The Voynich Ninja

@ Tavie 

I'm a journalist—believe me, I don't believe anything or anyone, not even myself. I'll probably be the last person to be convinced that I have the solution, even if I pretend I do when I actually have it.      

I have nothing against criticism; that's fine. It’s just that when it becomes clear the critic hasn't even looked into the subject they're criticizing, that annoys me because it wastes my time. Otherwise, I respond very politely to criticism, don't I? After all, I'm human and I make mistakes—quite a lot, in fact...


That were good Questions

1. Words with "sa" and "so"

You’re right that words with "so" and "sa" make up the majority of words that start with "s".

But we should take a look at which words these mainly are.

Words with "sa": saiin (119x), sar (77x), sain (62x), sal (48x)
Words with "so-": sol (59x), sor (47x)

Currently, I have aiin as "mit" = "with" (though this changes frequently). Then saiin would be "und mit" = "and with" fused into a single word.
"mit" is one of the more frequent words following “und” in my Middle High German reference corpus: 287 out of 10,542 "und" occurrences. So this is actually not a problem for the hypothesis—it actually tends to confirm it.

As for the standalone "s" followed by a word: The first characters of the next token are “ai” (25% aiin), "o" (20%), "ch" (16%), "a" (15%). This could be something like a mix of possible content beginnings (ch, sh) and functional elements (o = article präfix, ai = part of "aiin" see above). Important: No single character dominates so strongly that it would stand out.

2. Why does "sq" hardly ever appear?

Yes, a realy good question! But "sq" appears exactly twice in the entire manuscript. But a standalone "s" followed by a "qo" word occurs eleven times (s qokedy 3x, etc.). So "and + preposition" does exist, but it is very rare.

Why so rare? Because "qo" itself is a prefix. The system does not stack prefixes. You cannot have "s+qo" as a double prefix on a single token, so "and + preposition" remains as two separate tokens: "s" + "qo-word."

The frequency check: In MHD, "and" is followed by a preposition in 9.1% of cases (964 out of 10,542). In VMS, a standalone "s" followed by a "qo"-word accounts for 3.6% (11 out of 309). That seems low. However, if "saiin" absorbs "und mit" instead of forming "s qo...", we must count this separately. If we include "saiin" again: About 5.5% of all "s" contexts contain a following preposition. The remaining gap may be explained by other absorbed forms that I have not yet identified.

I think that "sq" is virtually impossible, but this does not pose a real problem. It is a prediction. A notation system based on prefixes should not allow prefix stacking—but, in principle, I have too little information to say that with certainty.

3. I haven't yet looked closely enough at the LAAFU pattern in this context - I still need to do that. There are several VMS "anomalies" that I haven’t incorporated yet because there are simply too many of them. 

@ Jo Jo Jost

I don't know if this is good news for the German/Bavarian angle.  But in this You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. it looks like Voynich as in eva "You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view." page 11.

[attachment=15007]

A good find, but the “d=8” is a glyph not uncommon in 15th-century Gothic Bastard manuscripts, although an "8" like glyph can be a “g.” Overall, however, the script is very similar to the VMS script, especially when compared to the marginalia, and it follows German orthography, not Latin.

But that would require more time; perhaps one could even make out words from the marginalia—I can recognize the typical “t,” the “z,” and others. Is there a transcription?

(04-04-2026, 05:37 AM)JoJo_Jost Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.A good find, but the “d=8” is a glyph not uncommon in 15th-century Gothic Bastard manuscripts, although an "8" like glyph can be a “g.” Overall, however, the script is very similar to the VMS script, especially when compared to the marginalia, and it follows German orthography, not Latin.

But that would require more time; perhaps one could even make out words from the marginalia—I can recognize the typical “t,” the “z,” and others. Is there a transcription?

This was from "Justanothertheory"

You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

Ah, right, now I remember - I took a quick look at it. Man, oh man, my memory. But you see, it fits with the marginalia, hahaha

(04-04-2026, 05:37 AM)JoJo_Jost Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I can recognize the typical “t,” the “z,” and others. Is there a transcription?

@JoJo_Jost

Shame on you—that’s German. It’s perfectly clear and understandable.

@ Aga  Yeah, for you, sure, but strangely enough, you often have slightly different views than the rest of us. 

But the point of the transcript was something else entirely: You can search for words in it without having to read the whole text—words like “gas,” “Marix morix,” etc...

(29-03-2026, 10:21 AM)Jorge_Stolfi Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

(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

For what it's worth, in Standard Italian, long consonants are actually long consonants, ie. notte is /not:e/, and r is always trilled - rr is, in fact /r:/. Only the s vs. ss difference is one of voicing, yes, but ss is also long - cassa is, in fact, /kas:a/. Not even sure /kasa/ exists in Italian. Venetian lacks the double consonants of Italian, but I believe Venetian does have its own orthography as well, where s is always /s/, while x is /z/ and the double consonants are not written at all. The "Venetian written the Italian way" is more Italian with Venetian pronunciation. But there's also another thing to note - Venetian /s/ and /z/ are, at least to my ears, apical, much like the Greek or European Spanish /s/, beause of which, borrowings from there into Littoralese Slovenian often end with /ʃ/ and /ʒ/ instead.

@ Kampfer 

Can we please leave this discussion alone in this thread—it has nothing to do with the thread!

An absorption rule absorbs letters and words. S = “and,” o = articles (der, die, das, dessen) , qo = prepositions—and even two words: “in einem”—so why should it take double consonants into account? That's complete nonsense...

Phonetically = spoken Bavarian shortens things out even more, including almost all endings, among other things.

So please—this topic doesn’t belong here! Start your own thread for it!

Yes, please, everyone, if you want to continue discussing other languages like Venetian, start another thread.  

JoJo has asked at least twice for this to stop.  I'd split this thread but with the exception of the last off topic post, it's too entwined with the German comments.