The Voynich Ninja

Professor, in my view, your research has somewhat turned into an "ad hoc hypothesis."

In science, this is called "constantly patching a theory in order to save it":

At first, it was merely the "Chinese theory."

When inconsistencies were found, you added "the system omits 味 and 生."

When the spellings were inconsistent, you added "daiin/kaiin/laiin are scribal errors."

When the sentence structure was incomprehensible, you added "qo is 'and.'"

When the spellings of high-frequency words were chaotic, you added "it may be a dialect or Vietnamese."

In my view, with every patch added, the theory becomes one point harder to falsify, but at the same time its credibility decreases by one point.

A truly correct theory should be one that "maps the letters of the VMS to specific sounds, reads out complete sentences, and is immediately understood by Sinologists around the world," rather than relying on a programmer's "badness scoring."

This is my perhaps somewhat immature view; I am just guessing, because I am only 16 years old, and my perspective may not be as far-sighted as that of you scholars or professors. I have been trying hard to improve.

Please allow me to complain a little: your thinking moves too fast, but I am trying hard to catch up. Relatively speaking, however, my thinking and reply speed is much slower compared with yours, so my responses may lag somewhat. Please forgive me.

(9 hours ago)chenxiang Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.If he understood the syntax, why would he spell "主" in four different ways (daiin, kaiin, laiin, dain) in the SAME short recipe?

This could be explained by the fact that Voynichese conveys the sound rather than the meaning. 
The author may also have understood that daiin-kaiin-laiin are the same word, but he placed great trust in the Dictator’s pronunciation.
We don’t know how the author perceived the Chinese language. 
But this is one more assumption added to the hundreds in the Chinese theory...

To be fair, we do have an example in use today where a single Chinese language can have various pronunciation - Japanese, even just looking at Sino-Japanese readings (on'yomi): eg. 百 (hundred) is normally read hyaku but it can also be byaku or ppyaku, depending on what precedes it, or, for example, 山 (mountains) in compounds is often read san but also sen, zan, or zen.

(9 hours ago)chenxiang Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.When the sentence structure was incomprehensible, you added "qo is 'and.'"

I share this idea, except that I think it is Greek δέ.

(Yesterday, 07:21 AM)chenxiang Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Is there anything I can help with?

Here is an easy one.  Imagine a Westerner (European, Jew, Arab, Armenian, ) who has been living in China for several years in the 1400s (not today) and learned the local spoken language, but never even tried to learn the written one.  He has seen Chinese writing but never paid any attention to it.  He writes his own language with a pen, not a brush, and does not know anything about stroke count, direction, and order; much less about "elements" such as those in 脏 or 魄.  He is like the Westerners who think that the fonts below "look like Chinese characters":

[attachment=17688] 

But one day this person decides to copy two hanzi -- maybe the title of a book or the name of a person.  He uses his pen, rather than a brush, but still tries to imitate the shape and varying width of the brush strokes.  With as much success as the guys who designed the fonts above.  

Now suppose that -- some years later, back to Europe -- he gives this drawing of those two hanzi to a young scribe who has never seen a Chinese character in his life, and asks him to copy those glyphs on vellum.  Suppose that this is the result:

[attachment=17689]

Considering how those signs were created, can you guess which were the original hanzi that the guy tried to copy?

All the best, --stolfi

(8 hours ago)Jorge_Stolfi Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Now suppose that -- some years later, back to Europe -- he gives this drawing of those two hanzi to a young scribe who has never seen a Chinese character in his life, and asks him to copy those glyphs on vellum.  Suppose that this is the result:

I think it looks quite similar to the letter psi in Old Slavic.

(8 hours ago)Jorge_Stolfi Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

(Yesterday, 07:21 AM)chenxiang Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Is there anything I can help with?

Here is an easy one.  Imagine a Westerner (European, Jew, Arab, Armenian, ) who has been living in China for several years in the 1400s (not today) and learned the local spoken language, but never even tried to learn the written one.  He has seen Chinese writing but never paid any attention to it.  He writes his own language with a pen, not a brush, and does not know anything about stroke count, direction, and order; much less about "elements" such as those in 脏 or 魄.  He is like the Westerners who think that the fonts below "look like Chinese characters":

 

But one day this person decides to copy two hanzi -- maybe the title of a book or the name of a person.  He uses his pen, rather than a brush, but still tries to imitate the shape and varying width of the brush strokes.  With as much success as the guys who designed the fonts above.  

Now suppose that -- some years later, back to Europe -- he gives this drawing of those two hanzi to a young scribe who has never seen a Chinese character in his life, and asks him to copy those glyphs on vellum.  Suppose that this is the result:



Considering how those signs were created, can you guess which were the original hanzi that the guy tried to copy?

All the best, --stolfi

Hello Professor Stolfi, thank you for the challenge!

Based on the logic of a 15th-century European 'drawing' Chinese characters as pictures:

The lower symbol strongly resembles '大' (big). The left and right sweeping strokes (撇 and 捺) are very exaggerated, which is exactly what happens when someone draws the shape of '大' without knowing stroke order.

The upper symbol has a 'roof' component (like '宀'). If it's from a name or book title, it might be '字' (character) or '安' (peace). The top arch is the roof, and the squiggles below are a distorted '子' or '女'.

However, thinking more about your hint about it being a name or book title, I also think it looks a lot like '令' (order/command). The top part looks like a distorted '人' (roof shape), and the lower part with the tangled lines looks like a distorted '卩' (hook/tail). This seems to fit even better if it's a name or book title.

Am I on the right track? This is a fascinating way to demonstrate visual distortion!

(8 hours ago)chenxiang Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.The lower symbol strongly resembles '大' (big).

You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

Wait, wait, wait, I'm a bit confused, my head feels like it's about to explode, did I prove it wrong?

---

I'm a bit overloaded with information, give me a moment to catch up.

At first, I thought that for a 15th-century European who doesn't understand mathematics, treating Chinese characters as pictures to depict, and then having a European clerk who has never seen Chinese characters transcribe them, I completely thought there would be an absolute answer, or that someone could truly guess it.

I think this is a question of logic and visual distortion deduction. I have been guessing that during the imitation process of his fake Chinese characters, the skeleton should still be there, but the coherence, direction, or thickness of the strokes might all be distorted.

My initial assumption was that the lower symbol had a very high probability of being "大" (big) or "天" (sky/heaven).
Visual features: This symbol has extremely obvious "left-falling stroke (撇)" and "right-falling stroke (捺)", and there is a horizontal line at the bottom (or a drag at the intersection of the two strokes).
Logical deduction: A European who completely doesn't understand stroke order and only knows how to "draw shapes", when seeing the character "大", is most likely to remember its posture of spreading its legs like a "人" (person). When he draws with a pen, he will draw the left and right falling strokes very exaggerated and thick (just like in the picture), and the middle horizontal line might be connected or drawn crookedly.
Alternatives: "天" (an extra horizontal line on top), "夫", "文". But considering the degree of distortion, "大" best fits this skeleton.

I thought the upper symbol might be "字" (character) or "安" (peace).
Visual features: Its top has a curved "cover" (similar to the "宀" radical), and below there are distorted zigzag lines and a long thin tail.
Logical deduction: The "宀" radical, for a European who relies only on visual memory, is just an arched roof shape. The lower part is extremely distorted, turning into snake-like or curled strokes.
Alternatives: If it's a book title or a person's name, it might contain "子" (like "字"), or "女" (like "安"). It could also be "玄" (a Taoist concept) or "宇". Combined with the "Chinese theory" studied by Stolfi, if it involves ancient classics, this symbol might also be a distorted part of "经" (classic) or "书" (book).

But suddenly I thought maybe it was "令" (order). The structural shape of the character "令" is simply tailor-made for this kind of "European visual distortion":

1. Top: Above is a "人" shaped head (亼), which in the eyes of Europeans looks like an "arched roof".
2. Bottom: Below there is a dot, plus a curved hook similar to "卩".
3. Visual logic: A Westerner who doesn't understand stroke order, when seeing "令", will draw it as a shape with a "pointed top and a curved little tail hanging below". This perfectly corresponds to the "top with an arc similar to 宀, and lower part with crossed and distorted strokes" you saw at first. ("今" is also possible, but "令" has an extra dot, making it more like the complex structure above).

Unfortunately, I am not a genius. I completely ignored it. I saw the professor tell me that he copied two Chinese characters. I didn't pay much attention to it. Later, it said it might be a book title or a person's name, so I looked at these two symbols separately. But there are really too many Chinese characters, and too many of them look like this. So I could only temporarily give a few examples of characters similar to these two symbols. I actually forgot that they might form a word together!

In my opinion, I think it should be the visual distortion deduction method, which should break conventions and deduce the original text from the picture. But unfortunately, there are really too many Chinese characters. The lower symbol even has an identical-looking character named "兀".

I am simply an idiot. I actually missed the important information the professor told me, that it might be a book title or a person's name. I looked at them separately for a long time, but forgot to put them together. Is there any similar word?

God, I completely looked at them separately at first glance, until olololo shared the link with me. God, I am simply incredibly stupid. It could completely be the word "冬天" (winter). Ah, but unfortunately I always analyzed them separately, I didn't put them together, otherwise I definitely would have recognized it as "冬天" at first glance.

I simply admit defeat. I admit I am an idiot. I am a genuine Chinese person, yet I didn't recognize the word "冬天" that I should have roughly seen at first glance. God.