The Voynich Ninja

(19-03-2026, 09:39 PM)oeesordy Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Adding to the challenge I see it has not been met as just in theory.  What if it were the highest frequency word 165 in the book with the same amount of tokens as daiin for the word in the book as the suffix?

I am not sure I understood your remark.  But anyway here is that Portuguese example I mentioned before.  From a novel (Dom Casmurro, 1899):

| 87 antes = "before"
| 20 instantes = "instants"
|  2 interessantes = "interesting"
|  1 bastantes = "enough"
|  1 brilhantes = "brilliant"
|  1 centelhantes  = "sparkling"
|  1 consoantes
|  1 constantes
|  1 dantes = "of before"
|  1 distantes
|  1 endossantes = "underwriting"
|  1 incessantes
|  1 restantes = "remaining"
|  1 semelhantes = "similar"

The numbers are only half of those of daiin, but it is a printed book that went through careful proof-reading, and it has a bigger vocabulary than the VMS.

But there are some things you must consider:

• Statistics are not properties of a language.  There is no such thing as "the most common word in English", or "the frequency of the letter 'e' in English".    Statistics are properties of of a specific text (or of a corpus, a collection of specific texts). Did you know that there is an whole novel in English that does not use the letter 'e' even once?  And readers won't notice unless they are told?
  
• That said, languages can be amazingly different and complicated.  Do not assume that something you think is true for European languages is true for all languages.
  
• And never just assume that something is true for any language, even for your native tongue. Check before making any such claim. You will often be surprised... 
  
• The VMS is not a novel. It is not a treatise of philosophy or theology.  It is not a historical or geographical account. It is not poetry.  Thus it is pointless to compare its statistics to those of novels, treatises, histories, poems, etc.  At best it makes sense to compare them to those of the Alchemist's Herbal or ancient pharmacopoeias.
  
• The VMS contains lots of errors, from various sources.  We don't know how many yet.  Currently I would guess that at least 5% of all tokens have a "spelling error" of some sort, and most if not all of the so-called "weirdo" glyphs are common glyphs that were mangled by the Scribe or other processes.  Thus do not pay attention to words that occur only once.  Or even twice.
  

All the best, --stolfi

Jorge Stolfi,

I agree with your bullet points and I should have said text and book and I was making sweeping statements, my apologies.  So your best logic is this Voynich text an invented language a substitution of a language or an elaborate cipher from a language.  It's suppose be to low that its not a cipher and I hope I'm not making a sweeping statement.

(20-03-2026, 12:43 AM)oeesordy Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.So your best logic is this Voynich text an invented language a substitution of a language or an elaborate cipher from a language.  It's suppose be to low that its not a cipher

I am pretty sure that it is a natural language, not in cipher but in a phonetic spelling.  And know what daiin means, at least part of the time.  But I still don't know the language, nor the value of the glyphs. Nor how daiin is pronounced.

All the best, --Stolfi

¡Dámelo! (Give it to me!)

(19-03-2026, 05:19 AM)oeesordy Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.No known language produces a 140 to 167 prefixes for its most frequent word.  The word would not make sense.  If you disagree show the list of words with the language and the prefix in front of that word and it probably does not have to be the most frequent word.

I totally disagree. In Catalan and Spanish we have the pronouns that are written after hundred of verbs and their thousands of declinations.

Examples:

Spanish:
¡Dámelo! (Give it to me!)
Quiero comprarlo. (I want to buy it)

Catalan:
Dona-me-la (Give it to me)
Anar-se'n (to leave)

This seems to be turning into an argument in favour of meaningful language....

(20-03-2026, 08:05 AM)quimqu Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I totally disagree. In Catalan and Spanish we have the pronouns that are written after hundred of verbs and their thousands of declinations.

Spanish novel Don Quixote (1605+1615)

All the best, --stolfi

(20-03-2026, 08:19 AM)ReneZ Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.This seems to be turning into an argument in favour of meaningful language....

I agree that's why I'm still a disciple up against something that's complex hiding real meaning or not.