Yes, a very welcome to this forum.
I see you follow the path that many, many people has walked. It indeed was a good suggestion to try this with a "normal" text.
Take for example a text from 1400-1500 which is a poem, in a language that has "You are not allowed to view links.
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So, do not take general Middle English but German for example. Then, try to follow the exact same bigrams and reasoning you now have.
(05-09-2016, 07:32 AM)ReneZ Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. (04-09-2016, 07:45 PM)ThomasCoon Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Statistically some characters cannot be the same because they appear in very different circumstances. l for example appears in completely different environments than y so I really doubt they are the same. But m appears in many of the same places as y and also looks similar to it in the text - and this is something I only realized after trying to figure out what combinations y could join in.
One has to be careful with such considerations, because it can equally be argued that two shapes that appear in completely different environments can represent the same character, and the two forms are to be used in these different environments as a result of some rule.
This happens with 's' for example (special form at end of word), or with 'r' (r rotunda following a round shape).
The two forms of s don't look at all alike, while the two forms of r have some similarity.
To support and expand on what René said, the letter "u" in medieval documents works this way too.
Just as a midword "s" is usually written as a long-s and an endword "s" is usually written like a "B" or like a Greek "s' (with both having the same meaning), the "u" is typically written like a "v" at the beginning of words but frequently written like a "u" midword.
Or take the "o" shape as another example. If it were in line with the rest of the text, it's the letter "o" but when it's superscripted it's like we say "nd" (2nd) in English OR, if it follows an "m" it can also be the abbreviation for "-odo" (as in modo).
And... to give an example that goes in the other direction...
In Latin, the 9 when used at the beginning of the word means con- or com- but when the same character is at the end, it usually stands for -us (sometimes -os). Same glyph, different interpretation, depending on position.
This "positional" interpretation of characters was very much a part of a medieval scribe's mindset because parchment was expensive, time was always an issue (everything was laboriously written by hand), and ways to abbreviate were as much a part of writing as learning the alphabet.
Quote:Thank you - I was not even aware that <g> was a different letter than <m>. Alright, I'll have to look more at that situation. I'm not sure I agree with the EVA creators that they are different.
Graphically they are. This is best seen using the "base shape + tail modifier" approach.
m results from
i plus the tail modifier, while
g results from
e plus the same tail modifier.
Quote:I have seen these <chh> combinations and they may not affect my units - for example:
2. ySKcy= y/s/k/ey
5. ch cKhh y = ch / ek / ch / y
6. ch cKhhy = ch / ek / ch / y (same as 5)
For examples #3 - 6, this ignores the fact that the second
e in a row is deliberately placed
under the crossbar. Note that its top is not aligned with the crossbar. Furthermore, these "lower"
e's are
not corrections: note that the crossbar has been sufficiently extended rightwards so as to fit the "lower"
e in.
(05-09-2016, 02:24 AM)BrianCham1994 Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. (04-09-2016, 03:23 AM)ThomasCoon Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.the majority seem completely unrestrained to certain word positions (except for the ones like <qo> you mentioned - but for that see point 7).
That's not true. The strong relationship between glyphs and word position has been noted and analysed many times.
For example, your unit 18 aiin appears almost always at the end of words. Why? Why do we not frequently see other ordered combinations of unit 18 like aiinol, aiinkk or chaiinaiin? If all word spaces are fake as you suggest, there is still the question for the system: Why do certain units like aiin[font=Arial], but not others, [/font](almost) always precede the fake word space?
That is a completely valid realization - certain groups always are at the end and others at the beginning. If I had the intent to mask my plaintext by placing word breaks regularly before or after certain cipher units (and that's the whole goal of using a cipher in the first place - to mask the plain text as best as possible) - then this easily explains why (aiin) is always last and (qo) is always first.
In an earlier post here, I've shown though that I can take a plaintext and encode it through my units system and generate a Voynich-like text where certain characters (aiin) always come at the end, and others (qo) always come at the beginning. Here was a random line from St. Augustine:
yolar ar Shaiin seeo Shoesal chetoly qoch qoskeaiin arSheo qochot qosolaiin otchod keesy oeee qochod ...
I think it should be striking that not only is this text very "Voynich-ish", but some of the words I generated are indeed
authentic VMS vords.
-----
Well, friends, I guess it's back to the drawing board for me then.
Thanks for the responses and the constructive criticism. I appreciate the many insights into the text that I did not see before. I will try to amend my theory and get back to you. To be honest I still think that I am on the right track and have noticed some valuable things. Now it is just a matter of tweaking my theory. If anyone thought I saw anything useful, feel free to use my ideas in your theories also.
I greatly appreciate all the help you've all given me here. I am sorry that I didn't respond to everyone before this post but I am definitely very thankful to all of you guys.
Much obliged,
T.Coon
For the record, in Latin, the m glyphs (there are actually three of them) represent ris (r+is), tis (t + is) and cis (c + is), with the loop and downstroke being the "-is" part.
I don't know what they mean in Voynichese, but it's clear that the scribe took the idea directly from Latin scribal abbreviations (this is one of the reasons why I say the Voynichese glyphs aren't really as exotic as they seem at first glance). Also, in Latin, they are almost always at the ends of words (there are a few exceptions, but not many), as they typically are in Voynichese...
So... either the m glyphs represent an abbreviated ending or... the shape has been co-opted to represent a sound... or the text is contrived to put them at the end (fake spaces after the glyphs) ... or... it's a bit of "misdirection" on the part of the scribe to make Voynichese superficially look like Latin.
Good luck with it, Tom.
Even if the glyph-landscape got a bit foggier, I agree in principle that looking at the elements that make up the text is a reasonable approach.
Wladimir kindly sent me the image with the weird crossbars which I was mentioning, here it is.
[
attachment=542]
Thomas. Your idea is interesting to me. But there can be necessary to add a few basic elements.
With the proposed list is impossible decompose the word with groups of characters "iii" (165 + 2 + 1 = 168 words), "iiii" - (1). And about half of the words "eee" sequence of (377 + 3 + 30 = 410 words)
Why in of your base of "the alphabet" there no frequently occurring characters "c" and "h" ? Or do you consider the top shelf - "the connecting line"?
But then it anyway not are decomposed the words with a combination "ih". 3 cases without gallows, and 73 cases with the gallows.
I think what Thomas is doing is highly interesting.
I don't think that the method should be required to achieve:
- 100% coverage of all possible character combinations in the MS
- a set of base combinations restricted to the size of the Latin alphabet (say: less than 30).
Apart from the possibility of errors in the Voynich MS text, we have also to keep in mind that:
- *If* it is some kind of en encoding of a meaningful text
- And *if* this meaningful text was written down as a source for the Voynich MS text
then this source text was not printed (with very high probability) but was handwritten.
It would have had variations in writing, possibly with capitals, ligatures and abbreviations, and not necessarily using the Latin alphabet.
An example:
cases where q is not followed by o are relatively rare, but probably not negligible. Since the apparent rule that q has to be followed by o seems so strict and is used so frequently, the exceptions (e.g. qy and qk) are hard to understand, and likely to have some origin.
(05-09-2016, 01:27 PM)Anton Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Graphically they are. This is best seen using the "base shape + tail modifier" approach. m results from i plus the tail modifier, while g results from e plus the same tail modifier.
Glad to see I've won you over on at least this point
(or was it Currier?)
(05-09-2016, 02:29 PM)ThomasCoon Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Thanks for the responses and the constructive criticism. I appreciate the many insights into the text that I did not see before. I will try to amend my theory and get back to you. To be honest I still think that I am on the right track and have noticed some valuable things. Now it is just a matter of tweaking my theory. If anyone thought I saw anything useful, feel free to use my ideas in your theories also.
No problem. Thanks for sharing your ideas with us. They are certainly food for thought. I will be interested to read the next update of your theory.