(12-10-2026, 04:15 PM)eggyk Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I was going to reply in the You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view., but I think I would probably derail the conversation there, so i'm answering here 
(12-10-2026, 02:12 PM)proto57 Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.But I also note that, in this very thread in fact, we see an example of my "Voynich Theorem #1" being borne out... for most of the examples being discussed are admittedly and demonstrably either owned by Voynich, or somewhere he is known to have visited, and even, a couple, a short stroll from his Florence Libreria. That is another important aspect of this... it is not just that these comparisons are compelling, it is that they were either in print by 1910, or somewhere he plausibly, or is known to have, visited.
I wanted to discuss the month name marginalia and ask for your view regarding them.
The month name marginalia represent extremely unusual forms to use as a forger. Even with the internet, digital libraries, access to 100s of examples and a dedicated search effort some of the forms are exceedingly rare to find. No matter who he was forging "as" (bacon, tepenec, anyone else), the forms make no sense to use. We would expect the forger to use at least semi-common forms from a plausible language.
I do not believe it is likely that Voynich would have easily come across these forms. In fact, it is extremely likely that he would have come across and used one of dozens of other rare (but less rare) forms instead. While searching for these, i've come across almost everything you can imagine: juillet, jullet, julet, juingnet, juinget, jungnet, jugnet, jules, jullé, julh, iuylol, even an extremely rare joingnet or joignet. Not a single jollet has ever been found, other than a lone "joilet" that I had to request from the BNF library.
Aberil is much the same. There are loads of abril, abrel, aberel, abrillen, abrellen floating around, but actual usage of "aberil" is almost non-existant and highly unlikely to come across. 2 of the 3 aberils we have (aberillen) are actually direct copies of an extremely old poem (and are nestled within 700 pages of text). The only other places we've seen aberil are in farmer records, where the people writing were far less educated and more likely to phonetically write their dialect.
Additionally, the french sections correlate to eachother. The areas that most used 'o' in june and july (eg joing, joingnet) correlate strongly to the same areas that used 'octembre'.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
So, admittedly this means that whether or not the forgery hypothesis is true, something unlikely has occured. Either:
1) Voynich happened to find extremely unusual month name forms in 2 different languages, and decided to mix them
or
2) Someone who spoke both a northern french dialect and an allemannic german dialect (alsatian, swabian, bavarian) wrote using both languages
or
3) Two seperate people (who both learnt to write in the exact same style, or at the same school) wrote the month names in their own dialects: one in northern french, and another in alemannic.
None of these are provable of course, and we currently have no full or partial sequence that mix this way. However, we do see some unusual / relevant french forms near Metz, and also some relevant german forms near strasbourg. These really aren't that far away from eachother. However, the forgery hypothesis requires that voynich came across extremely rare forms two times, and then happened to choose those two sources instead of all of the other, less rare forms he would know existed.
Considering how rare these forms are, what do you think the liklihood was that he would come across them in his stash?
Hi Mr. Yolk: First of all I don't know, of course, but will try to answer with various points which relate to your questions to share my thinking on this. I'll just do it as a list in an attempt at better clarity, and more brevity, which I am not good at achieving. So, some "free form" "stream of consciousness" answers:
1) Since the creator of these Zodiac month name "additions" used different languages, perhaps it is a sign of ignorance of the copier, rather than them being by different people? And therefore, might it not simply be another sign of forgery, rather than several people writing in the same style, or one scribe switching it up and using different languages?
2) The reality that you state, that these forms are rare, and therefore hard to find, may be so. But I think that is looking at the problem backwards, as I explained to JoJo in the other thread: Yes, it is hard for US to find rare examples to compare to. But I think it is a mistake to assume that a forger was looking for those exact things. They would have just been grabbing things they found, for effect maybe, and would not have had to seek any particular examples out, as we have to. Maybe an analogy would be a person praising the intricate relative associations of a Jackson Pollock painting, wondering at his immense skill in achieving such perfect balance. But, of course, he just flung the paint on the canvas... the things we see today, that we read into it, that we assume, make it seem so extraordinarily impossible that it was not all carefully planned.
3) I personally think that the questionable use of the varied source month names fits fairly well with the overall level of blurring of reality, of what we are used to, of what we would expect, as the entire Voynich is sick with. Almost every single item and character in the Voynich, like these names, is open to debate. And I suspect that this level of "blurriness" to the whole work is a form of insulation, of
protection against detection. Because we cannot figure out these month names, we cannot pin down an author, time, geography... and this is the situation we find ourselves in ten thousand times with the Voynich, and it keeps us from saying, for instance, "Those words are French, the drawings are French 15th century, too... like this, this, and this manuscript from the Lombardy region, as written by the Scribes of the Monestary of Voynich Manuscripts". And then, we would be able to compare the Voynich to a real manuscript from THERE. And then, we would find errors in it that belie it being a fake, because it is really, really hard for a forger to create a long anything because the chance of error goes up. Even in small amounts of content, this is apparent, and happened many times in the history of forger. For instance, the Vinland Map, which had incorrect phrasing in the inset legend. A forged Meso-American codex had a misuse of calendar date names. But there are hundreds of examples. By fudging things this way, it would protect the work from direct comparison to anything genuine, and have all the experts... and us... very confused, and with no landmark to compare it to.
And as I've said, I think the blurriness MUST be intentional, for "what are the odds" that one work would be THAT close to so many items, constellations, plants, animals, "words", source languages and geographies, styles, fashions, astrological symbolism... and so on... and YET be "off" by just enough to make them unidentifiable. Even the marginalia, which is supposedly by different people, at a different time! It is also just as "off"... and so, the month names... look, we cannot figure them out, beyond assuming the "real" months they were meant to represent. I wrote about this effect, and my opinions on it, in "A Little Bit Like Everything, a Whole Lot like Nothing": You are not allowed to view links.
Register or
Login to view.
4) You wrote, "We would expect the forger to use at least semi-common forms from a plausible language." But here is the thing: It has worked, because people believe the work is real- so therefore, regardless of what "We would expect...", the things he did do, have worked, if it is a forgery. And also, say, as suggested a forger would do, we did have a forger who was capable of making better choices... if such a work was consistently so good that it didn't not raise our eyebrows, we all might consider it genuine, or at least, not be arguing about it. Those are probably out there... almost certainly are out there... and they do not come under question. This one? It has long been questioned as a possible forgery, exactly because of the use of a great many inexplicable things, like these multi-language, mulit-sourced month names which are written in the same script.
I rambled a bit there... but the short form is, if it is bad, and by a forger, it is bad enough to engender discussion, not good enough to match anything else we know, and good enough to insulate the perpetrator from detection.
5) The added on month names reminds me a great deal of the use of marginalia in several ways: Yes they are decipherable, unlike the marginalia. But they appear to be added, and like the marginalia, they have serious problems. Now the last page marginalia is in the same ink as the text, which, to me, is pretty damning. Before the ink tests, it was said the marginalia was by another hand, and written at a later date, by someone trying to figure out the Voynich. When the ink results were announced, those claims, for the most part, were forgotten. But my point is, as I believe the marginalia was added for a "genuine effect", I suspect the month names were so added (which reminds me... I cannot remember if McCrone tested the ink of the added month names, and if they did, what they found. Do they match the ink of the main text?)
6) As for the likelihood of Voynich finding any of the rare month names "in his stash", that is something I would be unable to quantify. I mean, one would have to assess the number of month names and types of them in all of Voynich's 500,000 items at the Libreria, all his other books, and every library and collection he looked for them. If he looked for them. And then use some standard for how rare they are "in the World", and try to arrive at a probability. Maybe that number would be high, maybe it would be hopelessly impossible.
But here is the thing that I think of when people bring up probability... some cases are entirely constructed using relative likelihoods to support their ideas, or to reject alternatives. But the thing one must realize is this: No matter how rare, or how common... or, for that matter, how difficult or how easy, how well executed or how poorly... that is, any relative standard one can observe or assume in the Voynich... they must remember that it was done, it is there in front of us, so the likelihood that it appears, whatever it is, applies to a 15th century scribe, a 17th century hoaxer, a 20th century Voynich. In this case, I mean, why would it be considered any harder for a forger to find and use some example of these month names than for a genuine monk on a real document would have had to?
By the way, I was wondering... can you post (sorry if you did, and I missed it) the origins and years and location of the matching examples you did find? Do they fit the requirements of my Theorem #1, as in being in print by 1910?
But my overall answer comes under this general category: I believe think the Voynich is actually a rather poor forgery, which in no way deserves the patient and well meant minute scrutiny it has engendered, having been created by Voynich from among the great many sources piled all around him, combined with his great imagination, and his apparent lack of concern for technical accuracy, and his even less artistic skill. So in the case of the month names, I think it was probably just a matter of him pouring through some of his dusty tomes, and saying to himself, "I like these! And this... that one looks nice, too. I'll use some of each. That'll mess them up good!".
Anyway, sorry for the long answer. And no, I am not claiming any of my opinions above prove anything, they are just answers based on my opinions, my view of these matters.
Rich