(22-08-2017, 05:20 PM)MarcoP Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view....
In both the Latin and Italian examples it seems that the differences between plain text and labels are partly related with the labels being borrowed from different languages (with Italian borrowing from Latin and Greek and Latin borrowing from Greek). This is something I hadn't considered and that could also have an influence on the Voynichese statistics.
One of the things I mentioned briefly when commenting on P. Lockerby's "Latin" transcript of the VMS is that even if the VMS is not in Latin, assuming there is natural language, there may be Latin words sprinkled in.
I was thinking in terms of loan words that show up in many languages. In English, many medical terms are based on Latin, music terms are Italian, and cooking terms are French. This kind of dynamic existed in the middle ages, as well. For example, many Latin documents have Greek loan words, many French and German manuscripts have Latin and Greek loan words, many English and Flemish documents have French and Norse loan words.
The Linnaean system of binomial plant names frequently uses 1) Latin- or Greek-derived terminology for the first part and 2) a characteristic of the plant (e.g., the habitat or foliage), or the name of the discoverer, as the second part. Linnaeus didn't invent this system, it was already in use in some areas, but it became standardized due to his influence on the field. This system is now used in every language.
So, it occurred to me that even if the VMS were in Cuman, Czech, Romani, Turkish, Hindi, or something else, labels or headings for specific illustrations like plants or stars could be based on Greek or Latin root words or loan words. If that were so, deciphering the labels might not necessarily contribute greatly to understanding the rest of the text, especially if the proportion of loan words is small.
To give more concrete examples, it's pretty easy to expand out some of the words in the knapweed plant-page using Latin abbreviation conventions to yield words like Centaurus and Centaur. Also, if you want an example in Greek, it's pretty easy to use a substitution code and abbreviation for the ending to get the word "odorata" or odoratos (ɒδɒρɒτος) out of the second vord on the viola plant page. In fact, I've found dozens of words that could be expanded into valid Latin or Greek words (without cheating and changing the substitution rules as you go) but (and this is the important part) the systems that yield these words do not generalize to the text as a whole.
There are too many people who find a word here and there and announce it with great fanfare (or at least with a certain level of excitement) without checking to see whether the system works on the rest of the manuscript or even a reasonable chunk of text. I've found MANY more words in more consistent ways (and with much better grammar) than most people who claim to have solved the VMS, yet I'm pretty darned sure I do not have the solution.
