It's not about that one word, it's about the fact that when people don't understand something, they look elsewhere because they can't admit to themselves that they have no idea.
I'm just going to claim that VM is written in Zulu. Why? Well, the library in Timbuktu was the largest library south of the Sahara, and until the 19th century, Christians faced the death penalty if they entered the city.
Or was it Greenland after all? The bishop's seat was closed around 1350. Just a remnant of the Inuit?
When it comes to letting your imagination run wild, you've come to the right place.
Let me know if you find a clue. No matter what language it's in.
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Translated with DeepL.com (free version)
[quote="Aga Tentakulus" pid='72879' dateline='1762413379']
It's not about that one word, it's about the fact that when people don't understand something, they look elsewhere because they can't admit to themselves that they have no idea.
I'm just going to claim that VM is written in Zulu. Why? Well, the library in Timbuktu was the largest library south of the Sahara, and until the 19th century, Christians faced the death penalty if they entered the city.
Or was it Greenland after all? The bishop's seat was closed around 1350. Just a remnant of the Inuit?
When it comes to letting your imagination run wild, you've come to the right place.
Let me know if you find a clue. No matter what language it's in.
You are not allowed to view links.
Register or
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There are enough words in the text that would be more persuasive with multiple entries than just one very rare word. If the letter o is an article, then you also need the explanation what are
y, qo, cho, chy, c+ho, c+hy, t, k, p, f, , as these, like the ‘o’, are prefixed to the base word stem. In Swiss German we would then have to find more s` or maybe ä` or dä`.
(06-11-2025, 08:16 AM)Aga Tentakulus Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I'm just going to claim that VM is written in Zulu.
A priori it could be any language, or no language. But that means that the a priori probability of any specific language, like Zulu, Latin, or Chinese is practically zero.
To make a Zulu proposal worth investigating, you need (a) at least one plausible origin story, or (b) evidence from the VMS. Preferably both. The former should say why someone would have wanted to write a book like the VMS in Zulu, and how that book could have ended up taking up space uselessly on Barschius's shelf. The latter could be statistical properties of the text, similarities of (original) images with Zulu-related imagery, etc.
You have the beginning of (a), but just "the Timbuktu library could have books in Zulu" is still too vague and incomplete.
As for (b)... well, there is the pangolin
But the Zulu language has long polysyllabic words like "yintombazane" = "it is a girl". Thus it cannot be plain Zulu with a spelling anywhere like the modern one. It would have to be a funky spelling, or encrypted. But then language statistics cannot provide any evidence that would make Zulu more likely than Manchu or Urdu...
All the best, --stolfi
Who says it's a language?
It's drums.
The translation clearly shows a tam tam bum bum.
But still, no nymph has a bone in her hair.
(01-11-2025, 12:27 PM)Petrasti Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I have a question for everyone. I haven't found anything about this in the forum yet. Is there already a thread in which the a to o (or vice versa) swap has been discussed? (I am of course excluding my previous thread which was not commentable because of my thesis)
Is there already an analysis on this?
Here are a few examples:
Dom dam, chol chal, dol dal, pol pal, lol lal, cheol cheal, kooiin koaiin,
dain doin, Chor char, am om, or ar, oror arar, tol tal, chom cham,
kol kal, chaiin choiin, dar dor, daiin doiin, otchor otchar, taiin toiin,
saiin soiin, c+hol c+hal, aiir oiir, chory chary, dary dory, sal sol,
Vowel swap? As in f(1) = a and f(2) = o, and we consider the function g(1) = f(2) = o, and g(2) = f(1) = a? Am I getting this right?
(20-11-2025, 10:28 PM)Aga Tentakulus Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Who says it's a language?
It's drums.
The translation clearly shows a tam tam bum bum.
I read somewhere (Scientific American?) long ago that tamtam language is an imitation of the tones and stresses of natural language, with sentences stretched with redundant words to make it possible to infer the meaning.
Something like
"Voynichese is not Chinese, idiot" -->
"Voynichese of the Voynich from Voynich at Beinecke Library is NOT NO NO Chinese From China, you dummy dumb dumb idiot" -->
"TUMtumtum tum tum TUMtum tum TUMtum tum tumTUM TUMtumtum tum TUM TUM TUM TUMtum fum TUMtum, tum TUMtum TUM TUM TUMtum"
The intended recipient would of course know that "TUMtumtum tum tum TUMtum tum TUMtum" is the mnemonic code for "Voynichese", "TUM TUM TUM" means "not", "TUMtum TUM TUM TUMtum" means "idiot", etc.
All the best, --stolfi
Now that everyone has finished the drum concert and left the stage, we can continue. Otherwise, please open your own thread to get further musical support.
(21-11-2025, 10:52 AM)Petrasti Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Now that everyone has finished the drum concert and left the stage, we can continue. Otherwise, please open your own thread to get further musical support.
But my post was totally within the scope of this thread. Back in the early 2002, for statistical reasons that I don't remember any more, I concluded that the "circle" glyphs {
a,
o,
y} were sort of independent from the others. In the sense that one could usefully model the structure of Voynichese words as a string of the other glyphs, with those "circles" then inserted at varous points, at most once at every point.
One possible explanation could be that the language was Arabic or Hebrew, and
a,
o,
y were the three vowels sounds of those languages.
Or that the language was tonal and
a,
o,
y were pitch levels. And Zulu (and hence You are not allowed to view links.
Register or
Login to view. zulu) happens to be tonal...
All the best, --jorge