The Voynich Ninja - On plain texts and ciphers (a thought experiment)

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This thread turned out much more interesting than I expected Smile

Tomas: the possibility of a large number of digraphs is interesting snd would solve a lot of problems. Then you would almost certainly have to assume that most words represent one or two syllables though. Or a lsnguage with very short words. I see no problem with either one.

JKP, if you mean a pasigraphic system, then I suppose you are quite correct and that a linguistic analysis wouldn't be that helpful. But we're talking about a very limited exception. And I'm not sure that an extensive text could be written pasigraphically with such a limited character set. Something like Beck's codebook philosophical language would be needed.

I respect that as a line of research, though much like cryptological approaches I wonder if it's not demanding too much of the time period.

(10-09-2016, 03:00 AM)Koen Gh. Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Tomas: the possibility of a large number of digraphs is interesting snd would solve a lot of problems. Then you would almost certainly have to assume that most words represent one or two syllables though. Or a lsnguage with very short words. I see no problem with either one.

You know, you're one of the few people to make the observation that Voynich words are short. Most folk believe that short Voynich words are missing, when it's really not true. I believe one and two syllable words are incredibly common and make up the bulk of the text.

(10-09-2016, 11:46 AM)Emma May Smith Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Emma May SmithJKP, if you mean a pasigraphic system, then I suppose you are quite correct and that a linguistic analysis wouldn't be that helpful. But we're talking about a very limited exception. And I'm not sure that an extensive text could be written pasigraphically with such a limited character set. Something like Beck's codebook philosophical language would be needed.

I respect that as a line of research, though much like cryptological approaches I wonder if it's not demanding too much of the time period.

A pasigraphic or syllabic system (or one that is partially so) is one possibility and I've blogged about that line of thought in the past. It would not be too demanding of the time period if the person who devised the system came from a culture where the language is constructed that way (as is true for many Asian and some African languages). The Asian mindset is quite different. In China, a proverb can be encoded in four characters and everyone knows what it means.

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As an aside on pasigraphic systems, there was a lot of interest in universal languages in the 17th and 18th centuries (Kirchner had a strong interest in this and his friends devised such languages). I suspect one of the reasons was because Latin, which had largely fulfilled this role for about 1,000 years (particularly in religious and commercial matters), was gradually falling out of use as the printing press made it possible for books (and Bibles) to be widely distributed in local languages, something that had been impractical when manuscripts were hand written. The protestant reformation had a big influence on this, as well, since the underlying philosophy was that the common people should be able to read the Bible without having to rely on priests to interpret it for them from Latin. Thus, Latin was fading and intercultural communication was becoming more difficult and interest in developing a universal language (which continued up to the development of Esperanto) increased.
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But to bring it back to the 15th century... pasigraphic systems are not all linguistic. The "languages" of science and mathematics or even of travel signs are, in a sense, pasigraphic—a scientist in Russia or China can read a mathematical formula (or a visual image representing "man" or "woman" next to a toilet) as well as one in Europe or North America. Scientific languages predate the pasigraphic systems of the 17th century by a few centuries. You can see them especially in medieval books of astronomy. They're not given much attention because most of the population is math-phobic. Add a few formulas or systems to a manuscript and much of the content gets overlooked. Cryptographic systems are sometimes hidden in those calendrical charts and I've come across a few numeric ciphers in otherwise normal texts. There are quite a few numbers in the VMS glyphs. That doesn't mean a numerical system underlies it, but it does mean that whoever devised it had enough interest in numbers to retain their shapes.

The VMS script is extremely systematic. Some ancient languages are that way too, before they were infused with loan-words from other cultures, but by the middle ages languages did not have this characteristic to this extent.

(10-09-2016, 03:00 AM)Koen Gh. Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Tomas: the possibility of a large number of digraphs is interesting snd would solve a lot of problems. Then you would almost certainly have to assume that most words represent one or two syllables though. Or a lsnguage with very short words. I see no problem with either one.

Thank you Koen - I believe that digraphs and some monographs are the solution, but I have no idea how it works Wink

(10-09-2016, 11:46 AM)Emma May Smith Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.You know, you're one of the few people to make the observation that Voynich words are short. Most folk believe that short Voynich words are missing, when it's really not true. I believe one and two syllable words are incredibly common and make up the bulk of the text.

Emma, how would you interpret this example that I posted in the other thread? Here Voynich doesn't seem to represent a language with 1-to-2 syllable words, but rather an agglutinative language that keeps adding suffixes (and maybe prefixes)?

qot
qoteo
qoteol
qotcho
qotchol
qotcheo
qotcheol
qotol

qok
qokor
qokeor
qokeeor
qokchor
qokcheor
qokeeeor
qokeee

qok
qokar
qokear
qokeear
qokchar

daiin
odaiin
qodaiin
chodaiin
qochodaiin

Thomas,

all I can think of, when seeing this, is: 'numbers'.

(10-09-2016, 01:55 PM)ThomasCoon Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
(10-09-2016, 03:00 AM)Koen Gh. Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Tomas: the possibility of a large number of digraphs is interesting snd would solve a lot of problems. Then you would almost certainly have to assume that most words represent one or two syllables though. Or a lsnguage with very short words. I see no problem with either one.

Thank you Koen - I believe that digraphs and some monographs are the solution, but I have no idea how it works

I think that digraphs are part of the system, as well, and noted some of the more common ones (ox, al, ar, etc.) in pics from the small plants section:

You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

I think I have some idea of how it works (not a solution, but the ability to predict where a vord will show up and approximately how often) but I set myself a goal of not presenting anything until I could read an entire paragraph (I'm having trouble sticking to that goal with all the recent posts on this subject but I'm managing to restrain myself so far).

The two main things that are slowing me down are 1) I'm pretty sure they're not all digraphs, and 2) interpretation of certain of the glyphs.

(10-09-2016, 01:55 PM)ThomasCoon Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Emma, how would you interpret this example that I posted in the other thread? Here Voynich doesn't seem to represent a language with 1-to-2 syllable words, but rather an agglutinative language that keeps adding suffixes (and maybe prefixes)?

I would guess that all but two of the words you posted are one or two syllables. I don't know what would indicate differently. Also, the words may be getting phonologically longer with each character added, but there's no reason to believe that they're getting morphologically longer. "Lips" has both more sounds and more morphemes than "lip", but "clip" only has more sound. All three are a single syllable long.

Quote:qot
qoteo
qoteol
qotcho
qotchol
qotcheo
qotcheol
qotol

I'll only look at a portion of the words so that readers aren't bored, but the above words strike me as simply what they appear to be: words which differ by a single sound. Imagine we applied some sound values to the Voynich letters to give the following list:

hab
habja
habjan
habla
hablan
hablja
habljan
haban

What is odd about this? Apart from the last none of the words is all that common. And though you can find small clusters on a few pages, it is something to explore rather than worry over. Is there any proof that these words are related either semantically or morphologically? Proving it would be a breakthrough but assuming it a danger. We can't even assume that words spelt the same are the same. Thinking back to the example given above: is "clips" a noun or a verb?

Some words do occur very often near to one another with minor variations and this is a known problem. Quire 13 and 20 have huge numbers of [qokeedy, qokedy, okeedy, okedy] in very dense patches. It remains to be explained, but it could be a feature of the content rather than the language or the script. Given that those four words are wholly absent from great lengths of the manuscript, the former is quite possible.

(10-09-2016, 02:05 PM)ReneZ Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Thomas,

all I can think of, when seeing this, is: 'numbers'.

I can see why you'd think that, Rene - other people on the forum (Anton) also believe that letters <ar, or> represent numbers.

(10-09-2016, 02:20 PM)-JKP- Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I think that digraphs are part of the system, as well, and noted some of the more common ones (ox, al, ar, etc.) in pics from the small plants section:

You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

I think I have some idea of how it works (not a solution, but the ability to predict where a vord will show up and approximately how often) but I set myself a goal of not presenting anything until I could read an entire paragraph (I'm having trouble sticking to that goal with all the recent posts on this subject but I'm managing to restrain myself so far).

The two main things that are slowing me down are 1) I'm pretty sure they're not all digraphs, and 2) interpretation of certain of the glyphs.

Very nice! I look forward to seeing your work one day - you are approaching this from an angle similar to me, so I can definitely relate to your search Wink

(10-09-2016, 02:46 PM)Emma May Smith Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.What is odd about this? Apart from the last none of the words is all that common. And though you can find small clusters on a few pages, it is something to explore rather than worry over. Is there any proof that these words are related either semantically or morphologically? Proving it would be a breakthrough but assuming it a danger. We can't even assume that words spelt the same are the same. Thinking back to the example given above: is "clips" a noun or a verb?

Very well-written answer, Emma Smile

- You are right, I can't prove that any of these words are related semantically or morphologically. Maybe they are not.

(10-09-2016, 04:58 PM)ThomasCoon Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Very well-written answer, Emma - You are right, I can't prove that any of these words are related semantically or morphologically. Maybe they are not.

By the by, I do personally think that initial [q] and final [l] are likely to be morphological markers. I just can't prove it. I don't think we're at the point where we can understand the text and underlying language well enough.

(10-09-2016, 02:46 PM)Emma May Smith Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I'll only look at a portion of the words so that readers aren't bored, but the above words strike me as simply what they appear to be: words which differ by a single sound. Imagine we applied some sound values to the Voynich letters to give the following list:

hab
habja
habjan
habla
hablan
hablja
habljan
haban

What is odd about this? Apart from the last none of the words is all that common. And though you can find small clusters on a few pages, it is something to explore rather than worry over. Is there any proof that these words are related either semantically or morphologically? Proving it would be a breakthrough but assuming it a danger. We can't even assume that words spelt the same are the same. Thinking back to the example given above: is "clips" a noun or a verb?
...

I understand that you are speaking theoretically and, from that point of view, it's a good answer, but it's not enough for them to look like words. If you feel this is a natural language, then you need to identify it (or them). Much of the VMS can be resolved into syllables that look like words (or are words). It's even easier if the door is open to the words being from different languages, but that's not the same as resolving them into actual sentences or meaningful text.

It seems that one has to use about three or four languages to resolve this list into words. Perhaps you can fill in the gaps and explain all of them in a more cohesive way. If they can't be explained, there's a possibility they are just patterns and need to be dissected in another way in order to be understood.

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