The Voynich Ninja

MODERATOR NOTE - Posts 1 to 23 were originally part of the You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. and were moved to be their own thread]

(16-10-2026, 11:36 PM)pfeaster Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.From the standpoint of potential parallels with Voynichese, I'm particularly interested in their finding that the writer of the Rohonc Codex seems to have been working out the details of his writing system as he went along, with rules that evolved over time.

But I don't get that impression from Voynichese.  Yes there are differences between sections, but since we have no independent  way of determining the order of writing or the internal structure, we cannot tell whether they are the result of the Author gradually evolving the language/script/encryption, as in the Rohonc Codex, or just determined by different topics/structure/style, possibly with one discrete but relatively modest "spelling reform" at some point.

(And yes, @npcompl33t claims otherwise.  We are still fighting over that.)

By the way, the style of the nymphs tells me that Zodiac was drawn before Bio.  And that Aries and Taurus were drawn before Pisces and the rest of Zodiac.  

And the way some Pharma sketches were badly copied and expanded in Herbal tells me that Pharma is earlier than Herbal.

Also the bifolios of the Starred Parags section may have been scrambled and/or flipped over, but pages You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. and You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. were written last. (But, as I discuss in another thread, You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. was all but completely erased by a water spill and wrongly "restored" by a later owner.)

All the best, --stolfi

(18-10-2026, 04:46 AM)Jorge_Stolfi Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Voynichese is statistically uniform and does not show any sign of being evolved (claims by @npcompl33t notwithstanding

As if this claim was something new.

Denial is a river in Egypt.

(18-10-2026, 09:35 AM)nablator Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

(18-10-2026, 04:46 AM)Jorge_Stolfi Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Voynichese is statistically uniform and does not show any sign of being evolved (claims by @npcompl33t notwithstanding

Denial is a river in Egypt.

And Pareidolia is a river in Persia.  You will see it if you look at the map long enough, and you really want to see it...

All the best, --stolfi

(18-10-2026, 10:55 AM)Jorge_Stolfi Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.and you really want to see it...

... and you really don't want to see the evidence, a selective blindness common to natural language theorists.

(18-10-2026, 11:09 AM)nablator Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

(18-10-2026, 10:55 AM)Jorge_Stolfi Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.and you really want to see it...

... and you really don't want to see the evidence, a selective blindness common to natural language theorists.

Okay, could you please point me to the thread where evidence is presented of gradual language change within some section?

All the best, --stolfi

(18-10-2026, 11:20 AM)Jorge_Stolfi Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Okay, could you please point me to the thread where evidence is presented of gradual language change within some section?

You are moving the goalposts already. Many statistical jumps (at the paragraph, page and section level) have been documented in many threads... This is why we have statistically detected subsections by several analysts and there could be further subdivisions all the way down to pages and paragraphs that have unusual statistics: in these cases the discrepancy is only statistically significant when it is extreme, because of the smaller sample size.

For example see this thread, with an example in Q20:

(20-12-2022, 12:30 AM)Torsten Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.For quire 20 see also my You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. about the distribution of vords containing the glyph combinations 'ed', 'ho', and 'in' in the VMS: "For the stars section it is even possible to point to pages dominated by vords containing 'ed' (see f111r) whereas the very next page is dominated by 'in'-vords. Even another page within the very same section contains an unusual high number of vords containing 'ho' (see f113r)."

Some examples of statistical weirdness that I mentioned in your Chinese theory thread: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

I Wrote:- Omit all e on two random pages: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. and f36r.

- Concentrate some patterns on some pages and omit them in an entire section, for example You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. has a lot of [e:h]od, [e:h]os: 14 eod, 3 hod, 2 eos, 1 hos. No [e:h]or, [e:h]ol, -eo. It is the opposite of Q13, but both are Currier language B. There are many examples of extreme concentrations and total absence of common patterns on many pages.

I could list all these many pages, but I'm now going for a walk.

(18-10-2026, 12:34 PM)nablator Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.You are moving the goalposts already. Many statistical jumps (at the paragraph, page and section level) have been documented in many threads...

I am not moving the goalposts, you are... 

Yes there are significant statistical differences between pages, bifolios, and sections (treating Herbal-A and Herbal B as two sections). 

But the question is about evolution of the script/language/encoding/blabber as the text was produced.  Which that paper claims is visible in the Rohonc Codex.  Its pages were almost certainly written in the order they are bound.  I understand that they detect changes in the grammar and/or the lexicon, especially at the beginnig, that are consistent with its Author perfecting the language based on his increased experience in using it.  Isn't that so ?

We still do not know the order in which the VMS sections were written, and the order of pages or bifolios within each section.  Except in a very few cases -- like, the bottom starless text of f116r was probably written after all the Starred Parags were written, and the lost parag of You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. was probably its continuation.   And Pharma was probably composed (as a draft, inf not a vellum copy) before Herbal.

But we cannot even assume that page You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. was the first one to be written. Or the last one.  Or that the Zodiac pages were written in the sequence that they are bound. (For one thing, the illustrations strongly suggest that Pisces was drawn after Aries, maybe also after Taurus, but before the other signs.)

One can always order the pages of a section so as to maximize the statistical similarity between successive pages, based on the assumption that words used in one page are more likely to be used also on the next page. I played around with that idea myself for a while, 20+ years ago.

However, that assumption is too weak to overcome the other causes of statistical variation.  Therefore, the resulting order is not necessarily the chronological writing orde (CWO); in fact, for some types of text -- like a herbal or materia medica -- the assumption is very likely false, and the order obtained by that method is almost guaranteed to be quite unlike the CWO.  Again, that makes as much sense as ordering a random set of books on a shelf by size, and expecting the result to be the order in which they were printed.

As for statistical differences between sections, we expect them to exist if the VMS text is a natural language in an original minimally phonetic script, unencrypted or in an encryption that is one-to-one on the lexicon.  Again, the frequency of a character or digraph is determined largely by its occurrence or absence in the few most common words; and these can change substantially between sections on different subjects, or even just different formats and styles (like full sentences vs. telegraphic, conditional vs imperative, etc.).

The statistical variations between sections and the occasional extreme variations from page to page are a problem only for theories that propose a sophisticated cipher (like Vigenère's), which should have put the character and digraph statistics through a blender; of for gibberish theories, which cannot explain why the blabber's parameters would remain constant throughout a section, but change at section boundaries and at the occasional anomalous pages (like f84v). 

Quote:For example see this thread, with an example in Q20 ... for the stars section it is even possible to point to pages dominated by vords containing 'ed' (see f111r) whereas the very next page is dominated by 'in'-vords....

Not saying that it is relevant   but the ~365 entries of the Shennong Bencao (SBJ) materia medica are traditionally grouped into 18 sections according to toxicity and origin of the product (mineral, herb, animals, etc.)  Each section is expected to have different word frequencies because of those differences in the remedies.  Not because the language or style evolvedover time.

All the best, --stolfi

But it is a pretty safe inference.  Linguists deciphering ancient scripts routinely start by counting the number of different characters.  If it is 20-30, the script is probably alphabetic.  If it is 50-200, it is probably syllabic.  If it is 500 or more, it is probably ideographic.

Quote:We didn't know what language Rohoncese was written in previously (and still really don't). Based on the latest findings, this isn't a point of contrast, but a point where we now appear to know marginally more about Rohoncese than we do about Voynichese.

Are you still assuming that Rohoncese is an encrypted version of some common language?  

AFAIK it is almost certain now that it is an invented language, whose grammar is still partly uncertain, but definitely not like the grammar of any other known language.  

So, yes, Voynichese may still turn out to be like that too.  (As long as you dismiss the SPS=SBJ claim...)

Quote:[the Ignorant Scriibe theory] is disputed. It's a hypothesis we can bring new evidence and arguments to bear on, not an established fact we should use to evaluate the plausibility of other hypotheses.

Well, everything about either book is, strictly speaking, just a claim.   So when we compare the two we must necessarily compare probabilities, not facts...

Quote:of the two systems, the one we now seem to understand well enough to draw informed conclusions about did evidently evolve over the course of its writing. So we have one case that we have reason to believe evolved, and another case that shows variation of undetermined cause.

I am genuinely confused.  Which book is which?  

If you mean that the VMS "did evidently evolve over the course of its writing", I most emphatically disagree.  Even because we do not know the order in which the sections were written, nor the order of the pages within each section.  Or is that phrase referring to the RC?

Quote:Rohonc is pronounced roughly "ROH-honts," so I've been pronouncing the term Rohoncese in my head as "roh-honts-ESE."

Thanks!

(18-10-2026, 04:16 PM)Jorge_Stolfi Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I understand that they detect changes in the grammar and/or the lexicon, especially at the beginnig, that are consistent with its Author perfecting the language based on his increased experience in using it.  Isn't that so ?

I haven't read and checked all the presented evidence yet, and compared with the VMS, only the "mirrored C with mirrored c-diacritic", neither have you, so why argue before we know what's going on?

From what I've seen in a quick check, and posted earlier in this thread, the behavior of "mirrored C with mirrored c-diacritic" (hardly any in about the first half of the reordered Rohonc codex, then many in the 2nd half) is not much different from ed in the VMS (hardly any in Currier-A pages, then many in Currier-B pages).

(18-10-2026, 04:39 PM)Jorge_Stolfi Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

Quote:of the two systems, the one we now seem to understand well enough to draw informed conclusions about did evidently evolve over the course of its writing. So we have one case that we have reason to believe evolved, and another case that shows variation of undetermined cause.

I am genuinely confused.  Which book is which?  

If you mean that the VMS "did evidently evolve over the course of its writing", I most emphatically disagree.  Even because we do not know the order in which the sections were written, nor the order of the pages within each section.  Or is that phrase referring to the RC?

Yes, I meant this the other way around.  It's the VMs that I'm identifying with variation of undetermined cause.