The Voynich Ninja

Marco is correct about the much more flexible distribution of ending-characters in Latin (compared to the VMS). VMS glyphs do NOT shuffle around within words as one would expect in natural languages. But...

...it's also important to note that if you go in the other direction, VMS glyphs are crafted to follow Latin scribal conventions.

I've already written these things here, and on other threads, and on my blog, numerous times, but I'm going to repeat them again:

• In the VMS y is usually at the ends of tokens, sometimes at the beginnings of tokens, and occasionally within tokens. It is the same in Latin (where this shape is used as abbreviation for con-/com-, -us/-um).
  
• In the VMS y is usually written in line with the rest of the text but can also be found superscripted. Similarly, in Latin, the scribe had the choice of writing the abbreviation y in line with the text or superscripted (and some scribes did it both ways within the same document).
  
• In the VMS m is usually at the ends of tokens, the ends of lines, and the ends of paragraphs, and only occasionally next to itself. It is the same in Latin (where this shape is used as abbreviations for -ris/-tis/-cis and occasionally other endings).
  
• In the VMS there are certain glyphs (best examples are r and s) that can stand alone and these are consistent with glyph shapes that can stand alone in Latin.
  
• In the VMS there is the occasional example of a reverse-c shape. This is also an abbreviation in Latin, but one of the less common ones. In Latin it usually stands for con and occasionally contra. Most scribes chose to use y instead, but a few used both abbreviations within the same document.
  
• In the VMS a straight apostrophe (sometimes called a macron) is sometimes put above letters (or through them) to indicated that letters are missing. It's an abbreviation symbol. We see examples of the same shape, placed in the same position as one might expect in Latin. The "cap" shape (as on EVA-sh) is also used in a similar way as an abbreviation shape in Latin (and is also very common in the VMS).
  
  

These obvious and undeniable similarities to Latin scribal conventions are the reason why I've often said that VMS may possibly be contrived to look like Latin, not just in glyph-forms but also in the location of those glyph forms within and between tokens. It cannot possibly be accidental.

Whoever designed the VMS text not only knew Latin scribal conventions but chose to incorporate some of the Latin scribal positional conventions into VMS text. However, the paucity of alphabetic glyphs, the lack of variability of VMS glyphs within the tokens, and the shortness of the tokens (if one counts what is left after considering the abbreviation-shaped glyphs) are NOT characteristic of natural language.

It appears that the scribal conventions may have been added to make it LOOK like Latin while possibly being something else. Any attempt at statistically studying it must take into consideration these patterns and so far I don't see this happening. The glyphs that look like letters and the glyphs that look like scribal conventions are generally treated as "the same" but it's possible that they are meant to be understood differently.

In contrast to the way we think about alphabets today, it was part of the medieval mindset that certain shapes were "alphabetic" and certain shapes were "scribal" (which could stand for other things).

I understand your point JKP, and you're certainly right. Still, it's a select club of Latin glyphs, a peculiar collection. Off the top of my head, Latin glyphs which are certainly missing are b d e f g h j k l p q t v w x y z.

But let's assume the VM mirrors Latin script looks by intentional design. What could be the point of that? Anyone who can read will see that it's in fact not normal Latin script. And those who can't read won't be able to read it either way. 

I would even go as far as saying that your observations are an argument against people who propose the VM was made to deceive. Who exactly do you want to fool, if you go through much effort to make it look and feel like Latin script?

While I'm happy to concede that some of the glyphs in the Voynich script resemble those found elsewhere, I don't believe that a sound case can be made for them acting positionally the same.

Take [y] for example. It is true that it occurs at the start and end of words, much like the scribal abbreviation. Yet it is overwhelming found at the end of words in most the text. Its placement at the start of a word is strongly tied to the start of a line. Further, it is also one of the glyphs which can stand alone, which makes no sense if somebody is trying to pass it off as an abbreviated prefix or suffix. It also isn't commonly found superscripted as asserted, and while instances of it are interesting, they can't be regarded as usual.

I think that the similarities between the Voynich script and scribal abbreviations must come from one of two sources: 1) the inventor used a repertoire of shapes known to him, or 2) there is only a limited number of shapes possible with the medium and some similarity will always be found.

(05-06-2018, 10:17 PM)Koen Gh. Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I understand your point JKP, and you're certainly right. Still, it's a select club of Latin glyphs, a peculiar collection. Off the top of my head, Latin glyphs which are certainly missing are b d e f g h j k l p q t v w x y z.
...

The "scribal" glyphs are certainly not peculiar. Whoever designed the VMS chose the most common Latin scribal conventions (with the exception of the reverse-c shape, which is less common than y in both Latin and the VMS), but if you put scribal glyphs aside for a moment, I completely agree that the remaining alphabetic glyphs, when evaluated individually, do not comprise a full set (or anything close to it), ASSUMING this is natural language.

Some people try to decipher the VMS by treating the scribal glyphs as substitutes for the missing alphabetic glyphs (and some simply don't know the difference), but this line of decipherment doesn't work because the VMS glyphs that look like Latin scribal glyphs are positioned exactly as they would be in Latin—this particular set of scribal glyphs does not have the flexibility of natural-language alphabetical glyphs. That's one of the reasons simple substitution "decipherments" do not work.

If Voynichese is heavily abbreviation info or coded info rather than narrative text, the designer might not have needed all the letters or might have indicated them in a different way (e.g., variations in shape, variations in position, markers, modifiers, etc.).

Quote:But let's assume the VM mirrors Latin script looks by intentional design. What could be the point of that? Anyone who can read will see that it's in fact not normal Latin script. And those who can't read won't be able to read it either way. 

Let's say you were a spy dispatched to Constantinople or somewhere where the Latin alphabet might be vaguely known but not used (e.g., a region that uses Cyrillic or Arabic, for example). If you wrote the information so it vaguely resembled Latin, it would probably not draw too much attention from the local populace. It would superficially look like Latin but might contain confidential information. I'm not offering this as the best explanation or even as a good explanation, but there may well be reasons one might want it to look like Latin.

The other possibility is that the designer used Latin shapes and conventions (for their own purposes) simply because they were familiar and thus it would be easier to write a whole book in Latinesque glyphs rather than in something completely invented.

Quote:I would even go as far as saying that your observations are an argument against people who propose the VM was made to deceive. Who exactly do you want to fool, if you go through much effort to make it look and feel like Latin script?

I don't know why a whole book would be written in an inscrutable script that was something other than a simple substitution code. I only know that a medieval physician's daughter asked her father, "Why write in code?" and he responded that it gave the information more value, made it seem more important, and that one was giving away less (in the sense of trade secrets) by writing it this way.

I don't remember if I've heard the apothecary quote before, but it so sounds like something that would be said after 1450. Am I right? 

Still, something about this way of thinking doesn't make sense to me. Take your document smuggling example; if you want to pass off the MS as Latin, then why use gallows? Why not use P, T, K ... instead? It will be equally illegible but raise less suspicion.

Let me put it another way, the "peculiar set". Ignore all rare Voynichese glyphs, we're not talking about the exceptions. So we're left with the most familiar glyphs, including benched gallows as visually one glyph. Now how many other manuscripts do you know that include all of these glyphs? None, I assume. All but one? All but two? All but... eight? 

Just saying, if it's meant to trick people into thinking it is Latin script, it takes a lot of unnecessary risks. Even more likely might be that it's meant to trick Latins into thinking that it's something exotic, while maintaining perfect legibility for those who are in the know. That's not what I think happened either, but it seems less illgical to me.

I really have no idea what the motive was for using mostly Latin conventions and I try not to think about it too often because humans do the strangest things for the strangest reasons. I try to focus mostly on what was done, not why it was done. If you nailed me to the wall and said, "Why?" there seem so many different possibilities, it would probably take 10 minutes to list them all.

Maybe, simply, the scribe used familiar shapes to him when he wrote the string of symbols and numbers that form the text. Why 9 is (y) or a scribal abbreviation? Why is not a number? I think is a number, like 8. The numbers 8 y 9 are frequently in the endings of the Voynich and in others positions in the string of glyphs. In my opinion they mark the location of the stars, wich can be located in the eighth or the ninth sphere or in both due to the precession of equinoxes.

Quote:Who exactly do you want to fool, if you go through much effort to make it look and feel like Latin script?

Well,  us, if you subscribe to the modern forgery theory...

I think it is worth remembering here what You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.:

Quote:The difference between the script and the language is a really important one, because it could be that the underlying language is one that is known to us, but what stops us from getting there is just the script that's lying above it. And this is an element of the research which many people just don't seem to get. Even in recent discussions on the internet you get people confusing the issues of the script and language.

For instance, the fact that some glyphs typically occur in a fixed position (e.g. word initially and word finally) is a phenomenon that can be observed in a number of scripts. The example of the positionally constrained "9" abbreviation in Latin has already been mentioned: this obviously has very little to do with the Latin language per se and much to do with medieval Latin scripts.

In another thread, I mentioned the French manuscript You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. - Virgil - [Le livre des Eneydes] - late XV Century.
[attachment=2160]

Nablator pointed out that a full transcription is available online. This fragment reads:

Avez passe et leurs voyes copees,
Reprenez cueur et plus ne vous doulez,
Car tost aurons repos si vous voulez.
Laissez apart regrect et peur et craincte,
Ne faictes plus gemissemant ne plaincte,
Car peut estre qun jour le temps viendra
Quant de ce faict au mains il souviendra

The characters highlighted in circles are all rigidly positional:

• blue "r" (word-initial only)
  
• green "v" (word-initial only)
  
• red "s" (word-final only)
  

I have underlined the different shapes of the same characters used in other positions.

The glyphs in circles behave very much like Voynichese q- or -n. Like we shouldn't attribute the behaviour of these glyphs to weird properties of the French language, we should be careful with Voynichese glyphs. Some behaviours will reflect properties of the language, but others will be properties of the script, possibly totally unrelated with the underlying language.

(06-06-2018, 05:41 PM)Antonio García Jiménez Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Maybe, simply, the scribe used familiar shapes to him when he wrote the string of symbols and numbers that form the text. Why 9 is (y) or a scribal abbreviation? Why is not a number? I think is a number, like 8. The numbers 8 y 9 are frequently in the endings of the Voynich and in others positions in the string of glyphs. In my opinion they mark the location of the stars, wich can be located in the eighth or the ninth sphere or in both due to the precession of equinoxes.

It is similar to Latin scribal conventions because of the way it is shaped AND positioned and, for the record, many of the scribal conventions are based on number shapes. In the old Carolingian documents, one sees Indic-Arabic shapes used for scribal abbreviations as follows:

1 (the early slightly wiggle form of 1) is used for ir/er/re/ri, 2 is used for ur/tur, 3 is used for rem, round-4 is used (usually superscripted) but I forget the meaning because it didn't get used for long, 9 was used for con/com/us/um even after the printing press was invented, zero or omicron was used for grade/degree. It was a clever system in the sense that Indic-Arabic numerals were not in general use in documents in this early period and thus using them as scribal notations helped distinguish them from the regular text.

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So, to get to your question, why could it not be a number in the VMS? It could. I KEEP POINTING OUT THAT SHAPE AND MEANING ARE NOT THE SAME THING. When I say it is a scribal convention I AM TALKING ABOUT SHAPE, NOT MEANING.

Sorry, but I'm really tired of people twisting my words. EVERY time I say the shapes are Latin, two or three people come along and tell me I said the language was Latin or that the scribal conventions indicate Latin language. NO, I have NEVER said the language is Latin (it might be, it might not). I said the SHAPES are Latin. The language could be anything (including nonsense).

The same goes for scribal conventions. THE SHAPES are scribal conventions. I did not say the numbers were letters, or the letters were numbers or any other combination. I am talking about SHAPES. The MEANING could be anything: language, numbers, symbols. I've never said it could not be numbers (in fact I've blogged about VMS shapes that resemble numbers and I've also said that many Voynich solutions NEGLECT the possibility of numbers).

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Now, to SPECIFICALLY answer your question "Why 9 is (y) or a scribal abbreviation? Why is not a number? I think is a number, like 8."

The 9 glyph is not just shaped like a scribal abbreviation, it is POSITIONED in the VMS tokens in the same way as 9 glyphs are positioned in Latin scribal abbreviations. It would be difficult to devise a system that uses a number as an astrological property OR as a stellar coordinate that ALWAYS behaves position-wise like a Latin scribal abbreviation. It's not impossible, but it would be devilishly difficult—astronomical references, conventions, and coordinates have to be in the right position to make any kind of mathematical sense and even if it were something simpler, like astrological properties (which may in fact be in the VMS) it still would not behave like EVA-9 does in the VMS.


EVA-y (9) does not follow astronomical conventions in the VMS in terms of where it appears in tokens. I have read through many many medieval astrological/astronomical manuscripts on the Web and have made note of how numbers are used in the main text, in charts, in calendars, and I have never seen the numbers positioned like EVA-y but almost every medieval manuscript in a western language includes EVA-y as a scribal abbreviation mostly at the ends of words, sometimes at the beginnings of words and occasionally in the middle.

That does not necessarily mean EVA-y IS a scribal abbreviation (it might be, it might not), other possibilities are null, marker, or modifier, BUT it does not behave like a number behaves in astronomical/astrological documents. If you can decipher some of these as numbers into coherent information OR provide evidence of astrological notations that follow Latin scribal conventions in terms of position, then you might have an argument, but I think it would be very difficult to find astrology-related numbers positioned as they are in the VMS.


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I think it's quite possible that ancient astrological properties are expressed in some way in the VMS (I think a lot of properties might be codified in the VMS) but not the way you are suggesting. I think it's a mistake to assume the 9 shape is the number 9 without taking into consideration the way it positions itself within tokens (in the same way 9 is used in textual manuscripts).