The Voynich Ninja

(31-08-2025, 09:14 AM)Petrasti Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.with regard to (I call it) "mutations" in general. It is noticeable that the ‘basic words’ if we assume that the letters are prefixes (or whatever without belonging to the base word) are subject to a vowel swap from "o" to "a" or vice versa. Not all words, but too many to ignore this phenomenon.
Are there any theories or topics on this? Is there a language or dialect from the Indo-European branch that has such a vowel exchange?

For Indo-European languages, I would have to check how common that is.

Offhand I can think of the Germanic umlaut changes when making a plural:

  das Buch -> die Bücher 

Also of stress and vowel quality changes when inflecting verbs in Romance languages like Italian "cantare" = "to sing":

  cAnto  "I sing"
  cantÒ  "he/she sang"
  cAnta  "he/she sings", or imperative "sing!"
  cAnti  "you sing", or subjunctive "that you sing"
  cAnte  subjunctive "that he/she sings"
  cantÀ  Rome dialect "to sing"
 
And then there is the verb "contare" = "to count", with "cOnto", "contÒ", etc. as above.  And also "cInto", "cInta", "cInte", "cInti", past participles of "cingere" - "to wear [a belt or diadem]"; and "cEnto" for "hundred", ...

And in English there is "cat", "kit", "cot", "cut", or "bat", "bet", "beet", "bit", "boot", "but", ...

Those English examples are just coincidences, but in other language families vowel change may be a fundamental feature.  In Semitic (Afroasiatic) languages like Arabic, Hebrew, and Ge'ez, a lexical root is usually three consonants, and it is inflected to form related nouns, verbs, adjectives etc by inserting vowels between those consonants, or adding short prefixes and suffixes:

From the root k*t*b = "things to do with writing":

  Book            kitāb    كِتَاب
  He wrote        kataba   كَتَبَ
  Writer          kātib    كَاتِب
  He corresponded kātaba   كَاتَبَ
  Writing         kitāba   كِتَابَة
  Write!          uktub    اُكْتُبْ
  I write         aktubu   أَكْتُبُ
  Office/Desk     maktab   مَكْتَب
  Library         maktaba  مَكْتَبَة
  ...
 
Turkish (and Hungarian too, IIUC) has a feature called "vowel harmony".  Simplifying a big lot, the vowels are divided in two classes "front" and "back"; and all vowels of a word, including all its affixes, must be of the same class.  Thus most affixes have two forms, one for each class.  For example, plural is made with a suffix that is either "-ler" or "-lar": "tepe" = "hill", "tepeler" = "hills", "dağ" = mountain, "dağlar" = mountains. In modern Turkish spelling (with Latin letters, created ~100 years ago) the suffixes are written attached to the word.  In an invented script they could be written as separate words; but they still would have to follow vowel harmony, and thus there would be at least two forms of each, differing on the vowels.

And then (ahem!) there are the monosyllabic languages of East Asia...

All the best, --jorge

(31-08-2025, 09:14 AM)Petrasti Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I'm not sure whether this topic is known with regard to (I call it) "mutations" in general. It is noticeable that the ‘basic words’ if we assume that the letters are prefixes (or whatever without belonging to the base word) are subject to a vowel swap from "o" to "a" or vice versa. Not all words, but too many to ignore this phenomenon.

In Slovenian language these words are not the same, although some might overlap in different inflectional forms. If they are mutations, this happened in the most ancient time.  The old Slovenian roots were very simple, comprised of one syllable of mostly two, three letters. The variety of words was created by adding a letter or two, or by changing a vowel.
Let me try to explain the words you listed using Slovenian language and the slightly modified EVA alphabet. 

DOR - DAR means 'gift', a noun of the verb DARITI. DARI is contemporary Slovenian word for 'gifts' and for 'you give gift!'. I suppose the author of the VM used DOR! for the imperative form. 

DOL - DAL are two distinct words. DOL means 'down' and 'valley'. DAL is a past participle of the verb 'to give'. The words occasionally follow each other in Slovenian expression DOL DAL (he gave down - he placed down). DOL was used for a free standing words, like in English 'lay down', 'downplay', 'down grade'.

KOOIIN - KOAIIN - I read IIN as m. KOOM and KOAM are most likely two spelling variations of the phonetic KOM (now: KOMU - to whom). In the Voynich Manuscript and in early Slovenian, double oo or diphthong oa were used for long o).
CHOR - CHAR  - both of these spelling variations are used in Slovenian medieval text for 'charm', 'incantation'.

CHOL - CHAL  - CHAL is unique Voynich word that sounds like contemporary Slovenian word ČAJ (tea). It was most likely derived from the French word chalice. By extension, it might have been used for a liquid, and for blossom, because some flower blossoms look like chalice.

KOL - KAL  - these are two different Slovenian words, but their inflectional forms sometimes overlap. They are one of the oldest Slovenian words that might mutate from observing the changes in nature. KOL means 'pole' and 'KAL' means 'SPROUT', a grammatical form of the verb KALITI (sprout, germinate, also: make muddy, forge iron). KAL was also old Slovenian word for 'muddy puddle'. All these words have something in common: when seed fell into the muddy puddle, it split (KLAL, KALAL) and sprouted a KAL, sprout became a plant (KALINA). Toll young trees were cut for KOL(JE) - poles. The fenced place was called KOLIŠČE which gave word OKOL (around), OKOLJE, OKOLIŠ (neighbourhood).
KOL (a pole) was used to support plants, like grape vines. Cut poles or split wood for fire are called KALANCI. The noun of KLATI is POKOL (murder), cuting meat (butchering) is called KOLINE. Spliting a year into seasons was called KOLENDE/KALENDE, which gave the word KOLEDAR. 
When the puddle is disturbed, the water became KALNA (muddy, unclear). KALITI ŽELEZO (to forge iron), the hot iron was thrown into muddy puddle to become stronger. The word PREKALJEN means 'stronger, experienced'.

KOR - KAR  - KOR is a root word for 'root', KOREN (carrot, root). Because of the missing g in the VM, KOR can also be read as GOR (up). KAR is  pronoun 'that, which', as well as a root word of KARATI (to scold, to rebuke, to criticize). When prefixes or suffixes are added to Slovenian roots, the vowel is sometimes changed. A light punishment, like school punishment, is called UKOR (a noun of the verb KARATI), penance was called POKOR (now: POKORA), scolding one to submission is called POKORITI, while growing roots was called UKORITI (now: ukoreniniti).

LOL - LAL are two variations of the suffix for the past participle. Because of the vowel harmony, the vowel in the suffix might change. 

DOM - DAM   - again, I read EVA iin as m. DOM means 'home' and DAM means 'I give'.  In some inflectional dialectal forms DOM and DAM overlap. Example: DAM DAM is Slovenian phrase meaning 'I give to take home', NA DAM  is dialectal pronunciation of the words NA DOMU (at home), GREM DAM (is dialectal for GREM DOMOV). 

I wrote this not to push Slovenian theory, but to inform the forum members that there is a European language that displays similar features as Voynich text. The variations of pronunciation are often related to the length of the vowel and stress.

By the way: I just noticed that a line of my text was automatically converted to Voynichese, which looks somewhat different because I am transliterating some letters differently than EVA.


dor dar   - DAR means 'gift', a noun of the verb DARITI. DARI is contemporary Slovenian word for 'gifts' or for 'you give gift!) - I suppose the author of the VM used DOR! for the imperative form.

dol dal
kooiin koaiin
chor char
chol chal
kol kal
kor kar
lol lal
dam dom

(31-08-2025, 12:50 PM)Jorge_Stolfi Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Turkish (and Hungarian too, IIUC) has a feature called "vowel harmony". 

And don't forget Eastern Lombard   , one of the few Romance languages with vowel harmony (with its own rules, ofc). It's triggered by adding suffixes which include a stressed -ì or -ù (which are very common: diminutive and accrescitive suffixes and verbal conjugations) and it raises the quality of all the preceding vowels, except [a]

kortèl = knife, kurtilì = small knife
möer = to move , muìt = moved
balòt = stone, balutù = boulder

(31-08-2025, 09:14 AM)Petrasti Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Do you have an opinion on this?
I'm not sure whether this topic is known with regard to (I call it) "mutations" in general. It is noticeable that the ‘basic words’ if we assume that the letters are prefixes (or whatever without belonging to the base word) are subject to a vowel swap from "o" to "a" or vice versa. Not all words, but too many to ignore this phenomenon.
Are there any theories or topics on this? Is there a language or dialect from the Indo-European branch that has such a vowel exchange?
I'll add a few examples

dor dar
dol dal
kooiin koaiin
chor char
chol chal
kol kal
kor kar
lol lal
dam dom

I posted a theory which I am still working on refining including "vowel" type things in the voynich script. I class these as EVA "aoy" + sometimes "e" (and "e" more often in Currier B)
Without getting too far into it to derail the topic, "a" and "o" seem to be somewhat interchangeable but if we have "a" not "o" we sort of know what's coming next.  
All of the examples you give I would classify as "modification" end to "blackslash" start transitions (some sort of flourish to a \ base shape glyph). You can continue this thinking to predict "what's next" pretty well, though meaning wise.. no idea. 

To give an example of this and the slight differences between "o" and "a" using made up "voynichese" words, imagine this is "guess the letter" game
1. sa_or
2. so_or

If I were playing the game I would exclude (for "1.")
ecgbshxutkpdfqzoay

And consider 
inrjmlv

I would then say
n,m are "word end" so no
j,v are weird so no
i, "ior" isn't really a thing
so "l" or "r".. we have an "r" already so I'll go "l". 

"2." is a bit more tricky, we have to do the same but also consider 
tkpdfqz

q is word start, and z is weird, so get rid
So I have tkpdf, and lr (from last guess logic) left to guess with

In this way "o" is a bit more difficult to predict, but "o" and "a" in the examples you gave both seem to be viable choices and used often. What that means.. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

It's fantastic that we all, regardless of our country of origin, recognize the same phenomenon with pre-sounds, the substitution of ch for sh, and vowel swaps. We can agree on and recognize letters in latin script. Regardless of our theories (as long as we don't assume encryption), these must be supported by repetition or grammatical explanations. My suggestion would be to take the lowest common denominator and form a "think tank."

Jorge seems to be very knowledgeable about languages and their basic rules. Since Voynich seems "familiar" to us due to its Latin letters, I think we wanted to focus primarily on the Indo-European language family. Although the book was dated around 1420, the language could be much older. A dialect is certainly always a possibility.

The following peculiarities are recognized by most:

the pre-sounds as described in the first post
the substitution of o for a (or vice versa)
the ch to sh change
the increase of the e, ee, eee, eeee, in the words

Would it make sense to open a new thread as a "think tank" to search for precisely these phenomena and list them without addressing the details of our theories?

A think tank based on the phenomena accepted by all in a shared exchange?

(01-09-2025, 06:53 PM)Petrasti Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I think we wanted to focus primarily on the Indo-European language family.

Again, I propose that this is the reason why in 400+ years no one has produced a convincing translation/decryption of a single word.  The Scribe was almost certainly European, the materials and instruments are European. the layout of the text and letter shapes are European... but all that does not imply that the Author was European, nor that the language is European, nor nor that the contents is a product of European culture.

By the way: while the Greek and Egyptians did some alchemy, the biggest advances were made during the Baghdad Caliphate, the "Golden Age" of Islamic science, in the 700s.  It was then that Jabir Bin Hayyam ("Geber" in Latin texts) perfected the retort and used it to discover the sulfuric, hydrochloric, and nitric acids.  And he also discovered that a mixture of the last two, now called "acqua regia", was the first substance other than mercury capable of dissolving gold.  Another Caliphate alchemist, Abu Bakr al-Razi ("Rases"), used the retort to prepare pure alcohol (ethanol).  

The "art" of alchemy exploded in Europe only after the the work of those and other Caliphate alchemists were translated into Latin.  IIRC the first translations were done in Italy in the ~1200s, and from there spread to the rest of Europe.  The obsession of European alchemists with gold making was surely the result of the discovery of aqua regia, and of Jabir's reworking of the theory of Elements of Aristotles.  This reformulation implied that one could change a metal into another metal by rearranging its internal properties.  All that was left was finding a way to do that.

Apart from trying to make gold, it seems that another very popular alchemical process in the European Middle Ages was the preparation of another "acqua", the "acqua vitae" or distilled liquor.  

I personally do not think that the VMS is in Arabic or contains any alchemy.  But still, even if one believes that it is an "European" book, one should consider Arabic as a candidate language, and Arabic books as a possible source of the contents -- because they were to alchemy sort of what Italian is to pasta...

All the best, --jorge