(30-06-2026, 09:30 PM)Rafal Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Personally, unlike some other people here, I find midwifery connection possible:
Just to be clear, I never said midwifery, Maltese, Chinese, Bavarian, Irish, numeric and other connections are impossible. We have an ocean of ideas, hundreds of them. Very few of them can be ruled out decisively. This is why I'd love to have some direct clear positive evidence in each case. Even something tiny, like a clearly Maltese reference in an image, some purely local landmark or natural feature. Or a very obvious depiction of childbirth. Otherwise we are in a realm of pure conjectures, which appears infinite and impossible to navigate.
(30-06-2026, 09:30 PM)Rafal Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.The Maltese connection seems much weaker.
On the other hand would you people really recognize anything Maltese like some Maltese art? Personally I would only recognize this 
![[Image: Maltese_600.jpg]](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/94/Maltese_600.jpg)
I would wait for analysis of the text by DorotheeM. If I understand correctly, some is going to appear in the future.
Thank you for the patience.
Again, Malta is just a starting point and I have chosen it for the sake of other assumptions, like: the book is (at least mostly) about midwifery. What on earth could have happened to make such an effort and why could they have you used such an uncommon way to write it down? Thus my yet totally unproven background story.
But, correct me if I'm wrong, a semitic background has already been proposed by others. I'm trying to verify this in a first step. This is why I am not only collecting oodles of other parallel corpora, but a bunch of potential semitic corpora, like eg. siculo-arabian, as near to the expected time slot as possible.
To make it crystal clear: There is no overall hard evidence yet the VMS has something to do with Maltese, just very few minor evidences. I hope to find some more.
Furthermore, a lot of theories are based on well-known and well-documented languages, like Mediaval or Early New High German. Fair enough, but it has been analyzed quite a lot before, maybe, because reconstructing and learning an exotic language as a prerequisite is not what most people would do.
I wanted to step into regions of less focus so far, because one might argue for them as well and I assume it's time to do. This is why I judge Jorge_Stolfis "China theory" as far-fetched, but honesly said at least as brave. On the other hand, if one really wants to make progess here, it's a painful load of work to step into Jurchen, Mandchu or, lets say, Evenki. Btw: there is no need to focus on east languages like Japanese or Korean as intermediates, just think of the Timurid Empire! (And have fun with checking out Chagatai).
Cheers,
Doro
(02-07-2026, 09:14 AM)DorotheeM Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.... Btw: there is no need to focus on east languages like Japanese or Korean as intermediates, just think of the Timurid Empire! (And have fun with checking out Chagatai).
Cheers,
Doro
Doro, did you check the qualified research about "breast stylistics" and the diversity of "nipples" yet?
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"https://www.voynich.ninja/thread-3092.html?highlight=nipples"
Do you think the results can stand in perfect line with "Chagatai" and "Timurid Empire"?
Since all research on women health is done perfectly before us, it might be about the right time to leave this recommend scientific plattform.
There is one last question left:
Did the chatting collective figured out how to meet the default standards of science and digital humanities and to bear its responsibilities? Did they figure out their own downfall on how to speak and think abouts cultures in general, or women, or foreigners. Or other scientists, that got sacrificed infront of the busses for creating a hypothesis? Hmm... I am not sure, that this place is holding some kind of consciousness about its own theories and long forgotten statements and actions.
Quote:To make it crystal clear: There is no overall hard evidence yet the VMS has something to do with Maltese, just very few minor evidences. I hope to find some more.
Dorothee, just remember not to fall into "polyglot trap".
I know nothing about Maltese but it seems to be a hybrid language, a mix of Arabic, Italian and English. with Arabic grammar but a lot of western words.
You could also theoretically argue that someone writing in Maltese inserted some Latin, Greek or Hebrew words into his text.
Reading Voynichese words if you just substitute oroginal signs for letters is extremely hard and many people claim it will never work. People who tried it were never able to get consistent, grammatical reading in any language. So some of them went "polyglot" path claiming that Voynich Manuscript was written in a mix of languages or in some unknown dialect where readings of the words are only slightly similar to the "normal" words.
You can check the solution of Gerard Cheshire as perfect example of it: You are not allowed to view links.
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So be prepared that if you present a text being a mix of many languages, without any grammar and sounding like the scribe was on acid then people here just won't accept it.
Am I mistaken in thinking midwives were not usually literate? I realize this falls into the trap of thinking the VMS was conventional---it probably has some oddities, and so a literate collation of the knowledge of midwives cannot be entirely ruled out. All the same, would that not be something nearly or entirely exceptional about the manuscript?
(02-07-2026, 11:53 AM)Rafal Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Quote:To make it crystal clear: There is no overall hard evidence yet the VMS has something to do with Maltese, just very few minor evidences. I hope to find some more.
Dorothee, just remember not to fall into "polyglot trap".
I know nothing about Maltese but it seems to be a hybrid language, a mix of Arabic, Italian and English. with Arabic grammar but a lot of western words.
You could also theoretically argue that someone writing in Maltese inserted some Latin, Greek or Hebrew words into his text.
Reading Voynichese words if you just substitute oroginal signs for letters is extremely hard and many people claim it will never work. People who tried it were never able to get consistent, grammatical reading in any language. So some of them went "polyglot" path claiming that Voynich Manuscript was written in a mix of languages or in some unknown dialect where readings of the words are only slightly similar to the "normal" words.
You can check the solution of Gerard Cheshire as perfect example of it: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
So be prepared that if you present a text being a mix of many languages, without any grammar and sounding like the scribe was on acid then people here just won't accept it.
Thank you for your honest warnings. Allow me a few remarks:
Maltese is nowadays indeed a weird mix from Arabic dialects, Italian dialects and, starting very lately, but rapidly increasing English. It has maintained their arabic heritage, most prominently the consonantal roots (root and pattern morphology, to be more specific), but added some romanic morphology aspects, too - fascinating, but tricky to learn. But this, as far as I know, is not the case for the early stages of Maltese. As far I know it must have then been morphologically not so different with Siculo-Arabic and some north-african variants of Arabic, with the main differences probably in the vocalic melody. But this is one of the tasks I want to look closer into in the next months, including a trip to Bremen, where you can find the best experts (beside Malta itself, of course) and tons of dedicated literature.
And as my assumptions as mentioned before not necessarily point to a western academic background of what was written, I doubt there is any common mix with Latin. But, one never knows, I may turn out to wrong here. Well, I would be surprised - but if, any outcome is helpful.
Cheers,
Doro
(02-07-2026, 10:59 AM)sōlstəs Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. (02-07-2026, 09:14 AM)DorotheeM Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.... Btw: there is no need to focus on east languages like Japanese or Korean as intermediates, just think of the Timurid Empire! (And have fun with checking out Chagatai).
Cheers,
Doro
Doro, did you check the qualified research about "breast stylistics" and the diversity of "nipples" yet?
You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
"https://www.voynich.ninja/thread-3092.html?highlight=nipples"
Do you think the results can stand in perfect line with "Chagatai" and "Timurid Empire"?
Since all research on women health is done perfectly before us, it might be about the right time to leave this recommend scientific plattform.
There is one last question left:
Did the chatting collective figured out how to meet the default standards of science and digital humanities and to bear its responsibilities? Did they figure out their own downfall on how to speak and think abouts cultures in general, or women, or foreigners. Or other scientists, that got sacrificed infront of the busses for creating a hypothesis? Hmm... I am not sure, that this place is holding some kind of consciousness about its own theories and long forgotten statements and actions.
I do have to apologize, but I honestly don't know what you wanted to tell me. Could you please rephrase it?
Cheers,
Doro