The Voynich Ninja

Quote:Regardless of whether my translations are correct, do you think it is possible that the author could have written the manuscript in this way?
 
In concrete terms:
• with abbreviated word forms,
• by renouncing part of the grammar,
• with individual abbreviations,
• as a kind of personal notation or memorization style,
• with the aim of making the content difficult for third parties to understand, but still being able to read fluently.

I think a better question would be if it is probable than if it is possible.
And I would say it is possible but rather improbable 

Let me make a comparison from modern times, people interested in cipher riddles could know it:
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I would say it fits your description. Ricky was a half-illiterate man who developed his personal way of writing down things, shorthened, ungrammatical and understood only for him. Yet after all it seems to make some sense, he was probably writing about his meetings with some people, see:
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But I would say there is a difference between notes of some petty swinder and long, illustrated manuscript written in a tidy way. People often make dirty notes but they rather don't write big works in dirty notes.

There is also a serious problem with a theory of some illiterate man, madman or autistic kid. Voynich Manuscripts seems to be a collective work with several scribes involved. And they probably had access to many other manuscripts which they used as inspiration for their illustrations. VM may be poor quality but making it still involved time and money.

We simply don't know any cases where someone would take such coordinated effort and produce thing of such scope which would sound like babbling of a person with brain damage.

(31-05-2026, 06:37 AM)Thorsten Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.[..] 
Regardless of whether my translations are correct, do you think it is possible that the author could have written the manuscript in this way?
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Unabhängig davon, ob meine Übersetzungen korrekt sind – haltet ihr es grundsätzlich für möglich, dass der Verfasser das Manuskript auf diese Weise geschrieben haben könnte?[..]
 

There is a bit of a contradiction:
Maybe there was an author with such idea; but the VMS was written by probably a small group of scribes.
To write all this as fluently as the texts do look, all involved persons would have had the need of understanding the "shorthand / abbreviation system" of the 'author', since even just copying such a non-natural writing would have been a hell.

So, honest answer is 'No, the VMS could not have been written in this way',
but also 'Yes, everything is possible, some author could have had the idea to produce a notebook with simplified entries'.

But as several people seem to be involved, that last idea is quite unlikely.

Openly, no one here appears to be willing to answer your question with a simple 'yes' or 'no':
'No' would mean you wasted your ~2 years just useless and is quite disencouraging,
'Yes' would upkeep your (uncertain) dream of having a solution and let you just wade deeper into the tar pit.

Personally, I don't see any of German/Germanic language structures within the Voynichese; 
that is a false trace to follow, and seeing you doing 2-letter-'deciphering' into long words, is not convincing at all.

I thought the Chinese and Irish solutions would be the last ever added to the You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. because all others since have been LLM slop and so prohibited on this forum. I've even had to remove two or three entries on the List for being pioneer slop. 

But since no one is calling this one out for being AI, I've added you to the List as the 66th solution and the second German one.

This reminds me of Gerard Cheshire's deciphering of Voynich. However, it's important to understand that there can't be too many liberties or assumptions for accurate analysis. 
I also don't fully understand why the author uses a special alphabet to write MHG, but still knows how to write in the standard handwriting of the time (as shown on pages You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. and f116v).

(31-05-2026, 07:03 AM)Aga Tentakulus Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I'm looking for something similar in German.

I can recommend here the Cod. Pal. Germ. 213 as an example, which in my opinion has many parallels to the VM.
Many words are abbreviated into this manuscript. However, to a usual extent, since this text should remain readable for everyone.
Nevertheless, the examples show that thinking in abbreviations was normal and did not hinder fluent reading for the experienced reader.

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(01-06-2026, 09:04 PM)Stefan Wirtz_2 Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.There is a bit of a contradiction:
Maybe there was an author with such idea; but the VMS was written by probably a small group of scribes.
To write all this as fluently as the texts do look, all involved persons would have had the need of understanding the "shorthand / abbreviation system" of the 'author', since even just copying such a non-natural writing would have been a hell.

That's correct. I'm taking into account Lisa Fagin Davis' assignment table.

Therefore, I interpret Folio 57v as a learning aid. Person 5 may have been supposed to learn step 1 "character substitution". This would be possible if another parchment with the plain text were placed on top. Step 2 "the reduction system" is of course more difficult to convey. But I don't think it's impossible.

(04-06-2026, 06:17 AM)Thorsten Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

(31-05-2026, 07:03 AM)Aga Tentakulus Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I'm looking for something similar in German.

I can recommend here the Cod. Pal. Germ. 213 as an example, which in my opinion has many parallels to the VM.
Many words are abbreviated into this manuscript. However, to a usual extent, since this text should remain readable for everyone.
Nevertheless, the examples show that thinking in abbreviations was normal and did not hinder fluent reading for the experienced reader.

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It's not a new thing that medieval authors used abbreviations. They could shorten every word if it wasn't small enough.
Of course, internally, your theory is consistent, but Voynich's manuscript doesn't really seem like someone's "prank" or "creative idea of a shortened language." And yet... why this particular way? Why not, for example, shorten all words to a single letter? Why create new alphabet?

(04-06-2026, 01:17 PM)ololololo Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.It's not a new thing that medieval authors used abbreviations. They could shorten every word if it wasn't small enough.
Of course, internally, your theory is consistent, but Voynich's manuscript doesn't really seem like someone's "prank" or "creative idea of a shortened language." And yet... why this particular way? Why not, for example, shorten all words to a single letter? Why create new alphabet?

I don't think the VM is talking about a "prank" at this point. Presumably, a translation problem has arisen here.


I am currently resolving the string in question as sch.e.z. First of all, I used the Middle High German word schërz (stm.) and translated with the New High German "joke". In retrospect, however, I think this choice of words is misleading. What would then be meant would not be that the manuscript itself is a joke or a forgery, but rather that it should seem like an inconsequential occupation to the author's environment – like an ordinary herbal or astronomy book that does not give rise to any particular interest.

In the meantime, I think other assignments are even more likely. If, for example, you look at schërz (swm.) or schërzel (stn.), there is the meaning of a "cut piece" or a small section of wood, paper or bread. These readings might fit the context better.

As JoJo_Jost have already correctly noted, the choice of the long word currently still depends on my personal assessment. That's exactly why I'm currently working on further narrowing down the number of possible assignments. My goal is to base the interpretation more strongly on recurring word uses and contextual references, thereby reducing the number of plausible alternatives.

To the question of why it was not shortened to one letter:

A reduction to just a single letter per word would ultimately make the text almost unreadable even for the author himself. Therefore, I assume that a compromise had to be found between brevity and readability.

The question also arises as to why a separate sign system was also used. My guess is that the people of the 15th century were much more familiar with abbreviations and abbreviations than we are today. An experienced reader would probably have recognized many word abbreviations relatively quickly. The additional layer of character substitution would therefore provide further protection and make it more difficult to read immediately.

My previous experience with the signs indicates that they are no longer a significant obstacle after a certain training period. On the contrary: Some classifications seem surprisingly memorable to me.

For example, I map the character for r to z. This seems unusual at first, but it is easy to remember, as the shape is reminiscent of the spelling of the number two in the 15th century.

Other signs also show possible mnemonic aids. For example, the sign ce for m has two arcs, just like the Latin m. These were merely turned to the side and delimited by an additional line of two l standing next to each other.

The character for Sh looks like an upside-down w, which in turn was indicated by the reversible arc above it.

The character s for v can then be understood as half a w, so to speak.

Of course, I cannot prove whether these observations actually explain the original origin of the signs. However, I find it remarkable that such mnemonics arise again and again when learning the system.

(04-06-2026, 03:28 PM)Thorsten Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

(04-06-2026, 01:17 PM)ololololo Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.It's not a new thing that medieval authors used abbreviations. They could shorten every word if it wasn't small enough.
Of course, internally, your theory is consistent, but Voynich's manuscript doesn't really seem like someone's "prank" or "creative idea of a shortened language." And yet... why this particular way? Why not, for example, shorten all words to a single letter? Why create new alphabet?

I don't think the VM is talking about a "prank" at this point. Presumably, a translation problem has arisen here.


I am currently resolving the string in question as sch.e.z. First of all, I used the Middle High German word schërz (stm.) and translated with the New High German "joke". In retrospect, however, I think this choice of words is misleading. What would then be meant would not be that the manuscript itself is a joke or a forgery, but rather that it should seem like an inconsequential occupation to the author's environment – like an ordinary herbal or astronomy book that does not give rise to any particular interest.

In the meantime, I think other assignments are even more likely. If, for example, you look at schërz (swm.) or schërzel (stn.), there is the meaning of a "cut piece" or a small section of wood, paper or bread. These readings might fit the context better.

As JoJo_Jost have already correctly noted, the choice of the long word currently still depends on my personal assessment. That's exactly why I'm currently working on further narrowing down the number of possible assignments. My goal is to base the interpretation more strongly on recurring word uses and contextual references, thereby reducing the number of plausible alternatives.

To the question of why it was not shortened to one letter:

A reduction to just a single letter per word would ultimately make the text almost unreadable even for the author himself. Therefore, I assume that a compromise had to be found between brevity and readability.

The question also arises as to why a separate sign system was also used. My guess is that the people of the 15th century were much more familiar with abbreviations and abbreviations than we are today. An experienced reader would probably have recognized many word abbreviations relatively quickly. The additional layer of character substitution would therefore provide further protection and make it more difficult to read immediately.

My previous experience with the signs indicates that they are no longer a significant obstacle after a certain training period. On the contrary: Some classifications seem surprisingly memorable to me.

For example, I map the character for r to z. This seems unusual at first, but it is easy to remember, as the shape is reminiscent of the spelling of the number two in the 15th century.

Other signs also show possible mnemonic aids. For example, the sign ce for m has two arcs, just like the Latin m. These were merely turned to the side and delimited by an additional line of two l standing next to each other.

The character for Sh looks like an upside-down w, which in turn was indicated by the reversible arc above it.

The character s for v can then be understood as half a w, so to speak.

Of course, I cannot prove whether these observations actually explain the original origin of the signs. However, I find it remarkable that such mnemonics arise again and again when learning the system.

It seems (and in general, it is) that for a 15th-century reader, a book with abbreviations would be much more understandable than it is for us now. But you know, it doesn't change anything. What you call abbreviations in relation to the manuscript still stand out from the literature of that time, and they don't really resemble Latin in appearance. 
The scribe should understand that even when abbreviating, the text should still be clear. However, if the manuscript is indeed an abbreviation, it is probably the most terrible method of word abbreviation.
I would advise you to explain the quirky nature of the alphabet and why the author turned, let's say, a regular b into a Voynich's k, which are not very similar (maybe it's a disguise?).
At the moment, the problem with your system is that you can't directly say that this is how the manuscript was written (the fact that it's possible isn't really enough).
And the fact that the abbreviations are easy to remember means that you have... a very good memory .
P.S. Yes, I'm writing with the help of a translator, so there may be some issues. In this case, I meant by "prank" the overall quirky nature of the abbreviation system you described. Well, just couldn't find another word.