17-09-2025, 04:08 AM
As I was running some promising yet unsuccessful attempts to decode the Voynich MS text, I ran into the question: how difficult will it be to detect being 'close to' the solution? I decided to try something I had been thinking of on several occasions:
Take a known plain text, and substitute vowels with other vowels and consonants with other consonants. Will the result be recognisable? To try this out, I took a part of Dante's Inferno, and changed the vowels and consonants from the Italian frequency distribution to the Latin frequency distribution. For these distributions, I used the ones obtained empirically on this page: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
for the Dante and Mattioli source texts. Following is the conversion table:
Note that the Italian text had two fewer consonants than the Latin text, so I added J and K to make them equal.
Surprisingly, even though Italian and Latin are closely related, the conversion completely mixes up both vowels and consonants.
The two questions I had were:
- would the text be somehow recognisable?
- would the text show any indication of being meaningful?
The first is a definite no. The second is a bit more subjective, but I would also argue that it is: 'rather not'.
As the text is a fully grammatical known text with only simple substitution applied, and it largely follows a reasonable single character frequency distribution, this means that 'just looking' isn't sufficient to decide whether one is close to a solution or not.
A proper simple substitution solver (tool) should be used to test the result.
Here follows a moderatly short part of the resulting text. If anyone wants a longer sample to play with, let me know.
Take a known plain text, and substitute vowels with other vowels and consonants with other consonants. Will the result be recognisable? To try this out, I took a part of Dante's Inferno, and changed the vowels and consonants from the Italian frequency distribution to the Latin frequency distribution. For these distributions, I used the ones obtained empirically on this page: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
for the Dante and Mattioli source texts. Following is the conversion table:
Code:
E A I O U N R L T S C D M P V G H F B Q Z X J K
i e a u o t s r n m c l d p q b v f g h x y z kNote that the Italian text had two fewer consonants than the Latin text, so I added J and K to make them equal.
Surprisingly, even though Italian and Latin are closely related, the conversion completely mixes up both vowels and consonants.
The two questions I had were:
- would the text be somehow recognisable?
- would the text show any indication of being meaningful?
The first is a definite no. The second is a bit more subjective, but I would also argue that it is: 'rather not'.
As the text is a fully grammatical known text with only simple substitution applied, and it largely follows a reasonable single character frequency distribution, this means that 'just looking' isn't sufficient to decide whether one is close to a solution or not.
A proper simple substitution solver (tool) should be used to test the result.
Here follows a moderatly short part of the resulting text. If anyone wants a longer sample to play with, let me know.
Quote:tir dixxu lir ceddat la tumnse qane
da sansuqea pis ote mirqe umcose
cvi re lasanne qae ise mdessane
eva hoetnu e las hoer ise i cume lose
imne mirqe mirqebbae i empse i fusni
cvi tir pitmais satuqe re peose
netn i edese cvi pucu i pao dusni
de pis nsennes lir git cv a qa nsuqea
lasu li r ernsi cumi cv a q vu mcusni
au tut mu git salas cud a q atnsea
netn ise pait la muttu e hoir potnu
cvi re qiseci qae eggetlutea
de pua cv a foa er pai l ot curri baotnu
re luqi nisdateqe hoirre qerri
cvi d eqie la peose ar cus cudpotnu
boeslea at ernu i qala ri moi mperri
qimnani bae li sebba lir paetine
cvi dite lsannu ernsoa pis ubti cerri
errus fo re peose ot pucu hoine
cvi tir rebu lir cus d ise losene
re tunni cv a pemmea cut netne paine
i cudi hoia cvi cut rite effettene