The Voynich Ninja

(07-09-2026, 04:46 PM)ololololo Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I was talking about how, in any case, he would perceive the words aurally differently, and what he would write would be incomprehensible to a native speaker.

Right, and I don't understand how he is having conversations in the language and perceiving the language different from how it is spoken. Perhaps a transparent example---remembering that I do not speak French and cannot read a made-up representation of it in any event---might help

(07-09-2026, 05:32 PM)rikforto Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Perhaps a transparent example---remembering that I do not speak French and cannot read a made-up representation of it in any event---might help

I brought it to you — the word “aujourd'hui”. You and the native speaker pronounce it the same way, but you don't know how to spell it. You write it down in your own way (oujuvie), and the speaker does it the right way (aujourd'hui). 
You will be able to communicate with the native speaker, but you will not be able to correspond with him, relatively speaking

This seems fine to me:

(07-09-2026, 06:17 PM)ololololo Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I brought it to you — the word “aujourd'hui”. You and the native speaker pronounce it the same way, but you don't know how to spell it. You write it down in your own way (oujuvie), and the speaker does it the right way (aujourd'hui). 

But it does seem to differ from what you were saying before. If they are pronouncing it the same way and writing down the same pronunciation in different letters, what is the inaccuracy here:

(03-09-2026, 11:11 AM)ololololo Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.The author clearly perceived Chinese in his own way, with a “European” ear, and we cannot know how accurately he represented what he heard (for example, the speaker might have been reading quickly, and the author might have taken two similar characters for one word).

This doesn't seem to me like you are saying the accurate pronunciation is mostly getting recorded, but if that is what you are saying, I just misunderstand you.

And to be clear because I've been repeatedly strawmanned about this in the past: I'm not troubled by the possibility of some errors, and know enough about manuscripts that a perfect transcription would be beyond remarkable. I am just trying to understand who this person who can hold a conversation and design an alphabet for distinctions in phonology but not hear them it in dictation is supposed to be.

(07-09-2026, 06:43 PM)rikforto Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.If they are pronouncing it the same way and writing down the same pronunciation in different letters, what is the inaccuracy here:

I’ll provide the same text, written down from hearing it:
Translate:
Bonju! Sava?
Sava biean, etua?
Sava biean. T'qua tcokuptu?
Jevuea epari sesuar, etua?
Jevuea mepromene.

In terms of how it sounds, “je” and “vais” merged into “jevuea” (well, if a person is smart, they can separate “je” and “vuea”). It doesn’t look much like French, does it?

(07-09-2026, 06:43 PM)rikforto Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.This doesn't seem to me like you are saying the accurate pronunciation is mostly getting recorded,

Yes, the correct pronunciation is recorded. But it’s not guaranteed that it will be conveyed correctly (ujuvi, oujovey), and it’s not guaranteed that such a text will be understood by a native speaker.
This is if we’re talking about writing in Latin script, i.e., when the listener will be able to read our scribbles. According to the theory, the author of VMS acted differently.

(07-09-2026, 06:43 PM)rikforto Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I am just trying to understand who this person who can hold a conversation and design an alphabet for distinctions in phonology but not hear them it in dictation is supposed to be.

Well, here’s how I see the situation: the author created an alphabet for sounds and could clearly distinguish them in words (I think there was still some accuracy, at least in terms of tones). However, he didn’t know the language perfectly; he studied it on his own, and even then only through conversations. He could roughly understand what was being said to him, but that didn’t mean he would correctly understand all the sounds or all the words.
Here, it’s easier to use an analogy, for example, with English in Russian schools. If you don’t study it additionally, your school‑level knowledge will allow you, for example, to read and somehow understand a text, but you won’t be able to have a normal conversation with a native speaker (because you’ll be a very boring conversationalist, slowly forming phrases). In our case, it’s the opposite — you’ll be able to speak, but you won’t be able to read a text. 

I hope I explained it clearly.

(07-09-2026, 06:17 PM)ololololo Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I brought it to you — the word “aujourd'hui”. You and the native speaker pronounce it the same way, but you don't know how to spell it. 

I'm not even sure me and the native speaker pronounce "aujourd'hui" the same way, even if he can understand me.

Maybe it's just me, but I could have never got a basic understanding of the sounds of even my own language without specifically studying phonetics. Ask any Italian who never studied phonetics and he'll tell you the language has one 's', one 'z' and five vowels, while it has two, two and seven. Phonetics is hard without the theorethical background.

(07-09-2026, 08:08 PM)Mauro Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Phonetics is hard without the theorethical background.

This is the case with a native speaker. Now imagine that we are referring to a person for whom this language is not native.

(07-09-2026, 09:05 PM)ololololo Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

(07-09-2026, 08:08 PM)Mauro Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Phonetics is hard without the theorethical background.

This is the case with a native speaker. Now imagine that we are referring to a person for whom this language is not native.

I agree, way harder.

(07-09-2026, 07:57 PM)ololololo Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.It doesn’t look much like French, does it?

So I think this is the thing! I don't think French has a look, standard French orthography has a look. And it's fine that we're framing this differently, but it seems now I thought you were talking about the language when you just mean the writing a few times

(07-09-2026, 07:57 PM)ololololo Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Yes, the correct pronunciation is recorded.

You cannot know that.  

First, in spoken language one often "eats" phonemes or slurs them with neighboring ones. Even if the speaker is trying to pronounce words isolated and with extra clarity. I mentioned before a famous paper on speech recognition by computer that is titled "How to Wreck a Nice Beach".  Those distortions are particularly common for subtle aspects like vowel length distinctions and tones.

A frustrating experience for foreigners in the US is that, when they ask a native American to repeat a word that they did not understand, the person just repeats it louder instead of slower.  Because most Americans are not used to interacting with non-native speakers, and don't quite grasp why a word may be hard for them to understand.

Second, if you are not a native speaker of the language, you will probably conflate some distinct phonemes, because they are not distinguished in your native language.  I already mentioned my personal problem with "man" vs. "men".   Conversely, non-Portuguese speakers (except maybe French ones) seem unable to perceive the nasal vowels of Portuguese, like the "ã" of "São Paulo" and the "õ" of "Camões", and invariably replace them by non-nasal vowels. 

Humans are generally able to adapt to widely different accents of their language, so that they can converse naturally even with people who conflate some phonemes.  Like some Indian speakers who pronounce "that" as "dat", or some Japanese speakers that have only one sound for "R" and "L".  Thus a foreigner who learned to speak another language well enough for business and living purposes may not distinguish all the phonemes that native speakers can.

In fact, unlike speakers who learn a language through formal classes, native speakers learn the phonemes subconsciously, before age 4.  Thus, native speakers themselves may not consciously know what are the phonemes of their language.  I suspect that, if you ask a native speaker of French or English or Portuguese "what are the phonemes of your language", the answer will probably be "what are the what?" 

... Unless the language's orthography is mostly phonetic, in which case the native speakers may learn the set of phonemes consciously at school, as part of learning the spelling. That is probably the case for speakers of Turkish, Korean, or Japanese, maybe also for Italian, Spanish,and German...

A possibly relevant anecdote is the reason why the ISO-Latin-1 character set does not include the letter œ/Œ, while it has ç, ñ, å, ø, ß, þ, ý, and æ.  Once I asked a French visiting prof about that, and he angrily said that the idiot who represented France in the relevant ISO committee told them that œ was not a real French letter, just a typographic ligature like "fi" in some fonts.  But (according to that prof, and to my faithful lalamo) writing "soeur" and "coeur" in French, instead of "sœur" and "cœur", would be considered spelling errors.  And a French speaker who had to read the nonsense words "zoeut" and "zœut" aloud would pronounce them in very different ways.

All the best, --stolfi

(08-09-2026, 03:00 AM)Jorge_Stolfi Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.A possibly relevant anecdote is the reason why the ISO-Latin-1 character set does not include the letter œ/Œ, while it has ç, ñ, å, ø, ß, þ, ý, and æ.  Once I asked a French visiting prof about that, ...

Actually, it seems that the prof was only partly right. Some French historian (lalamo tells me) found that the real reason why the French representative convinced the ISO committee to exclude œ from Latin-1 was that he was an employee of French computer manufacturer Bull, and they did not want œ to be included in the character set because their printers did not have that character.

After ten years and national outrage by the French, ISO finally created a standard ISO-8859-15 (ISO Latin-9) which included œ, €, and another 6 characters, but removed eight -- including "¤" and "¦", which I have used many times, for various purposes.  Ugh.  Fortunately we now have Unicode...

"The best thing about standards is that there are so many of them to choose from."

All the best, --stolfi