The Voynich Ninja

(03-09-2026, 04:36 PM)Jorge_Stolfi Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.That's a very interesting experiment.  I should try a similar one: post an audio clip in some language and ask for a volunteer who does not know how to write that language to try to write down the sounds they hear, using whatever spelling system they chooses, and then see how consistent the result was.  Namely, if they always wrote the same word in the same way.

To better approximate the dictation scenario of the Chinese Theory, the volunteer ideally should be somehow familiar with the spoken language, even partly understand it, but they have no idea of its official spelling or even the nuances of its phonetics.  Maybe playing Portuguese to an Italian speaker, Dutch to an English speaker, Czech to a Polish speaker...

All the best, --stolfi

This would have to be done one word at a time and clearly to have any chance. I just brought up a video in portuguese to test (I cannot understand it, but am familiar with its ties to spanish and other romance languages so i get a word here and there) and it's a complete non starter to even try to write it down. 

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I got to about 20 seconds in, and i've been repeating this over and over at 0.5x speed, and its almost completely impossible. Here is my text, does it hold any actual information still? (do not laugh at how obviously horrible this is)

omdilia trente dewes unyos sot brazil de terut sao paolo maz veskiturzian skoviv un paranaon je fustudar uuh furomacum proffesor je portugues espanyol nao apremereves kuv ... uduguay jevinu truz vez, ee kiminkun tenten viriki

and the auto-transcript:

(02-09-2026, 01:18 PM)rikforto Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.This does not explain the distribution of <qo> in quire 20, which is frequently paragraph initial and cannot be attaching to the right elements of serials.

In my transcription of the usable part of the SPS there are 9 (nine) parags that start with qo, out of 243.  OK, let that be "frequently".

In English, starting a sentence with "And" is considered bad style, even an error.  But in Arabic (and Hebrew, and Aramaic, and Ge'ez) that is quite common.  That is why that "error" is so frequent in the King Jacob Giacomo Iacobos Séamus Diego Jaap Jimmy Tiago James Bible: it is a literal translation of the Hebrew or Aramaic, possibly via Greek. A more natural translation would use "Then" instead of "And".

Thus, if the Author indeed inserted qos by influence of Arabic wa-, he may also have used it at the start of some recipes.  There are a few sets of consecutive recipes in the SBJ that are either distinct versions of the same remedy (like the root of aconite, which has three separate recipes depending on its shape) or are similar enough that they even repeat the same string of 5-10 characters (syllables). Maybe the Author used qo in those sets.

All the best, --stolfi

(03-09-2026, 05:07 PM)eggyk Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.This would have to be done one word at a time and clearly to have any chance. I just brought up a video in portuguese to test (I cannot understand it, but am familiar with its ties to spanish and other romance languages so i get a word here and there) and it's a complete non starter to even try to write it down. 

• omdilia trente dewes unyos sot brazil de terut sao paolo maz veskiturzian skoviv un paranaon je fustudar uuh furomacum proffesor je portugues espanyol nao apremereves kuv ... uduguay jevinu truz vez, ee kiminkun tenten viriki
  

and the auto-transcript:

• o meu nome é Marília eu tenho 32 anos sou do Brasil do interior de São Paulo mas faz 14 anos que eu vivo no Paraná onde eu fui estudar H me formei como professora de português e espanhol não é a primeira vez que eu venho para Uruguai já vim outras vezes e o que me encanta tanto em vir aqui
  

Thanks a lot!

I could only guess a few words from your transcription.  As you can see comparing with the auto-transcript, it has many missing and spurious word breaks.  Besides from sound inconsistencies, the  part 

• "maz veskiturzian skoviv un paranaon je" 
  

should have been split as 

• "maz ves kiturzi ans k o vivu n parana onje".
  

Unlike Spanish, Portuguese spelling rules are almost as bad as those of English.  Here is my attempt to write what she is saying in a sort of phonetic orthography, but still using mostly letter values of Portuguese:

• u mêu nômi é marília êu têñu trínta i dôiz ânus sôu du brazíu du interiô di sãu paulu mas fais katôrzi ânus ki êu vívu nu paraná ôndi êu fúi istudá mi formêi komu profesôra di portugêis i ispañóu nãu é a primêra vêis ki vêñu pru uruguái vin ôutras vêzis i u ki mi inkânta tântu en vir akí 
  

Here "é" and "ê" are like in French "frère" and "mes pieds" or Italian "bello" and "bene".  The "ó" and "ô" are like Italian "notte" and "dolce" or English "boy" and [there is no English word with that sound ].  The "ñ" is like French "mignon" or Italian "gnocchi".  The "ã" is a bit like English "bun" but with some of the voice coming through the nose (it is not used in Spanish, Italian, and most other European languages; maybe the sound exists in French too, but not sure).  

I tried slowing the video down to 25% speed but strangely that made it harder to recognize the sounds.  Maybe because the plosives like "t", "d", "p", "b", "k", "g" got lost?

You are right that, for the experiment to be more applicable, the text should be dictated one word at a time, or, better, one syllable at a time.  I will try to prepare such a sample...

All the best, --stolfi

(03-09-2026, 04:43 PM)nablator Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I heard tourists, probably from Southeast Asia (my guess), talk yesterday and I thought: I have no idea how I would write (phonetically) what I just heard.

I think there’s a significant difference between native speakers’ conversations and dictation for the purpose of transcription. Careful reading of a text to an attentive listener should result in a fairly consistent transcription.

(03-09-2026, 06:13 PM)Jorge_Stolfi Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.You are right that, for the experiment to be more applicable, the text should be dictated one word at a time, or, better, one syllable at a time.  I will try to prepare such a sample...

I have 2 main notes:

1) European languages are not monosyllabic, so will be quite different to phonetically transcribe compared to asian languages. Knowing where words begin and end is (demonstrably) difficult if you are not reasonably confident in a language. 

2) It's likely that if I were to try the same thing with a german clip, its likely that I would get a LOT closer. I can speak a couple of very basic sentences, and can guess the meaning of some written text, due to speaking english and dutch and living in reasonably close proximity to the german border. So the exact familiarity with the language is a critical factor here.

In fact, i'll do the same thing in german, partly to see how it goes, partly as it may give insight, and partly because it's quite fun.

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home im deutchen at home eigenlich zwei voorvetsung um zu wisht de vershteer und zwa kamen aber sagen home-us in de freundlish bin zu hausen, was eigenlich nawbedoyted ich bin gradada, woysht zu sein wohne, um vielesen gan zo sehr dat mit connected was ich ider worden, en dat gibt uns einer homes in de vorm, um, ich gehr naar haus to min eten oder...

Needless to say, i got a LOT more correct, but with some embarrassing and interestingly bad mistakes.

(03-09-2026, 04:36 PM)Jorge_Stolfi Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

(02-09-2026, 09:07 PM)ololololo Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.This experiment was inspired by Chinese theory, and in particular by Stolfi’s theses about the scribe’s mistake and writing by ear.  ... I tried to create such a “phonetic” script for the Ingush language. I used not only letters (but not all of them) as symbols, but also very common syllables in words in the text.

That's a very interesting experiment.  I should try a similar one: post an audio clip in some language and ask for a volunteer who does not know how to write that language to try to write down the sounds they hear, using whatever spelling system they chooses, and then see how consistent the result was.  Namely, if they always wrote the same word in the same way.

To better approximate the dictation scenario of the Chinese Theory, the volunteer ideally should be somehow familiar with the spoken language, even partly understand it, but they have no idea of its official spelling or even the nuances of its phonetics.  Maybe playing Portuguese to an Italian speaker, Dutch to an English speaker, Czech to a Polish speaker...

All the best, --stolfi

Maybe this study might be useful: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. ?
What this study tries to prove is, that while an individual non-speaker cannot reliably transcribe a foreign language on their own, a statistical model aggregating dozens of non-speakers can reconstruct the target text with surprisingly high precision.

(03-09-2026, 05:33 PM)Jorge_Stolfi Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Thus, if the Author indeed inserted qos by influence of Arabic wa-, he may also have used it at the start of some recipes.  There are a few sets of consecutive recipes in the SBJ that are either distinct versions of the same remedy (like the root of aconite, which has three separate recipes depending on its shape) or are similar enough that they even repeat the same string of 5-10 characters (syllables). Maybe the Author used qo in those sets.

This polysemic use puts a predictable and testable constraint on which paragraphs can match. Is that borne out in your findings?

(03-09-2026, 07:18 PM)rikforto Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.This polysemic use [of qo]

In the mind of an Arabic speaker, the wa- in lists and the wa- at the start of a sentence are not different senses.  They are the same logical conjunction marker.  Like in English "Take the book and the pen" and "Take the book and read it"

To an English speaker, the "is" words in the the sentences "The car is red" and "The car is parked" have the same sense.  To a Spanish speaker, they are two very different senses: "El coche es rojo" and "El coche está aparcado". 

All the best, --stolfi

(03-09-2026, 07:44 PM)Jorge_Stolfi Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.In the mind of an Arabic speaker, the wa- in lists and the wa- at the start of a sentence are not different senses.  They are the same logical conjunction marker.  Like in English "Take the book and the pen" and "Take the book and read it"

The English is actually a fairly typical example of polysemy for function words, and my understanding of the Arabic is much same. Taking two objects together and doing two actions are different things, but there is a shared sense of coordination between them. But I really only emphasized the term to emphasize that I'd anticipated this, and that in that post I said it would need to be accounted for. Which brings me to the question I asked that seems to be the heart of the matter even if you insist on a definition of polysemy that excludes this example:

(03-09-2026, 07:18 PM)rikforto Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.This...use puts a predictable and testable constraint on which paragraphs can match. Is that borne out in your findings?

Quote:The hypothesis that a text is written in an awful semi-phonetic, inconsistent version of some Asian language is therefore unfalsifiable.

I would agree. You can butcher the language unknown for you so much that it indistinguishable from gibberish.

A funny example - in Indiana Jones movie an American lady tries to sign in Chinese. From the comments you can learn that it is totally impossible to understand for the real Chinese speakers and someone did a hard, detective work to get what she meant to say 

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