(08-10-2024, 10:23 AM)Ruby Novacna Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. (08-10-2024, 04:05 AM)BessAgritianin Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view....there are the same symbols but with different sounds behind them.
As in ciphers based on the Polybius square?
It is like a reverse Polybius and not only square but cubic or more dimensional.
Just an example for understanding.
ARON- Arum plant, which was cited in 116v. Sound "r" and "n" are reflected with one Voynichese symbol. So being on two places in this case you receive 2 high 2 variants. To explain it it clearly it can be read as "Anon"; "Aron", "AROR", or "ANOR".
But wait and see, if the next word (as it is usually) is also with probabilities, then you receive an exponent function of uncertainties and that is why the translation, or better said the interpretation is very, very difficult.
And above all these difficulties, Kohen merrily deletes basic letters and proclaims that Voynich Alphabet is 18 letters at maximum?
Don't let me down listening to similar explanations!
As a remark the same symbol for "r" and "n" could be "d" too. So the variants for this word will be 2 high 3- that is 9. For one simple word!!!
BR: Vessy
I didn't understand it that way, even though I had a hard time with the language.
He only cuts out unnecessary or duplicate sounds.
Whether you write Joghurt, Yogurt or Iogurt, it's still the same. So you can delete J and Y from the alphabet.
There are the others.
But the minimum is about 18 characters which are needed to get a text across properly.
I would also assume 18 characters as the basic building block.
(09-10-2024, 04:23 AM)Aga Tentakulus Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.He only cuts out unnecessary or duplicate sounds.
Whether you write Joghurt, Yogurt or Iogurt, it's still the same. So you can delete J and Y from the alphabet.
There are the others.
But the minimum is about 18 characters which are needed to get a text across properly.
I would also assume 18 characters as the basic building block.
Aga, I have provided a real example in my proofs, taken from the text- can You be more specific and use a real example from the Manuscript, and not a modern
"Yoghurt" word ?
Minimum letters are 22 plus- like every normal Alphabet.
br: Vessy
(09-10-2024, 04:23 AM)Aga Tentakulus Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.He only cuts out unnecessary or duplicate sounds.
Whether you write Joghurt, Yogurt or Iogurt, it's still the same. So you can delete J and Y from the alphabet.
There are the others.
But the minimum is about 18 characters which are needed to get a text across properly.
I would also assume 18 characters as the basic building block.
Aga, I have provided a real example in my proofs, taken from the text- can You be more specific and use a real example from the Manuscript, and not a modern
"Yoghurt" word ?
Minimum letters are 22 plus- like every normal Alphabet.
br: Vessy
I just finished watching the video and find its presentation very clear, one of the trademarks of Koen's videos.
The problem presented here is real, and it explains one of the reasons for the low entropy in non-mathematical terms.
This does not mean, in my humble opinion, that an explanation of this feature has to be very far-fetched or even complicated.
We need to remember that the correspondence between sounds (phonemes) and the letters of the alphabet (graphemes), can have quite a loose relationship, which depends heavily on the language.
Spoken Dutch and written Dutch are quite different, but it cannot beat English in that respect.
There are more sounds than letters. Some of these (e.g. diphthongs) may not be considered single sounds - I suppose that linguists have a definition for that.
However, some languages use single symbols (letters) for diphthongs and others use two, three or more characters for a single phoneme. In fact, English does all of this.
Furthermore, the same sound may be represented by different groups of characters, and the same character may produce several different sounds. Again, English does all of that.
We are perhaps fortunate that the MS is not written in modern English....
Czech has a longer alphabet than English, and has a reasonably close mapping between characters and sounds.
The sound represented by English 'sh' (two characters, one phoneme, except in some words like 'mishap'), is represented in German by three (sch) and in Czech by one (š).
Thus, a small alphabet can represent a larger sound inventory by using combinations.
If that is really what is happening in the MS, then words in the Voynich MS, which are already short, become even shorter, which is another problem.
This suggestion can possibly solve one problem, but several others remain.
In particular, the point of the video, that simple substitution (or something largely based on it) cannot work, remains completely valid.
Solvers 'in spe' who base their solution on simple substitution cannot fail to realise that it does not really work - it generates only some valid words and never valid phrases. They tend to go to one of the following modifications (or both):
- suggest that the plain text is in a mixture of languages (Levitov, Cheshire)
- suggest that some Voynich symbols can represent several different plain text characters (too many to name)
Both lead to more words, but still no valid phrases.
Both also could conceivably seem sensible when only thinking about the back translation from Voynichese to plain text, but barely make sense when considering the act of creating the MS text.
Who would have spoken in an arbitrary mixture of several languages? Certainly not more than two, and only in a consistent manner (e.g. vernacular mixed with Latin).
Who would have encoded both an 'r' and a 'd' with the same cipher symbol?
It is clear that that is just a device by the decoder in order to match more words...
I knew approaching the problem as one of alphabet size would be slightly controversial, especially since there are workarounds that could still make this one aspect work (like assuming extensive use of digraphs or some ambiguity). The general situation in the middle ages wasn't as bad as modern English of course. English had the misfortune that its process of spelling standardization coincided with drastic changes in the language like the Great Vowel Shift, which is why there is such a mismatch.
The reason why I chose this approach is that it allowed me to talk some more about entropy without mentioning entropy. It's an entropy video in disguise. It also allowed me to show that obscure languages aren't magical solutions, nor are syllabaries, abbreviations, abjads... And it works much better than I thought. I got a lot of people aware of some of the VM issues and thinking about them.
One thing I'd like to do personally is talk for two hours instead of 15 minutes. But I'm specifically aiming at a broader audience, and most people will much more readily watch (and pay attention to) a well-trimmed 15 minute explainer rather than an hour long exposition. So unfortunately I've had to cut out a lot of side notes, exceptions etc.
(09-10-2024, 08:14 AM)Koen G Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.most people will much more readily watch (and pay attention to) a well-trimmed 15 minute explainer rather than an hour long exposition.
That is absolutely right of course!
Very easy to follow. Great sound quality and visuals. I am glad to see that you have already managed to get an impressive number of views and comments in such a short amount of time.
Currently @16k views , nice job.
(09-10-2024, 12:58 PM)joben Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Very easy to follow. Great sound quality and visuals. I am glad to see that you have already managed to get an impressive number of views and comments in such a short amount of time.
(09-10-2024, 01:42 PM)RobGea Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Currently @16k views , nice job.
Thanks! I didn't expect this honestly. When I upload a video, I never expect more than a few hundred views. Especially since the audience I had in mind was people who have studied the manuscript before (like those with a solution, forum members...).
But from the video's analytics it appears that 79% of viewers saw it in their YouTube Home as a random recommendation (based on their previous viewing I guess?) and 14% saw it as an "Up next" recommendation after watching another video. External sources account for 5% at most.
From the comments it also appears that a lot of viewers didn't know much about the manuscript before. I will need to keep this in mind for any future video.