The Voynich Ninja

(27-03-2026, 10:12 PM)JoJo_Jost Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Well, and what if the tar pit is exactly what nobody wants to see?

You should really care for the tar pit, as you reached it‘s rim already: until now, all theories got stuck in it. There is a whole list of them in a section of this forum, and all other tries failed also.

Most people here do not cross an imaginery line from Vienna to Stockholm and stay with their ideas within the area west of that line;  
but here are no „unknown“ languages which may fit to VMS texts, all known languages do not work out with it, and the basic Latin alphabet was completely developed and dominant in Western Europe since ancient times — as well as grammar and structure of Latin influenced all Romance and western languages.
For Greek and it‘s area: same. 
VMS will not work with anything out of the Greek-Latin complex or even with any (West)Germanic/Scandinavian languages.

The trick is to find a european language that complies with the strange structure of VMS text, not to force some favourite language (and theory) with twists and tricks and wildcard-interpretations into an „understanding and solution“ of Voynichese.
Yet, I just saw much things that may be called „barking up the wrong tree“ (very German proverb, imperfectly translated to english. Might show im a nutshell where the problems are).

@ Stefan

You don't need to warn me about anything, Stefan! I'm an adult, and have been for a very long time   . And honestly: cynicism isn't an argument. You end up in the “tar pit” when you start with a conclusion and twist the evidence to fit it. I do the opposite - the numbers, the statistics a.o. come from corpus comparisons that I didn't design to confirm anything. If they still lead to the “tar pit,” so be it.

I started when I noticed that the marginal notes were in Bavarian. It seemed obvious to me to test that. And from then on, this theory was increasingly confirmed... Not the other way around....

I was surprised myself, because I never would have expected that the VMS could be in Bavarian dialect! (Up until then, I thought it was in Latin.)

(31-01-2026, 08:31 PM)Rafal Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

Quote:As already written here, I even suspect that it could be incredibly difficult to decipher VMS, precisely because of the many possibilities and variants of Bavarian, including, among many others, those pointed out by Stefan here

That's fair said.

If you ever try to read Voynichese as Bavarian remember that the most common words should be simple words like "and", "or", "with", "by" and so on.
Also Bavarian should have some kind of der/die/das word like standard German, am I right?
Unfortunately we don't have good candidates for such words.

And remember that 50% of Voynichese words end with "9". You won't find any similar letter in Bavarian, I believe.

I have wondered about it once and some possible option could be tricks similar to Pig Latin which I have already mentioned in this thread.
For example in classical Pig Latin 100% of words end with "y"  

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For words that begin with consonait sounds, these are also known as consonant blends (two letters that make one sound: e.g., black, slack, clown). The initial consonant blend (or two letters) is moved to the end of the word, then "ay" is added, as in the following examples:

• "pig" = "igpay"
  
• "latin" = "atinlay"
  
• "banana" = "ananabay"
  
• "black" = "ackblay"
  

I looked at y ending for words and it's You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. !15496/38,000 is roughly .40

JoJo watch out for this so you don't spiral.  The saying goes the more complex a cipher is, its probably not the solution.  Think about Occam's Razor.  I have been reading through your work and I don't know how many steps you have to go too to get a reading.  It does sound complex.

(28-03-2026, 11:04 PM)oeesordy Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Also Bavarian should have some kind of der/die/das word like standard German, am I right?

You really should have familiarized yourself with what you're criticizing; otherwise, none of this here makes any sense. Check my code before you write! For example: “und” (and oder) are there, as are “der, die, das,” prepositions, etc. das "y" is there. 

And the code is anything but complicated...

The Bavarian Absorptionschiffre 


ABSORPTION PREFIXES AND FUNCTION WORDS

Articles (der/die/das/ein etc.)             ->  o-

Preposition + article (in dem, etc.)   ->  qo-

Verb prefixes (ge-/ver-/be-/er-)        ->  y-

und (and)                                         ->  s

---

BANK GALLOWS  (complex initial clusters, one glyph each)

tsch   ->  tsh
pf     ->  cfh
ng/ck ->  ckh
tr/dr  ->  cth

---

SIMPLE GALLOWS  (consonant classes)

EVA k  ->  MHD w              (general; Bavarian w-prothesis before vowels is a subcase of this)                            
EVA t  ->  MHD t / d           (dental plosives)
EVA p  ->  MHD f / v / u      (labials, labio-dentals)
EVA f  ->  open                   (not yet confirmed independently)

---

SINGLE-CHARACTER CONSONANTS

ch  ->  n / m              (both nasals map to ch)
sh  ->  ch / sh / sch      (sibilant + palatal)
d    ->  s / z / tz / ss    (Bavarian z/s conflation)
r    ->  r   (testing)
l    ->  l    (testing) 

---

VOWELS

a    ->  a / o / e       (Bavarian phonetic reduction, polyphonic)
o    ->  o / u            (EVA o covers both)
e    ->  i / ie            (EVA e = MHD i)
y    ->  not fully resolved: either a word-final -e that is pulled forward into the preceding syllable, or an ending such as
          -en / -er absorbed into the word
ee  ->  ei / ai / au / eu  (Bavarian diphthong reduction)
ii  ->  currently decoded as part of aiin (= ein); possibly ei,
           possibly other vowel doublings -- not yet confirmed independently

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Frequences tested with a cleaned EVA (not a Proof, but an important hint)

s = "und" (and) appears absorbed in three positions: 
standalone (302x, 0.86%) 
word-final (847x, e.g. chos = cho + und) 
word-initial (908x, e.g. saiin = und + ein)  

Total s in all positions: 5.87% of tokens. 

MHD und/vnd (and)  frequency: ~5.9%.   confirmed.

Important: 72% of s-initial VMS words also exist without the s!


The y->q transition pattern crosses word boundaries at high frequency. Statistical validation against four MHD reference texts (Ortloff von Baierland, Breslauer Arzneibuch, Admonter Bartholomaeus, Kochrezept- sammlung Cod. germ. 1 = 173,485 words!): 

Element               VMS      MHD range    Result 
o- words (article)   21.0%  20-25%         confirmed 
qo- words (prep)   14.7%  12-16%          confirmed 
ART/PK ratio         1.43     1.37-1.54        confirmed (Breslauer 1.36) 
y- words (prefix)   4.3%     4.0-5.6%        confirmed 
aiin standalone     1.66%   Ortloff 1.74%  confirmed (factor 1.05x)

EVA ch (= n/m)   VMS: 9.48%           MHD: ~10.4% confirmed
EVA sh (= ch/sch/sh)  VMS: 0.116/Wort    MHD sch+ch komb.: 0.077-0.098  nearly


The cipher isn't finished yet, nor is it complete; there's still quite a bit missing. But it's already at a stage where some translations are possible. This isn't a sprint; it's a marathon. And at least as far as frequency analysis is concerned, it's coherent.

And: I am not aware of any other approach based on a real language that has produced a coherent frequency analysis of this kind.

Postscript: The -y-Problem

Since 40% of VMS words end in -y, there is a connection here that deserves attention.

If "y-" at the beginning of a word indicates verb prefixes (ge-/ver-/be-/er-), it stands to reason that “-y” at the end of a word indicates suffixes.

Obvious candidates would be "-en, -er, -n, and -e", which are frequently reduced or merged in Middle High German in the Bavarian phonetic spelling.

Taken together, these endings account for the following percentages: 

VMS -y at the end of a word: 39.5% 

Ortloff von Baierland: 31.1%
Breslauer Arzneibuch: 37.8% (excluding vnde)
Admonter Bartholomaeus: 25.0%
Kochrezeptsammlung: 31.1%

I am not yet entirely convinced by this interpretation, but the figures are within the expected range.

There is a second, perhaps more interesting possibility: that -y represents a word-final -e that was intentionally moved to the end of the word—to suppress the high frequency of "e" in the plaintext and make the ciphertext look less like German.

In Middle High German, between 41% and 54% of all words contain at least "e". 
(It should be noted that in phonetically written Bavarian, many e-endings (-en, -er) are dropped or reduced -- "haben" becomes "habn", "machen" becomes "machn". The actual share of words containing e in spoken Bavarian would therefore be lower than the 41-54% measured in the written MHD texts, bringing it closer to the 39.5% observed in the VMS, or lower.)

In the VMS, 39.5% of all words end in -y.

If -y is a shifted -e, the scribe has moved the language’s most frequent vowel to a fixed position at the word boundary—a simple but effective means of frequency masking.

The two interpretations (suffix vs. shifted vowel) are not mutually exclusive. This remains an open question—but if we look at actual transcriptions, the interpretation with the shifted “e” might make more sense—especially since in phonetically written Bavarian, most endings are omitted or reduced.

(27-03-2026, 08:17 PM)Stefan Wirtz_2 Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.This "spelling conventions" did not come suddenly after 1438 or whenever VMS was finished. You will find lots of German writing of 15th, 14th or 13th century showing masses of double consonants without any conventions, sometimes even changing whitin the text from one and the same author.German has many roots in Latin where geminized consonants were a standard and standardized by finalisation of Latin at least 1,000 years before VMS.

Yes, sure, in German standard spelling the "little break" before a consonant sound has always been conventionally encoded by doubling the consonant.

But, in case you haven't noticed, the VMS is not written in the German standard spelling.

Japanese hiragana script, for example, encodes that same "little break" by adding a っ before the (non-doubled) syllable gliph: ぽ = "po", っぽ = "ppo".

Quote:We had the double-consonants-discussion already about Venetian: it leaded to a moment when I just posted random screenshots of Venetian texts showing dense appearances of Geminis, while you insisted that there are no doublings at all in this language.

And I still insist. 

As I explained, in the standard Italian script, consonant doubling is used for three distinct things: 

1. with many consonants, to denote a "little break" before the consonant, as in "note" = /'nòte/ vs "notte" = /'nò<break>te/; or the lengthening of the consonant, it it can be sustained, as in "anno" or "bello"; 
   
2. to turn the simple "r" sound into the trilled "rr" sound, as in "caro" vs "carro", and 
   
3. to prevent the letter "s" between vowels to be read as "z", as in "casa" = /'kaza/, "cassa" = /'kasa/
   

The spoken Venetian language does not have those "little breaks" or lenghtened consonants that spoken Italian and other "dialects" have.  The verb "to strike" is written "battere" and pronounced /'ba<break>tere/ in Italian, but pronounced /'bater/ in Venetian. Spoken Venetian also lacks the trilled "r" sound.  

But when it is written, Venetian uses basically the Italian orthography, which is usually read according to the Italian orthography rules.  Thus, in written Venetian, you will not see any doubled consonants, except "ss" between vowels -- which does not mean a doubled /s/ sound, not a break before the /s/, but just a single /s/ sound rather than the /z/ that Italian speakers would read there.

All the best, --stolfi

(29-03-2026, 10:21 AM)Jorge_Stolfi Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Yes, sure, in German standard spelling the "little break" before a consonant sound has always been conventionally encoded by doubling the consonant.

But, in case you haven't noticed, the VMS is not written in the German standard spelling.[..]

What?
There is no „little break“ before consonants in our language, we are not Italians.
Doubled consonants are shortening the previous vowel if necessary by context, they don‘t put breaks in. And this is only a bit different in medieval german texts, when there some geminis do not appear where we are used to it, making it a bit difficult to read that word in the first try. But nowhere are „breaks“ intended.
„Mine“ is something completely different than in „Minne“ in today‘s german, but you will find the (medieval) word „Minne“ written as „Mine“ in old texts.

Maybe you haven‘t noticed: I as native speaker refuse the idea that there is any German spelling in VMS from the very first second. It is not Latin, it is not German.

About Venetian: well, we could open this barrel again, but it will still be clear that there are „a few“ double consonants in written venetian — and quite more than the VMS ever will offer.
But that belongs not into this thread here.

(29-03-2026, 11:59 AM)Stefan Wirtz_2 Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.well, we could open this barrel again,

but not in this thread, please...

[quote="Stefan Wirtz_2" pid='82123' dateline='1774781994'] /quote]
I know very little German, so I stand corrected about the pronunciation of doubled consonant letters.  But the point is that those "double consonants" are a convention of the standard orthography to encode phonetic features that are generally not doubled consonant sounds (except perhaps for certain sound that can be lengthened, like /n/).  You don't pronounce "Krabbe" by saying two "b" sounds, do you?

[quote]: I as native speaker refuse the idea that there is any German spelling in VMS[/quote]

And, again, that is obviously true.  The Voynichese orthography is not the standard German or Bavarian orthography.  

So the absence of doubled glyphs is not an argument against the language being Bavarian.  The pronunciation features that the standard orthography encodes with doubled consonant letters could be encoded in a different way. 

About Venetian, it is my mother tongue -- the language we spoke at home when I was a kid.

All the best, --stolfi