The Voynich Ninja

You're right. the ending looks more like....

-nia, -mia, -uia. And the beginning like.... un-, vu-, vul- val-.

Hmmm.
“-ia is not a normal German ending. Maybe in names like “Germania, Maria.
Indicates more Romanesque, and feminine. “Maria, Mario”.

Well, back to the books.

Instead of an 'l' or 'k', could the first letter of the third word possibly be an 'f' or not a chance? Like 'fvcʒ' ?

However, “fuez” german Fuss/feet would not make sense with “aller” and “her”. “aller Fuss ihr”

If it was just as easy as reading the letters, someone would have already figured it out by now, but even experienced researchers have trouble with this one. This marginalia either has some meaning obfuscated or none at all. Even considering the possibility of multiple languages at play, in most of the readings suggested so far the sentence doesn't make much sense at all taken at face value.

Could we at least agree that there's likely an intent to not make the marginalia as easily legible + meaningful as "Paint these green"? Can painting annotations or memos even get this much confusing in other MSs?

The translation is in
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It states: 
" malher alter  healing skin..."

 Marsh mallow. 
Voyniches "malher" comes from Galenis "malachen", Greeks molocha, "alter" is althoea-  healing.

It is used as  a perfect cure of irritations in the mouth, throat,  stomach and skin.
The last two words revealed from multispectral images are under investigation. I have some thoughts, but since I am not  quite sure will leave them for future.

Conclusion: The user, has made some clarifying notes on the foils. The user was a professional healer or doctor or herbalist. 
The language of the script was also not clear to him/her, or the notes were for other users and he was the coder.
The language is Czech and Latin.
Hope finally that you accept the truth and not dig into German words on this place of the script.
br: Vessy

There is no Czech in the VM.
The “uez / uess” is a typical Alemannic-Bavarian feature.
“kuez” is a language variant of ‘kurz’. With the overscore it should be “kurz-en”. With a short stick.
It can also be used in texts as “klein”.
That's short, that's short.
Even in northern Germany, the “r” is not always pronounced over kuez or lang


Es gib kein tschechisch im VM.
Das "uez / uess" ist ein typisch alemannisch-bayrisches Merkmal.
"kuez" ist eine Sprachvariante von "kurz". Mit dem Überstrich müsste es "kurz-en" heissen. Mit einem kurzen Stock.
Es kann auch in Texten als "klein" erwendet werden.
Das ist ja klein  das ist ja kurz.
Sogar im Norddeutschen Raum spricht man das "r" nicht immer. über kuez oder lang

(01-02-2025, 03:29 AM)RadioFM Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Could we at least agree that there's likely an intent to not make the marginalia as easily legible + meaningful as "Paint these green"? 

I agree that they are weird, much weirder than annotations in other manuscripts. You are right to point this out. In "regular" manuscripts, I am not always able to read the annotations, but I can usually see at a glance what it's broadly about, what the language is etc. 
Note that marginal writings don't always have the intent to communicate or even contain information. Sometimes they would write the alphabet just to test their pen.

When you talk about intent though, it reminds me of Hanlon's razor: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
"Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity."

In this case, I'd say there isn't necessarily an intent to obscure. Maybe there is. But perhaps the marginalia writer did not yet master the language they were trying to write. Maybe they had not mastered writing itself, and made some mistakes turning the words in their head into written text.

One thing does look certain to me, which is that the three longer pieces of marginalia (f17r, f66r, f116v) are done by the same person, in the same way. Same handwriting, same flavor of weirdness.

(01-02-2025, 04:42 PM)Koen G Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.In this case, I'd say there isn't necessarily an intent to obscure. Maybe there is. But perhaps the marginalia writer did not yet master the language they were trying to write. Maybe they had not mastered writing itself, and made some mistakes turning the words in their head into written text.

I agree that if there's no denotative meaning to be communicated to the reader, there's no need for any obfuscation to be at play. As you said, this could be an instance of pen testing, a spell, or words with a personal meaning or connotation only known to the writer(s).

For the sake of argument, let's say this text was written deliberately to convey something to someone, something beyond random pen tests or spells (even if it's something as tangential to the text as a painting instruction).
If the scribe did not yet master the language they are writing in, why not write in a language they do master? Here are some ideas I can think of, maybe you can help me out:

1. They were instructed not to.
   ∟ Scribe was copying a text or was told to use this language. Not a satisfying explanation since we would have to then wonder why those instructions were given and shift the question over to the hypothetical instructor. See the other 3 scenarios below:
   
   
2. They think the intended readers will prefer to read in this language.
   ∟Maybe the painter is a native Michitonese speaker, a language no longer spoker and of which very few written text survive to this day. We could even consider the possibility of throwing in some loanwords or code-switching, make the marginalia a mixture of Michitonese and other languages. What are the odds that not even through cognates could we make sense out of this?
   Although a likely later addition to the MS, the month name of "jong" or "yong" IIRC was a somewhat rare noun but decipherable given the context nonetheless. From what I understand, Michitonese reads like some Romance or Germanic language, or a mixture of both, right? What are the odds of amateur or even professional paleographers not making sense out of a whole line, if the text is just some plaintext, obscure Romance-Germanic language? (Genuine question to you guys btw, maybe it really is difficult af).
   
   
3. They want to catch the attention of future readers.
   ∟Medieval hoax hypothesis, etc.
   
   
4. They want to obfuscate the meaning.
   ∟The scribe has reasons to restrict the set of readers who will understand the meaning. This would explain why we still have trouble to read the writing even when it's not in Voynichese script.
   Option #2 (intended readers will prefer to read this language) is not excluded from this "obfuscation" scenario.
   

I do like the explanation that the scribe did not master writing itself. If they are the same writer as You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. it would even explain the monstruos error of mistaking (and correcting) an m for a d, but would they make so many mistakes as to make the text so unintellegible?

You draw Hanlon's razor, fine, let me draw Occam's instead: If Voynichese is unintellegible through simple substitution (either because it's largely assemic or cipher), unintelligible marginalia could be a case of the same gibberishness written in a different script or under slightly different rules, and it would fit both the Hoax or Cipher theories quite well IMHO. You wouldn't have to assume that any scribe, who were possibly versed in astrology and herbals to some extent, if not more diverse literature, did not yet master writing.

The few marginalia in Voynich Manuscript which seem to be written in Latin letters are generally very weird. For over 100 years people are unable to understand it, recognize the language or even read it with certaintly

anchiton oladabas multos ceve portas fix maria ?
mallior allor fuez  her villemnia ?



Feels more like some glossolalia and not ordinary language.
But don't give up people!