(26-10-2025, 04:33 PM)JoJo_Jost Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. (26-10-2025, 03:07 PM)Mark Knowles Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Rareness is not a reason for exclusion. It is quite rare to meet someone from Mauritius, but that don't mean they don't exist. The other versions that I mentioned do exist. I think Voynich researchers make a big mistake when they think that rare things can be ignored. Rare features need to be accounted for.
But one can assume a certain distribution of numbers in a certain context. In this case, the botanical/medical context of the 15th century. The number 2 could indeed occur frequently in this context, the number 1 almost never, the number 3 less often, the number 4 even less often, the number 5 possibly (e.g. rose petals and also because of the natural Fibonacci sequence) a tad higher again, and then it should continue to decline. In my opinion, one would like to see such a distribution. But I have seen medical texts from that period, and there was not a single number in them so who knows 
I think numbers are to be found on You are not allowed to view links.
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Login to view. The aiiin and other similar glyphs appear to have a numeric format, but these don't represent numbers.
(26-10-2025, 05:31 PM)Mark Knowles Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I think numbers are to be found on You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. The aiiin and other similar glyphs appear to have a numeric format, but these don't represent numbers.
Yes, who knows... To me, for example, it looks more like a code disc where you have to turn the inner discs correctly to get the result you need.
Why? There are four women visible, and four rings; two of the women are pointing in both directions, and one is using her right arm and the other her left arm. That could be the movement pattern.
But who knows... The only thing we know for sure is that there are a lot of strange symbols on this page.
(26-10-2025, 12:28 PM)Mark Knowles Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.But what about ail , aiil?
They could be mapped to some number, but they are very rare.
From the GC transliteration:
in : 1759
ir : 610
il : 37
il represents about 0.02 % of all (composite) characters in the MS.
Now of course I am not seriously suggesting that these characters represent the numbers 1 to whatever, but they appear just like an enumeration.
(27-10-2025, 12:56 AM)ReneZ Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.They could be mapped to some number, but they are very rare.
From the GC transliteration:
in : 1759
ir : 610
il : 37
il represents about 0.02 % of all (composite) characters in the MS.
Now of course I am not seriously suggesting that these characters represent the numbers 1 to whatever, but they appear just like an enumeration.
Of course, one could simply play around with this. If you can calculate the exact occurrences, we could do it the other way round:
Based on the number of hits, we could create a list that would correspond to a natural distribution of numbers in medieval texts in the fields of botany and medicine. And if these hits reveal a logic in the letter sequences, we would at least have a good clue.
an; ain; aiin; aiiin, air; aiir; aiiir; il; iil; ais; as
Due to the low occurrences of as and ais, I would define these as 10 and 20, for example. So we had to look for: ais ain = 22 e.g. This is because numbers above 10 rarely appear in medical and botanical texts, and numbers above 20 even more rarely. Quantities usually change the unit (ounce, lot) of measurement as they get higher, and in botany, you rarely count all the leaves
.
It would be interesting, but I no longer consider such a complex number system necessary for a corresponding text from that period. (Just a side note.)
(27-10-2025, 12:56 AM)ReneZ Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. (26-10-2025, 12:28 PM)Mark Knowles Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.But what about ail , aiil?
They could be mapped to some number, but they are very rare.
I question whether rarity is so relevant in this context and in the context of the Voynich text as a whole. This notion that some text or character is "rare" is often used as a gotcha, meaning it is "rare" therefore it can happily be ignored. However, is one then arguing that the writing of such characters was a mistake on behalf of the author(s)? If it is deliberate, as it appears, then one ought to interpret it seriously. I am now coming to the end of a long study of the distinctive and rarer text in the Voynich and I am being cautious about excluding text on the basis that it looks unusual. Of course, the author(s) must have made some writing errors, but I think one must exercise great care in making such an assessment in each and every case.
(27-10-2025, 11:14 AM)Mark Knowles Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I question whether rarity is so relevant in this context and in the context of the Voynich text as a whole.
(27-10-2025, 12:56 AM)ReneZ Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.il represents about 0.02 % of all (composite) characters in the MS.
In a cipher letter of 500 characters, a character that has a frequency of 0.02% has a probability of appearing in this letter, at all, of 0.1. It may appear in one of ten such letters.
Clearly, it plays no role at all in the approach to solving the cipher.
Characters / standing alone / within words
an / 3 / 260
ain / 67 / 1.617
aiin / 307 /3.646
aiiin / 32 / 71
air / 42 / 542
aiir /18 / 109
aiiir / 0 / 2
il / 0 / 103
iil / 0 / 18
ais / 0 / 18
as / 5 / 96
die Reihenfolge ist aiin, ain, air, an, aiir, il, as, aiiin, iil und ais, aiir
erkennt da jemand eine Logik hinter?
(27-10-2025, 12:16 PM)ReneZ Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. (27-10-2025, 11:14 AM)Mark Knowles Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I question whether rarity is so relevant in this context and in the context of the Voynich text as a whole.
(27-10-2025, 12:56 AM)ReneZ Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.il represents about 0.02 % of all (composite) characters in the MS.
In a cipher letter of 500 characters, a character that has a frequency of 0.02% has a probability of appearing in this letter, at all, of 0.1. It may appear in one of ten such letters.
Clearly, it plays no role at all in the approach to solving the cipher.
I disagree. The frequency of the symbol is non-relevant. If it is deliberate and not a writing mistake then it is important, not because it conveys a lot of information in the text, but because it testifies to the nature of the cipher. It is often stated that Voynichese has a small cipher symbol set and I think there are a variety of symbols which indicate that in total it has a much larger symbol set. It is like a zoologist saying that because platypus are rare they should be considered not to exist. If zoologists ignored species that are rare then it could lead to have a much poorer understanding of evolution and biological systems. When you find a rare symbol in the Voynich It stills demands an explanation. You could say, that it is a writing mistake, that it is a null designed to confuse the reader, that is a symbol with its own unique substitution or maybe you have another explanation for it; what I think you can't justify is just ignoring it. It is lazy and bad practice to just ignore things that don't fit your theory and I don't think rarity is an excuse.
I have looked for homophonic substitution in the EVA transcript, because there are words that have just one exchanged character. If you analyse this you find that some characters are exchanged while others stay fixed. Neither a,i or n have a significant exchange rate in words. So if it s a common suffix it appears very often without any change. However, it would be very likely that vowels have more characters in this kind of systems.