than individual components."
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(16-07-2024, 02:04 PM)Rafal Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I have browsed these two papers.
They are of decent quality, or at least better than many other proposed solutions that we have seen.
Is it the paper that is of decent quality or the solution?
Personally I prefer a fanciful solution presented in due form to a credible solution presented in a fanciful manner.
P.S. Today's students do not hesitate to use AI, which may explain the bugs in bibliographic references.
(16-07-2024, 02:51 PM)nablator Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. (16-07-2024, 02:04 PM)Rafal Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I'm also not sure also about this "Gestalt Perspective", whatever it is.
I think it means that words should be looked at as a whole, not analytically glyph by glyph.
"Gestalt theory emphasizes that we perceive things as a whole rather than individual components."
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Well, if we approach Voynich text on a word level and not break it into glyphs, then it's basically a nomenclator or book cipher approach.
So you have have a long list of words where word structure doesn't matter. It's the same as you had these words numbered: word number 928=flower, 929=water, 930=leaf, 931=grow and so on. In such case a digit like 9 itself doesn't mean anything indeed.
It is actually possible although it would be the longest nomenclator ever.
There has to be more to this "gestalt perspective" than "it's basically a code" though? I hope...
(16-07-2024, 04:14 PM)Rafal Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Well, if we approach Voynich text on a word level and not break it into glyphs, then it's basically a nomenclator or book cipher approach.
Not exactly, because what Voynichese words look like, as a whole, matters (a little) especially if there is something vaguely similar in Cappelli. Any resemblance to actual abbreviated Latin can be used to seed the creative writing... Also the same Voynichese text can be interpreted differently in different contexts.
This is not completely unreasonable because in some manuscripts with messy, difficult-to-read cursive handwriting, it's impossible to separate and identify the glyphs: you have to rely on what entire words look like, intuitively. However the VMs is quite the opposite type of handwriting: most glyphs are easy to identify.
(12-07-2024, 01:59 PM)nablator Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.samen (not Latin) /semen is daiin, according to The Translation of The Voynich Manuscript: Folio 1r page 16.
The author suggests that this word could well be frequent in a herbal manuscript, but this is entirely unlikely.
Thanks to Marco's transcription effort, we have the electronic text of an alchemical herbal, and if my counts are correct, the five most frequent words are:
et (585)
de (186)
in (182)
ad (148)
accipe (140)
With the exception of the last one, these are the types of words that should be expected to be among the most frequent.
Also, neither 'semen' nor 'samen' appear at all in this text.
There is just one: 'sementibus'.
I do not know if that is related to seeds in any way.
It is sementis, -is f., more or less the same as semen,-inis n.,'seed' - Samen is GER seed
As I have said before, the abbr. means 'dicit Avicenna'