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| reading [y] as a null character |
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Posted by: geoffreycaveney - 24-09-2020, 07:13 PM - Forum: Analysis of the text
- Replies (21)
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I'm sure I'm not the first person to consider this idea, but one way to deal with the difficulty of analyzing the ubiquitous vord-final glyph EVA [y] is simply to treat it as a null character. That is to say, perhaps it has no phonetic content whatsoever. Maybe it's a word-divider, or maybe it's something else. Perhaps the author simply liked the way that glyph looked as a very common medieval Latin ms suffix (and sometimes prefix) abbreviation, and decided to use it to end (and sometimes begin) words or syllables or whatever the vords are, wherever he pleased.
This analysis would greatly increase the variety of possible vord endings in the Voynich ms text. In most languages words and syllables can end with more than just a small handful of letters and phonemes.
I'm curious what kind of statistics Koen's and Marco's verbose cipher analysis would produce for h2 conditional entropy and h1 entropy, if all the [y]'s are simply disregarded throughout the ms text?
For those who are curious, I took a modified version of my You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view., which following Rene I should call an alphabetic interpretation rather than a transcription, and applied the reading of EVA [y] as a null character. I have marked it as <#> so that it is still clear exactly where these nulls are in the text. Also, in this particular version of my modified VCI interpretation, I have focused on the possibility of a West Slavic reading of the text (Czech, Polish, Sorbian, et al.), so the modifications of VCI have been made with such languages in mind. They include [d]=<c>, [od]=<h>, isolated [o]=<ch> (voiceless velar fricative /x/), [or]=<w> (in Polish and Sorbian a certain type of Slavic "l" sound is pronounced /w/), [al]=<as>, [am]=<ás>, and [ain]=<o>. These are all minor changes in the details of the phonemic interpretation.
I have selected the first "recipe" in the "Recipes" section, the first four lines of folio page f103r:
<[P]jecas rjc# #péj#Pi# be# #srje# mé# mas rjec# #rjcas co dz cas c#>
<co rjet iPjic# casd# Bjec# Perjz jeP al bi# ras sté# ral o d jec#>
<#rjco rjét jeb# idas jec# itj# w wz do jas b tal b j#s>
<#jec# nec# dec# né# de# icalz sb# jecal as#>
I find it curious that the first word <[P]jecas> rather resembles a widespread Slavic form meaning 'you (sg.) bake': Czech "pečeš", Upper Sorbian "pječeš", Lower Sorbian "pjacoš", Polish "pieczesz", etc.
This is just one word of course, but the more general idea of EVA [al] = Slavic VCI <as> = 2nd person singular verb ending may possibly apply to a number of vords that appear to be rather appropriately spread out throughout these lines: <mas>, <#rjcas>, <cas>, <ras>, <idas>, <jas>. In several cases it is easy to recognize similar-looking Slavic forms, such as "maš" meaning 'you have' and "říkáš" meaning 'you say'. Naturally the phonological details may vary depending on the language and the dialect.
This Slavic reading and interpretation is of course highly speculative, and this is only a very preliminary rendition of just four lines of text. But the main thing I find interesting here is the more natural appearance of the text when EVA [y] is simply treated as a null character.
Geoffrey
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| A case for Gibberish |
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Posted by: Voynichgibberish - 24-09-2020, 12:15 AM - Forum: Analysis of the text
- Replies (70)
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A case for Gibberish and no one should suffer anymore by the hands of the Voynich Author
![[Image: random-vms-schinner-conclusion.jpg]](https://frenchvoynich.files.wordpress.com/2020/09/random-vms-schinner-conclusion.jpg)
Anyone reading this please have mercy on me for passing any judgments upon the Voynich Manuscript, as I know this is a contentious topic for everyone involved. Over the years I've looked at the manuscript's text searching for any meaning whatsoever. I have run dozens of frequency analysis on several languages and compared it to the Voynich Manuscript to no avail. I even compared it to classical and modern ciphers and I could not fetter out a rational input and output cipher with languages which resembled normalcy of its kind. The output just became garbled so to speak. Lastly I began to think this was a created language and it only held meaning to the owner or a group, but that's when I woke up after reading the Random Walk Pdf by Schinner.
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Here is some bullet points to ponder before going down the path of a literal translation of the VMS:
- VMS contains a low use of 1-2 tokens
- NO evidence for punctuation in the VMS whatsoever.
- Tokens repeat geometrically to often compared to languages
- Even in the modern era there is no decryption for the VMS
- If this was an invented language it still should obey a normal language rhythm for token repeats
- otol is a label for a star, plant and a empty pipe
- Lastly what likely would be consonants can be found at times as 1 character tokens
If you are a person trying to decode the Voynich Manuscript I would HIGHLY and its capped for a reason, go on and read the Schinner paper with the link I provided. In my opinion stop wasting your time. Its a dice roll of randomness and the text contains gibberish.
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| vord-final [-ckhy]: curious statistics |
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Posted by: geoffreycaveney - 22-09-2020, 10:16 PM - Forum: Analysis of the text
- Replies (2)
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The Voynich vord ending [-dy] is well known for its ubiquitous presence in the ms text. But recently I have found some rather striking statistics about another interesting vord ending:
[-ckhy].
Of course [-ckhy] cannot be anywhere near as frequent as [-dy], because the ligature [ckh] itself only occurs with modest frequency in the ms text. But what is striking to me is just how large a portion of all occurrences of [ckh] in fact appear as part of this particular vord ending [-ckhy].
I have followed here Koen's and Marco's verbose cipher analysis ideas, by which [ok] is treated as a single unit distinct from [k]. Thus I treat [ockh] as a distinct unit different from [ckh]. My analysis here focuses on [ckh] and [-ckhy] without [o] before them.
It is probably well known that vord-final [-dy], occurring 6690 times, constitutes over half of all 12505 occurrences of [d] in the Voynich ms text.
I find it notable that vord-final [-ckhy] (without preceding [o]), occurring 360 times, also constitutes over half of all 706 occurrences of [ckh] (without preceding [o]) in the ms text as well.
No other glyphs share this level of frequency of occurrence as vord-final [glyph+y]. Vord-final [-ockhy] makes up 42% of all [ockh]. Curiously, the preference is reversed for [cth], where final [-octhy] makes up 43% of all [octh], but final [-cthy] without preceding [o] only makes up 37.5% of all [cth] without preceding [o]. There would be no reason to expect such discrepancies between [ckh], [ockh], [cth], and [octh] if the ms text were merely generated by some kind of automatic self-copying algorithmic method.
It is interesting to note that the special top-line ligature glyphs have a somewhat less frequent occurrence before final [y]: vord-final [-cphy] only makes up 23% of all [cph], and final [-cfhy] only 31% of all [cfh]. Like [cth], but unlike [ckh], these percentages rise somewhat with a preceding [o]: final [-ocphy] makes up 39% of all [ocph], and final [-ocfhy] 40% of all [ocfh]. It should be noted that the sample sizes are getting extremely small for these last glyph sequences: Here 40% means just 6 out of 15.
Thus we have the curious fact that [ckh] is the only one of the ligature glyphs which is more likely to occur before vord-final [y] without a preceding [o] than it is with a preceding [o].
It is probably not surprising that vord-final [-ey] is also rather frequent, making up 27.6% of all [e]. All other glyphs occur much less frequently before vord-final [y]: final [-oshy] is 19% of all [osh], and final [-ochy] is 15% of all [och], but these percentages decline significantly to 6% and 9% without the [o]. All other glyphs, with or without preceding [o], occur less than 10% of the time before vord-final [y].
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Therefore I was curious to look into this very frequent vord-final [-ckhy] (without preceding [o]) more deeply. In fact, it turns out that the vast majority of occurrences of vord-final [-ckhy] without preceding [o] comprise just five Voynich ms vords: [chckhy] (140), [shckhy] (60), [checkhy] (47), [ckhy] (39), and [sheckhy] (35). Together they make up 321 of the 360 vord-final [-ckhy] without [o]. No other such Voynich vord type occurs more than 3 times in the ms text.
We thus arrive at the striking conclusion that these five Voynich vords [chckhy], [shckhy], [checkhy], [ckhy], and [sheckhy] constitute a sizable 45.5% of all [ckh] without preceding [o] in the ms text.
Even the famous [chedy], [shedy], [qokeedy], et al., cannot match this feat: The five most frequent vord-final [-dy] vords [chedy], [shedy], [qokeedy], [qokedy], and [dy] constitute only 17.4% of all occurrences of [d] without preceding [o] in the ms text.
For comparison I also checked these five specific [-ckhy] vords with [cth] substituted for [ckh]: I found 79 [chcthy], 31 [shcthy], 28 [checthy], 111 [cthy], and 20 [shecthy]. Together they constitute 34% of all [cth] without preceding [o]. Most striking is the much greater frequency of [cthy] itself as a vord, compared to [ckhy] itself. All the other vords occur more frequently with [ckh] than with [cth]. Again, these are unexpected discrepancies that cannot be easily explained by an automatic self-copying algorithmic method.
Finally, I checked these five [-ckhy] words with the preceding [o] inserted: I found 21 [chockhy], 5 [shockhy], 10 [cheockhy], 13 [ockhy], and 2 [sheockhy]. Together they constitute 25.4% of all [ockh].
In conclusion, I think it may be worth looking more deeply into the five Voynich vords [chckhy], [shckhy], [checkhy], [ckhy], and [sheckhy] that make up a striking 45.5% of all occurrences of the ligature [ckh] without a preceding [o] in the ms text. Also, the one vord [cthy] that occurs more frequently than [ckhy] may be worthy of particular attention and investigation as well.
Geoffrey
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| If you made the VMs, ... |
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Posted by: R. Sale - 22-09-2020, 07:10 PM - Forum: Voynich Talk
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If you made the VMs, what would it be? How is the information presented? Why were these images and this text created - either in whole or in part? - where there have already been such a variety of suggested interpretations. And what can be learned from this manuscript as it is investigated, in the current circumstance?
If you made the VMs, you would already be familiar with the old traditions and with the relevant science of that historical era.
If you made the VMs, you would pretty much need to confine information, references, methods and techniques to the first part of the 1400s - unless some excuse is provided. Just to avoid anachronism. While some complexity and sophistication must be allowed.
If you made the VMs, is it false and meaningless? Is it intended to be scientific or literate? Is it a facade for a disguised reality- encoded, encrypted - or whatever?
My view is that the VMs is the best surviving example of an attempt to embody Roger Bacon's first rule of obfuscated communication, which is *not* to let the fact of obfuscation be plainly obvious as in many early code systems. And for the investigator having the necessary familiarity with tradition (heraldry) and with science (botany) as would be contemporary with the parchment dates, then one of the first cracks in the VMs facade takes the shape of a nebuly line.
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| Patterns |
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Posted by: crwiin - 22-09-2020, 06:10 PM - Forum: Analysis of the text
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I'm just opening a thread for discussion, but I believe people should stop trying to think of translating the manuscript using known languages and instead look for patterns in the text and try to relate what may be said in it to the pictures. Then maybe we could understand this unique language. For example if a certain word structure comes up often they may be connectives etc.
Just an idea, I'm not sure if people have already tried this I just registered to the website.
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| Obfuscation combination |
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Posted by: R. Sale - 21-09-2020, 07:50 PM - Forum: Voynich Talk
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The investigations of the VMs cosmos and the zodiac sequence seem to reveal a complex combination of various methods of trickery, disguise, heraldic canting and obfuscation. Multiple methods of obfuscation are used in the illustrations. Why not in the written text as well? In a way, this is incorporated in the suggestions that the language may in some part contain or be composed of nulls, filler etc.
At the same time, the statistical method of investigation is to take the entire written corpus and analyze it as if all parts are equally valid. However, this cannot be expected to give useful results if that assumption is false.
So, if the VMs does contain meaningful text, in combination with meaningless filler, there needs to be a way to differentiate between them. Differentiation based on internal characteristics would be a herculean task. If it was intended that meaning could be recovered from the VMs, then a simple and reliable, yet subtle, method needs to be employed to designate meaningful text. That method is position, the use of a specific location. The problem then is to define and discover how the specific location is designated. And the method used here is tradition - disguised, obfuscated, unrecognized, forgotten tradition as seen or not seen in the illustrations.
Rather than labelling text as meaningful and meaningless (filler), there might be two (or more) methods or levels of obfuscation. The majority of text could be obfuscated by a more difficult method, while the text with a simpler method of obfuscation, containing key information, would be the part that is physically hidden.
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| previous research on Arabic and the Voynich ms? |
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Posted by: geoffreycaveney - 18-09-2020, 11:37 PM - Forum: Analysis of the text
- Replies (17)
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The following is very speculative so I'm moving it out of the "Verbose cipher" thread before I even put it in there.
This also has nothing to do with any of what might be considered my own "pet" theories about the Voynich ms, currently or previously.
But my You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. of the Voynich ms text, and the You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. on folio page f67v1, unexpectedly drew my attention to Arabic for a couple reasons. I wish to emphasize, Arabic would not by any means be my first candidate to be the language of the Voynich ms. Of course it is possible, like many languages are. My first inclination, like Ventris with Linear B and Greek, would be to first try to find evidence to rule out Arabic as a candidate language if possible, and see if such efforts succeed or fail. Ventris was led to the Mycenaean Greek hypothesis as a result of a line of investigation to try to prove that Linear B wasn't Greek, which to his own surprise failed and led to the opposite conclusion.
One of the VCI "Zodiac" labels reads <d'hrá>. I happened to discover that al-eadhra' is the Arabic name for Virgo (for Arabic-speaking Christians, Maryam al-eadhra' means "the Virgin Mary"). Now before anyone gets too excited, I have not been able to find many other such matches among Arabic Zodiac sign names, although the issue is apparently complicated by the fact that several different sets of Arabic Zodiac signs and names appear to exist, and who knows what the situation was like in the late medieval period. An investigation into Arabic in medieval Europe would also have to include the Maltese language, for example. But I digress. Another VCI "Zodiac" label reads <káás>, and the Arabic name for Sagittarius is al-qaws. Alas, this label is four "houses" away from <d'hrá>, while Sagittarius should only be three houses away from Virgo. More vaguely, the VCI Zodiac label <da aly> loosely resembles al-dulu, the Arabic name for Aquarius. At least <da aly> is two houses away from <káás>, the right distance from Sagittarius to Aquarius.
This is a curiosity, but hardly convincing. The best of the name matches, <d'hrá>, is the one in the "wrong" place in relation to the other two roughly similar names. And a quick check has not found any explanation for what the other nine label names might be related to. Of course at this provisional stage many of the phonetic values of the VCI transcription system could be completely wrong, but changes that improve other label names might also disturb the neat match of <d'hrá>. For now it is only a few curious names, which may or may not mean anything.
I must also mention that naturally I had to check the VCI transcription of the two label words near the group of seven stars that appear to represent the Pleiades. In fact I did this before I did the 12 "Zodiac" labels. The VCI readings of the two vords are <khaly> and <hajez>. Hejaz is the historically significant Arabian coastal region along the Red Sea, in which Mecca and Medina are located. Khali is the Arabic name of the large desert bordering Hejaz to the east. How this would be related to the Pleiades, I don't know. One wall of the Kaaba in Mecca is aligned with the rising point of Canopus, the second-brightest star in the night sky after Sirius.
I never delved much into Arabic in relation to the Voynich ms. I always figured that hundreds of millions of people around the world know the language so well already, that I never thought I could contribute much to such an investigation without a great knowledge of the language myself. I also figured if the ms was written in Arabic, surely someone would have figured that out and deciphered it already. But maybe everyone else has always figured the same thing too, so that the hypothesis has perhaps actually not been as deeply investigated as other well-known languages have.
The one tell-tale giveaway sign of the Arabic language should be the ubiquitous article "al-" occurring before a very large number of nouns in any text. It should be everywhere, unmistakable and impossible to miss. However, in the Voynich ms text, the VCI representation of <al>/<l>, which is the equivalent of EVA [ar]/[or], occurs predominantly at the ends of vords, not at the beginnings of them. A hypothesis of a "right-to-left" reading of the Voynich ms text is implausible, and in particular all the Arabic words cited above are the result of left-to-right reading of the VCI transcription. The only explanation I can think of to justify the Arabic hypothesis with the VCI character readings is that the author enciphered the text by writing the article "al-" at the ends of words rather than at the beginnings of words as in standard Arabic. This sounds bizarre, but after all we are dealing with a bizarre manuscript and text. One might perhaps compare it to the French argot "Verlan", in which the syllables of words are transposed. (Such an idea can also be considered for the many Romance languages with articles with "l", of which the word "Verlan" itself is one example.)
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| Agreeing on standard transliteration files to use |
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Posted by: Koen G - 16-09-2020, 04:42 PM - Forum: Voynich Talk
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In another thread, Rene suggested that we might better use standard transliteration files. This sounds like a good idea to me.
However, I have no idea about the variation in quality between the various options. I am just using Takahashi out of habit, but will gladly switch if this appears too flawed.
What are peoples' thoughts on this?
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![[Image: voynich-random-walk-is-high.jpg]](https://frenchvoynich.files.wordpress.com/2020/09/voynich-random-walk-is-high.jpg)
