The Voynich Ninja

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(27-04-2016, 06:42 PM)davidjackson Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.An analysis of the text of the Voynich and a proposed partial solution by You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view..

The document in English can be downloaded from her website You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.. A Russian language version of the document is available You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view..

Thanks for posting the link, David.

As I see it (I worked through the translation), the "method" consists of
  • taking the glyphs that look like traditional Latin abbreviations and expanding them into unabbreviated Latin, and then
  • assigning a variety of letter possibilities to the other glyphs.
I've long said that the abbreviation shapes are traditional Latin but that the meaning behind them may not be.


The problem with interpreting it as Latin is that the STRUCTURE of the VMS text does not follow traditional Latin structure even if the glyphs are shaped and placed in a similar way and even if the person deciphering it builds extra flexibility into it by allowing specific shapes (the ones in between that are not shaped like Latin abbreviations) to have a variety of meanings, as well...

Taking May's translation for Plant 1v as an example... It includes: hot skeletons brought together, sloping ground and gurgled kisses, vanity, beehives, condensing great burdens, songs, warnings... These subjects don't appear to relate to each other in any discernible way even if we assume the text has nothing to do with the plant drawing.



A lot of effort obviously went into this, but looking at May's translation, it comes out like many translations, with a dozen different chunks of subject matter unrelated to each other on the same page (even if you choose the alternative word that seems to work best in relation to the others) and there's no perceivable grammatical coherence, not even the note-style coherence that one sometimes sees in herbal manuscripts, for example (where they jot down characteristics, uses, recipes, etc., without a lot of verbs or joining words).

I'll look at it some more this evening when I have time to give the "Latin" a better read to see if there's anything in that jumble. Unfortunately, I have to run (as usual, I have deadlines).
I welcome everyone to read my study and deciphered text of a few VMs pages. I know it is nonstandart and doesn't correspond to usual deciphering methods and rules, but I hope you won't waste your time. Please, if you read it, read to the end. Some questions of my approach is clarified closer to the second part or to the end of this work.
David shared links to my PDF file, but, as I corrected some mistakes, I've updated it and putted it here.
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I merged two threads for convenience.
-JKP:-

Taking May's translation for Plant 1v as an example... It includes: hot skeletons brought together, sloping ground and gurgled kisses, vanity, beehives, condensing great burdens, songs, warnings... These subjects don't appear to relate to each other in any discernible way even if we assume the text has nothing to do with the plant drawing.

As for exactly this fragment, due to my whole theory it must look so:

Casum alteratorum os(.) os  cano (pevam) erutori (ardore, uretur) exerere (efferare) rutas (rudus) cum piem (meum) erutori (uretur, ardore) inter novem duo compono (skladam) includere unitum (altum, votum) do aquam (aciem) acinacium inque declivem humum copulatum diverse dense vocali traditione (traditur) tradis (tritus) sonivium unigenitum 

In-omnem caelus (chaos) traditur aliorsum terere viam motam oborturam lenonum (nullum) vocem vos humanos vanos, nigros, delusivum eludo (alto, alito) sinos jam  humum prone? os Jovis (alveis, aliis?) iens dense obsecro (upivam) concluse (congeneus, congens) dense (tenus) denso (tenso)(.) concluse (congeneus, congens) densandum ingens-onus* genus cavum vobiscum unius habens votum (altum) unius triturum (territorium) cantione (cantore, venture) logos alios dense cum tritura caelus (chaos) (vanus?) taliter nimio (homine) teretur agendum monitione (monitor, planetare) invoco (vopijem) diverse votum si altum (votum) onus alterare (alteratur).


1 – cambium – cambiandum.
2 – includerere – includere (v. l.).
3 – acinacium – genitive acinaces, in some sources acinacium (nominative) is mentioned as the sort of wine.
4 – aliors – possibly, cutted aliorsum.
5 – ingruus – incongruens, also incongruus.
6 – delusivum – I guess, it's close to the meaning of delusum.
7 – congeneus, congenius – vicinus.
8 – congens – possibly, a variant of writing cogens.
9 – voscum – folk vobiscum.
10 – teritorium - territorium (v. l.).
? – a questionable word.
* - I couldn't find an exact and clear interpretation for these words, I consider them two-in-one words for now and leave them in the present state.
Os - oratio.
Red words - Czech or Serbo-Croatian.
It is not necessary that all chosen variants are correct, my Latin is not very well.
I have not yet time to read the paper in full, but if I may I would like to ask four brief questions:

1) In the proposed translation, what is otol?

2) In the proposed translation, what is odaiin?

3) In the proposed translation, what is aror sheey (f116v)?

4) Does the proposed translation produce at least one coherent sentence in any of the folios?
I'm popping in briefly... can't stay, but I wanted to make a quick comment.

Searcher, I always read your posts, you have contributed some good ideas to the board.


What I wanted to put out there was a couple of thoughts...

1. If you expand an abbreviation into Latin, and add intervening letters, especially alternate letters, you will get valid words for many combinations because expanding the abbreviation already gives you a big chunk of a word in that language. You could do the same for other languages like Spanish, for example. If you found out which common suffixes and prefixes were used in that language, and expanded out the abbreviations into those suffixes/prefixes (the same as one would for Latin), and propose alternates for the intervening letters, you will get many valid words.

2. Almost every literate person in the western world in the 15th century knew Latin. Even A. Kircher, who came along almost two centuries later, wrote many books in Latin and was interested in linguistics, decoding languages, creating a universal language, etc. That's partly why the manuscript was put into his hands. If the VMS is in Latin (or mostly Latin), why couldn't polymath minds like his, that were already very skilled at Latin and totally familiar with Latin abbreviations... why couldn't they decode it?

Ok, gotta run again. Sorry. Wish I could spend longer on this.
(27-04-2016, 11:48 PM)Anton Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I have not yet time to read the paper in full, but if I may I would like to ask four brief questions:

1) In the proposed translation, what is otol?

2) In the proposed translation, what is odaiin?

3) In the proposed translation, what is aror sheey (f116v)?

4) Does the proposed translation produce at least one coherent sentence in any of the folios?

Well, I expected the last question, of course.
1) otol - omnius (neutrum genus), nepos (masculine), nubens (fem., mascul., neutr.)
[font=Eva]2) odaiin - [/font]intraturum, interiturum
[font=Eva][font=Eva][font=Eva]3) aror sheey [/font][/font][/font](aRor sheey) - retornare ...vam/vem/eam. Unfortunately, I can't identify this kind of the ligature "sh" exactly, this combination may be "retornare vivam" (future), "retornare novem" (conjunct.praes.), "retornare ineam" (conjunct. praes.), so I can't say for sure. "Retornare - the same as "redire".
As for me, the text is enigmatic and strange, but coherent in the whole manuscript.

(28-04-2016, 01:09 AM)-JKP- Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I'm popping in briefly... can't stay, but I wanted to make a quick comment.

Searcher, I always read your posts, you have contributed some good ideas to the board.


What I wanted to put out there was a couple of thoughts...

1. If you expand an abbreviation into Latin, and add intervening letters, especially alternate letters, you will get valid words for many combinations because expanding the abbreviation already gives you a big chunk of a word in that language. You could do the same for other languages like Spanish, for example. If you found out which common suffixes and prefixes were used in that language, and expanded out the abbreviations into those suffixes/prefixes (the same as one would for Latin), and propose alternates for the intervening letters, you will get many valid words.

2. Almost every literate person in the western world in the 15th century knew Latin. Even A. Kircher, who came along almost two centuries later, wrote many books in Latin and was interested in linguistics, decoding languages, creating a universal language, etc. That's partly why the manuscript was put into his hands. If the VMS is in Latin (or mostly Latin), why couldn't polymath minds like his, that were already very skilled at Latin and totally familiar with Latin abbreviations... why couldn't they decode it?

Ok, gotta run again. Sorry. Wish I could spend longer on this.

I can't make a quick reply to your post, I'll answer later.
(28-04-2016, 09:58 AM)Searcher Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.1) otol - omnius (neutrum genus), nepos (masculine), nubens (fem., mascul., neutr.)
[font=Eva]...[/font]
As for me, the text is enigmatic and strange, but coherent in the whole manuscript.

You have to ask yourself, if it can be this many interpretations, is the person choosing the interpretation the one who is creating coherency in the manuscript?

Let's say in English you have the common endings -ing -able -ly or -ed. If you add a few letters in front of them, many will become real words.


I'm afraid I don't see coherency yet (I'm willing to keep looking and to keep an open mind about this)...

As I mentioned, folio 1v has been translated into a dozen disjointed unrelated subjects with no consistent or coherent (or even note-form) grammar other than those we human beings "fill in" with our minds when we see familiar words. How many of the abbreviation+more-letters combinations look like words because the expansion of the abbreviations is already providing the foundation for a word so that anything you add to it with a basic vowel-consonant balance has a good chance of matching some word in Latin?


I'm not posing these questions to be argumentative. These are things we all have to ask ourselves when we have something the LOOKS like words but which otherwise doesn't make a lot of sense and which requires alternatives for many of the word-glyphs in order to try to make sense of it.
I also don't want to be overly critical, and the following comment equally applies to anyone looking for the solution.
As mentioned already before, I think it is important to look also at the 'encryption' step, not only the 'decryption' step.

In the above case it means that, whoever wrote the MS, could have encoded the plain text word 'omnius' as otol , but also nepos and nubens would become otol .

I find that hard to imagine...
Are you able to translate the 49 words listed on this page:
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