The Voynich Ninja

Alas I don't know what happened with Jacques Guy. Last I read (at Diane's blog) is that he was in contact with Gerry Kennedy when the latter was writing his book.

Indeed, the Mandarin example was to give an example how the word structure could arise, which would not work for any Indo-European language  (I think. I welcome evidence to the contrary!). I don't believe that this is the solution though. There are scores of more likely scenarios than a European writing the MS in the far East, or a Chinese in Europe dictating the MS.

Could it be a "Latinizing" transcription of another script, to make it easier to read for Europeans while keeping the inherent structure of the source? For example a European copying a "insert language like Mandarin here" text, replacing the original glyphs with more familiar ones?

I wouldn't rule this out if the original text was strongly structured, perhaps exploiting some inherent properties of the source language or script.

(27-05-2016, 06:52 PM)Koen Gh. Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Could it be a "Latinizing" transcription of another script, to make it easier to read for Europeans while keeping the inherent structure of the source? For example a European copying a "insert language like Mandarin here" text, replacing the original glyphs with more familiar ones?

I wouldn't rule this out if the original text was strongly structured, perhaps exploiting some inherent properties of the source language or script.

Many languages are written using Arabic script, just as many languages are written using Latin script. Borrowing a script style to convey a language that doesn't have a character set of its own (or which is geographically divided as to character set) is not at all unusual (and was more common in the past than now).

Indeed. They even added characters to the existing script if necessary.
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Sorry I'm only getting around to replying today, and thank you all for these replies.

When I look at studies such as Montemurro or Reddy & Knight or Jaskiewicz and see that the Voynich is only compared against the major languages (European or Asian), it seems to me like we might be missing out on something by ignoring the lesser dialects and the pidgins in such analyses.
I can understand if no one else is interested or if it seems pointless, and after all, as I said, it would be an impossible task to compile them all.
However I think it would be a shame if someone actually already had found the right decryption tool but hadn't found meaningful text because they didn't consider all the language options for the plaintext results they got?

Also, in the unexpected category, I'd like to add Romani.
eg:
[*]dūvrī – "distant"
[*]dūvrī-dūvrī – very distant"

Romani and its variants were and are present in many European countries at the relevant time for the Voynich. I know that the Romani hypothesis has been mentioned by commenters on Stephen Bax's site as well a couple of years ago.
[*]ETA: just saw that Derrek Vogt had looked into the Romani option, with very interesting results... but that was last year... I wonder if there have been any new developments?

(28-05-2016, 05:03 PM)VViews Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Romani and its variants were and are present in many European countries at the relevant time for the Voynich. I know that the Romani hypothesis has been mentioned by commenters on Stephen Bax's site as well a couple of years ago.
[*]ETA: just saw that Derrek Vogt had looked into the Romani option, with very interesting results... but that was last year... I wonder if there have been any new developments?

Hello VViews,
the most recent You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. by Stephen Bax also discusses Romani (or Romany).

In particular, paragraph 1. “Grammatical elements – a possible conjunction” is about  the possibility that daiin (the most frequent word in the Voynich manuscript) could be related with the You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. Romanj conjunction “taj” (meaning “and”).

As I wrote in a You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. on Stephen's site, there are two additional facts that I find interesting:

1) The Romany conjunction can be repeated (“taj taj”, possibly with the meaning “and also”). This is an analogy with EVA:daiin, that is often repeated (daiin daiin).

2) It has been noted that in the so-called Currier “language” B aiin is more frequent than daiin (You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.). Maybe the loss of the initial d could be related to the Lovari variants“taj” and “aj”.

Of course Romanj is attractive. It is a family of languages with many Indo-Persian elements, that correspond to the theories of Stephen Bax and Derek Vogt. It had recently arrived in Central Europe at the time when the Voynich manuscript was written. 

Romani had no written tradition. This could justify the creation of a new alphabet largely based on signs used in medieval Latin manuscripts. Something analogous to the creation of the glagolitic alphabet (created in the IX century, on the basis of the Greek alphabet, to write the Slavic languages).

(28-05-2016, 07:17 PM)MarcoP Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Hello VViews,
the most recent You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. by Stephen Bax also discusses Romani (or Romany).

In particular, paragraph 1. “Grammatical elements – a possible conjunction” is about  the possibility that daiin (the most frequent word in the Voynich manuscript) could be related with the You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. Romanj conjunction “taj” (meaning “and”).

As I wrote in a You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. on Stephen's site, there are two additional facts that I find interesting:

1) The Romany conjunction can be repeated (“taj taj”, possibly with the meaning “and also”). This is an analogy with EVA:daiin, that is often repeated (daiin daiin).

2) It has been noted that in the so-called Currier “language” B aiin is more frequent than daiin (You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.). Maybe the loss of the initial d could be related to the Lovari variants“taj” and “aj”.

Of course Romanj is attractive. It is a family of languages with many Indo-Persian elements, that correspond to the theories of Stephen Bax and Derek Vogt. It had recently arrived in Central Europe at the time when the Voynich manuscript was written. 

Romani had no written tradition. This could justify the creation of a new alphabet largely based on signs used in medieval Latin manuscripts. Something analogous to the creation of the glagolitic alphabet (created in the IX century, on the basis of the Greek alphabet, to write the Slavic languages).

This comment is not addressed to you, specifically, Marco, but is a thought arising out of your post that relates more generally to the thread...

It seems to me to be intuitively obvious that the most frequent word in a mystery manuscript would be likened to common words like "and" "the" "is" "I" "what" or whatever else might be relevant to the subject matter so I'm assuming, without looking it up, that dozens of people, probably going back to Wilfrid Voynich himself, have proposed that daiin could be "and" (or "the" or "is", etc.).


What may be less obvious is this...

It might be important to consider why daiin is sometimes attached to other words and sometimes stands alone. I don't think it's an accident of the spacing. It appears to be deliberate. A good question to explore is, "Does it mean something different when it's attached or not?".


Think about it... if it DOES mean something different when attached or unattached, then is the token as common as it seems at first glance!?

JKP - in Dutch, 'en' means 'and', but it is also a plural ending. For example handen means hands. If I'm not mistaken, somethig like that may explain the distribution you describe.

For what it's worth, based on my readings of the labels on f89, I would read daiin as 'nam' which could be the Latin word. However, I  haven't made sense of the language of the paragraphs yet, so this may be unrelated. 

What I can say with slightly more confidence though, is that at least at some point in the text's history, someone who knew an Indo-Iranian language has provided the words for the labels on the f89 foldout. Since I think these labels are relevant foreign names for these plants taken from a number of sources though, I still have no indication about the core language of the manuscript, which could be Greek or Latin or Romani for all I know.

(28-05-2016, 09:35 PM)Koen Gh. Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.JKP - in Dutch, 'en' means 'and', but it is also a plural ending. For example handen means hands. If I'm not mistaken, somethig like that may explain the distribution you describe.
...

That's a good example... and even if they weren't the exact same syllable (for plural and for "and") it's still possible a word-token could stand for more than one thing, depending on context, which would affect frequency counts (and thus, the possible interpretation).

(28-05-2016, 08:18 PM)-JKP- Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Think about it... if it DOES mean something different when attached or unattached, then is the token as common as it seems at first glance!?

The You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. daiin and aiin are common: they cumulatively occur about 1300 times. I cannot see how our hypotheses about their meaning could influence this count.