For those who are in or near Rome in the middle of October, there is a presentation about the Voynich MS by Alain Touwaide in the Villa Mondragone, on 14 October starting at 2 PM:
One thing that has slightly annoyed me is the lack of attention or failure to observe many of the specific and deliberate details on the page.
One particular example is the numerous buildings. If one looks carefully one can notice that even many of the very small buildings are drawn in very specific and deliberate ways. Now it might be argued these buildings do not correspond to any specific geographical locations and even if that is the case I think it worth asking why the drawings of these buildings are so specific and not generic. Are the drawings of the buildings influenced by or copied from buildings that the author was familiar with or were they made up purely out of the author's imagination and why did the author not believe that general drawings of buildings would suffice. I should add that these specifics become very clear when one looks at the scan of the page, though zooming in on the drawings certainly can help to make the details particularly clear.
I would argue that not only is this page the largest page it is also the most detailed, though one often needs to look carefully to spot the specifics, something I think very few people do. There are certainly parts of the page that lack detail, such as the top left rosette, but there are also other parts that are rich in specific detail. I think when one notices the specific details it is worth asking why the author chose to draw this or that think one way when it would have been easier to draw it another way. Also I think one should ask whether it is more likely that those very specific details were drawn from pure imagination or memory or possibly a mixture of both.
There is a drawing of a building on the causeway from the top-right rosette to the top centre rosette. Now to me that looks very much like the kind of pretty flat roofed campanile(church bell tower) that we find prevalent in South Eastern France and Northern Italy.
To me there is a feature of this drawing that I particularly associate with campanile. This is arcaded cornices. Now arcades cornices are a series of semicircular architectural features that we see particularly at the tops of many campanile. It is noteworthy that the author of the Voynich made a deliberate decision to draw these curly semicircular features at the top of the building in question, this is not the natural or normal thing to do, it requires a deliberate decision to represent the building in that way.
To me, like the swallow tail battlements, these arcades cornices again tie the Voynich to Northern Italy or possibly South Eastern France.
Now I don't know the history or origin of the use of arcades cornices and whether they have a specific meaning in the way that swallow-tailed battlements do. I don't know how their usage dispersed geographically over time. However I do know that they were definitely in use in the early 15th century in Lombardy. If anyone else has any knowledge of arcades cornices or where to find more information of this kind that would be interesting.
As those who have followed closely what I have written publicly about the 9 Rosette Page, which is probably not many people, I have suggested that the Centre Left Rosette shows what is normally termed a Rose Window, although more specifically a type of Rose Window called a wheel window, for obvious reasons.
Now I have suggested this represents the Rose Window of Geneva Cathedral (St. Pierre). However whether one accepts that specific identification or not thinking about it again I feel the case that we have a drawing of a wheel window is really quite strong. Apart from the obvious layout of the rosette, I think an important detail is the way the point of connection(node) on the outer end of the spoke and the outer loops of the petals is drawn. This is drawn in quite a specific and deliberate way, which closely resembles what we see with the outside of many wheel windows and that is not the natural way that one would otherwise draw that connection, so I would argue this architectural parallel is significant.(I don't know what the technical name for this connection is, if it has one; if anyone know please enlighten me)
At the centre of the Rosette we see what, from what is visible from the scan of the page, looks to me more like a deflated balloon than anything else; now clearly that is not my identification, as to what it is, and that would be indicative of a much too early technological breakthrough. In my analysis I have associated it, to the best of my ability, with the bulbous dome of the St. Pierre cathedral. So I don't view that centre illustration to be part of the Rose Window as such, nevertheless the parallel with a wheel window seems strong to me and better than any other explanation that I am aware of that explains the specific details of this rosette.
I thought I would reintroduce that idea as have not mentioned it to the best of my knowledge in this forum and my mind has recently returned to it.
f58v_Dulov .txt (Size: 4.08 KB / Downloads: 31)
I don’t understand why, in the first line, “c” was reflected “?” In another social network, loading from the same media occurred correctly. f86v6_Dulov.txt (Size: 5.05 KB / Downloads: 23)
In the proposed transcription, I used the ideas for decomposing glyphs into parts proposed by Cham You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.and the addition to them of A. Alipov in the topic You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.. In the signatures under the examples, after the "=" sign, the transcription of the selected region is given in accordance with the transcription in "elementary strokes". With the help of “elementary strokes” (a total of 19 of which are presented in the table), one can decompose (transcribe) any rare glyph that, when using the EVA alphabet, was considered simply to be mistakes (blots) in writing and ignored when analyzing text statistics. The table shows the variety of sequences of adjacent elementary strokes. The purpose of transcription in "elementary strokes" is to check whether each stroke is an independent letter (phoneme). Of the 19 strokes, 4 (No. 14, 17, 18, 19) can be excluded and considered as special characters (or symbols of another alphabet for writing foreign words), since their occurrence is less than 10 cases. It is unlikely that some independent letter of the alphabet can so rarely be found over 200 pages of text. We still have 15 strokes - letters. However, in the transcription there are numerous sequences of up to 5 characters “i” and “e” –EVA, which can give us 2 more letters in visual similarity to the Latin alphabet. For example: ii = n, ee = u. And with a language based on the Greek or Cyrillic alphabet, you need to add 2 more letters. Assuming that the vowels in the manuscript are omitted and add another 4 vowels “a”, “o”, “e”, “i” to 17, we get 21 letters, which coincides with the number of letters in archaic Latin. An additional explanation is needed why, if the listed vowels are omitted in the text and the vowel “u” remains in the text. The fact is that in archaic Latin, the symbol “v” in the letter denoted two phonemes - the vowel “u” and the consonant “v”. That is, the vowel phoneme “U” can be omitted (inserted during translation), and the glyph denoting it is already taken into account quantitatively in the symbols of the alphabet. In the transcription, I used characters of the Latin keyboard layout with the most similar configurations of elementary strokes in the VM. I designated a half-space with the number “0” (if one additional character can be inserted between adjacent words), “o” means a full-space space, “O” is the end of the line. I conditionally divided all strokes into the basic form and modifiers. Modifiers t1=”1”, t2=”2”, t3=”3”, t4=”4”, J=”7”, )=”)”, ‘=”^” . Basic form e=”c”, i=”i”, [font=Tahoma, Verdana, Arial, sans-serif]•=".", /="/", |="|", [font=Tahoma, Verdana, Arial, sans-serif][font=Arial, sans-serif] [/font][font=Arial, sans-serif]¯="-"[/font][/font] , ך [/font]=”>" and "<" The original version provides examples of possible combinations for each bar You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. What is common between examples 138, 139, 140 (there are a lot of such examples) and 119 examples? Here the "pseudo-apostrophe" is too long and as a vertical line in example 119 goes deep into the interlinear, just as the bracket in eva- "y" does. [font=Arial, sans-serif]
Б4- ПОСЛ-1.JPG (Size: 36.64 KB / Downloads: 121)
[/font] Separately, I want to demonstrate the device of "benches". Pay attention only to the legs of the benches (without gallows and upper "indexes"). What a variety of combinations of "legs" are present in the text. Along with the usual legs in the form of two e-EVA symbols, there are also combinations of legs: •&ך - fig. 141, 144 (?) e&ך - fig. 143 |&e - 145, 146 e&| - 148, 149, 150 •&e - 156 e&• - 157, 158 i&e - 76,77, 78 i&• - 159 •&• - 160 Б4-ПОСЛ 2.JPG (Size: 146.8 KB / Downloads: 118)
I have no doubt that in the examples of long benches 151, 152, the right leg is the symbol I-EVA. This gives us another option. e & i - fig. 153, 154, 155 Such a variety of combinations can only be explained by one, that each element of the bench is an independent glyph (possibly a letter). In favor of this assumption, examples 51, 52, 53 (with codes not fixed) are given and compared with 65, 66, 67, 68, as well as five options for writing code 202 v 101 fig. 84, 122, 123, 124, 125. I have a claim to transcription of EVA, expressed in the fact that in many cases the horizontal line is ignored. For example, in 54, 55, 78, 79, 80, 151, 151. This especially surprises me with the transcription in the ligatures of the bench with the gallows. In the figure below, we see that the left foot of the “e” changes in the ligature to “i”. In the transcription, “e” changes to “c”, and “i” does not change to code 200 V 101. Take a look at You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view..
I do not understand how eva- "s" appears in examples 76, 77?
I do not claim that the manuscript was written in archaic Latin, but I think that this version needs to be checked, like other languages with an alphabet of 15-23 letters. The proposed transcription increases the likelihood of using a simple character replacement cipher when writing MV! This work took a very long time. I am ready to do another transcription of the first and last pages of the manuscript myself. JKP in another topic said that it’s quite simple to write a program for translating transcription of EVA into elementary touches. If someone does this and makes publicly available the full (partial) arrangement, then I am ready to gradually use these files to make adjustments in accordance with my views and publish them for statistical analysis. Only the request to use the designation of “strokes” on the keyboard in my interpretation. Other users could create their own transcription variants if they have alternative views (on the decomposition of benches, gallows, eva- “l” ...). Please make a preliminary estimate of the entropy, and build a graph (in descending order) of the meeting of each stroke, expressed as% of the total number of strokes. The sequences “I”, “ii”, ... ”c”, “cc” ... count and place on the chart separately.
René linked to the new book by Tucker and Janick You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view..
"This is a breakthrough in Voynich studies. We are convinced that the Voynich codex is a document produced by Aztec descendants that has been unfiltered through Spanish editors."
I tried to look at the preview. I'm always interested in books about plants. But even the abstract has me concerned. How can any European-medieval-style codex written by Aztec descendants be "unfiltered through Spanish editors"? It's not at all in the Nahuatl style.
Already in the sixth sentence, I see the authors don't know how to spell Salvia. They turned it into Spitplant hispanica.
Then they claim that 80% of 123 million people (which is more than 98 million) live in Mexico City. The population of Mexico City (I've been there) is about 9 million.
It gets worse. Then they claim that the Aztecs numbered 11 million, but disease killed 5 to 8 million and then further disease a generation later killed another 7 million. That adds up to 12 to 23 15 million, which is more than the 11 million that supposedly existed. It would be impossible for the Aztecs to interbreed with the conquistadors, as written, if they were all wiped out by disease.
If these basic, very simple facts are wrong, how faulty is the rest of the research?
For a while, I have been wondering about how mid-line breaks due to drawings compare with "true" line breaks. In other words, I wanted to check if the same LAAFU (line as a functional unit) effects that happen at line boundaries also appear when lines are interrupted by a drawing. For instance You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view..
This has likely been studied before, but I am not aware of any specific research in this area.
As always, I cannot exclude I have made errors somewhere in the process.
This analysis is based on the corpus of text from pages that include at least a drawing interruption. I used the Zandbergen-Landini transcription (ignoring uncertain spaces) where mid-line breaks are marked by the three characters sequence '<->'. The text from pages that do not include mid-line breaks was ignored. The corpus includes:
13966 words
11050 regular word breaks (word couples separated by a space)
751 image word breaks (word couples separated by an illustration)
2168 lines
The following histogram illustrates word length, considering:
* all words in the corpus
* first words in lines
* words that appear immediately before an image break
* words that appear immediately after an image break
* last words in lines
The histogram shows that the first word of each line is slightly longer than average. This has been discussed, for instance, by You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view..
On the contrary, words that appear immediately before a mid-line break are shorter than the average. Line final words and words following the image-break have a normal length.
The following is the histogram for specific word-lengths. Last words in lines have more frequent 1 and 2 length words: maybe because they can be more easily squeezed at the end of a line. This tendency is much stronger for words before an image break. It is possible that words are sometimes split around the image, but words after the image break do not show any particular word-length pattern.
This graph shows frequencies for the most common word-initial characters in the different positions. s[^h] stands for s-not(h), i.e. it excludes the "bench" Sh which is considered separately.
The fact that p-, t-, y-, s- are more frequent at line start is another known fact, discussed for instance by Emma You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view..
The first word after an image break shares the preference for y- and s- with line-initial words, but initial gallows are almost totally absent. In addition to the gallows, also l- and q- are rare after the image break. o- is also more frequent than usual. The drop in the frequency of q- after an image break and the (symmetrical?) increase in y-/o- are particularly noticeable and puzzling.
The graph for the word-final character shows what could be the best known LAAFU effect: the high frequency of -g and -m at line end. The two characters are not particularly frequent before a mid-line break. On the other hand, -d and -s are twice more frequent before a mid-line break than in the other positions; -y is also more frequent than expected.
I looked into the specific case of -s before an image break. It turns out that almost half of the occurrences are due to the word 's' itself: the word occurs before 0.6% of regular (i.e. space) word breaks and before 3.2% of image breaks, more than 5 times as frequently. Nothing similar happens for 'd' and 'y', the other two characters that are more common immediately before an image break: they only rarely occur in that position as stand-alone words.
In a few cases, there are multiple occurrences of 's' immediately before an image on a single page:
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's' is the only character to appear twice isolated by two image breaks.
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It seems possible that this could be described as a preference for detaching an initial s- from the rest of the word.
First, I would like to apologies for my first post, because I said there that I had a theory. When I meant to say I a hypothesis(I always seem to get those two mixed up), which is that each glyph or [font=DDG_ProximaNova, DDG_ProximaNova_UI_0, DDG_ProximaNova_UI_1, DDG_ProximaNova_UI_2, DDG_ProximaNova_UI_3, DDG_ProximaNova_UI_4, DDG_ProximaNova_UI_5, DDG_ProximaNova_UI_6,]glyphs[/font] represent a specific # of Chinese characters.
[font=Tahoma, Verdana, Arial, sans-serif]1. I thought it was just 昴 which is Subaru (yes, I thought it was Japanese at first, there is another hypothesis before this one.) Then I ask the question: " what do the Chinese called Pleiades?" So I look up Chinese constellation You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. and it was the same character, but there was also this one [font=sans-serif]宿 next to [font=Tahoma, Verdana, Arial, sans-serif]昴 on this star map. You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.[/font][font=Tahoma, Verdana, Arial, sans-serif] I then went to see[/font][font=Tahoma, Verdana, Arial, sans-serif] if [/font][font=Tahoma, Verdana, Arial, sans-serif]昴[/font][font=Tahoma, Verdana, Arial, sans-serif]宿 fit into EVA: oalcheol and begun to notice that oal has a slight gap [/font][font=sans-serif]between it and cheol. Also saw that EVA: eo conjoin together and look similar to the part in green and that EVA: ch appear similar to the roof part in red [font=Tahoma, Verdana, Arial, sans-serif](picture below #1-3). You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.[/font][/font][/font][/font]
[font=Tahoma, Verdana, Arial, sans-serif][font=sans-serif][font=sans-serif][font=Tahoma, Verdana, Arial, sans-serif][font=Tahoma, Verdana, Arial, sans-serif][font=Tahoma, Verdana, Arial, sans-serif]This where my hypothesis started and I went on to learn the Chinese language to see if I can found more character in VMS.[/font][/font][/font][/font][/font][/font]
2. I was looking for the radical character "辶" in blue to found out its meaning, (testing to see if EVA: iin might match it) and found that in Chinese it means "to walk" Japanese its "water" "slide" or "water slide." When saw water/slide, I immediately went to You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. and the vord I saw was EVA: kooiin. So I went to google translate ( I admit a bad source to use, but unfortunately I don't know Chinese very well, yet.) and type in water lilies(English --> Chinese(traditional)). I got [font=Tahoma, Verdana, Arial, sans-serif]睡蓮, [/font]the first character didn't match anything, so I switch the language around(Chinese(traditional)-->English) and got rid of [font=Tahoma, Verdana, Arial, sans-serif]睡 to see what [font=Tahoma, Verdana, Arial, sans-serif]蓮mean. This is how I got lotus for [font=Tahoma, Verdana, Arial, sans-serif]蓮(I also got lotus/water lily, when looking it up on You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view..) So I notice EVA: k look like the top part, while the blue part I said was iin. Now am left with EVA: oo and this symbol 車. At this point I thought my hypothesis was wrong, but I realize the character was very complex to be represent by a few glyphs. This may be for reason #1 why they use the EVA: oo, but then I found reason #2. I went to look up what [font=Tahoma, Verdana, Arial, sans-serif]車 mean and turn out to be "vehicle" and then it hit me that the author made his/her own logography to represent vehicle. While [font=Tahoma, Verdana, Arial, sans-serif]車 is a top down view of a cart, the EVA: oo is a side view of the cart wheels, and why they use the two O.[/font][/font][/font][/font][/font]
[font=Tahoma, Verdana, Arial, sans-serif][font=Tahoma, Verdana, Arial, sans-serif][font=Tahoma, Verdana, Arial, sans-serif][font=Tahoma, Verdana, Arial, sans-serif][font=Tahoma, Verdana, Arial, sans-serif][font=Tahoma, Verdana, Arial, sans-serif][font=Tahoma, Verdana, Arial, sans-serif]3. I found this one by accident, while looking at lotus in google translate I found this character [/font][font=Roboto, arial, sans-serif][font=Tahoma, Verdana, Arial, sans-serif]菏[/font][/font][/font][/font][/font][/font][/font][/font][font=Roboto, arial, sans-serif][font=Tahoma, Verdana, Arial, sans-serif].[/font][/font][font=Roboto, arial, sans-serif][font=Tahoma, Verdana, Arial, sans-serif]Which look [/font][/font][font=Roboto, arial, sans-serif]surprisingly[/font][font=Roboto, arial, sans-serif] like the first vord on paragraph 2 in [/font]You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.[font=Roboto, arial, sans-serif]. It was odd to me why the first vord on both paragraph would be lotus, but then I copy the character and look on [/font]You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.[font=Roboto, arial, sans-serif]. On there it says "[/font][font=Roboto, arial, sans-serif][font=sans-serif]name of a [/font]You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.[font=sans-serif] in [/font]You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.[font=sans-serif] [/font][/font][font=Roboto, arial, sans-serif]You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.", but I wan't convenience. So I went to google map and look around all in Shandong province in China for this river and while I was looking, I realize that their is a lot river with "he" at the end, which is the sound 菏-->[font=Tahoma, Verdana, Arial, sans-serif]Hé makes. Then it click, I went to google translate and in my head ask "google, what is river in Chinese?"(type river into box) Google responds:[font=Tahoma, Verdana, Arial, sans-serif]菏. (well thanks google for sending me on a wild goose chase.)[/font][/font][/font]
[font=Tahoma, Verdana, Arial, sans-serif][font=Tahoma, Verdana, Arial, sans-serif][font=Tahoma, Verdana, Arial, sans-serif][font=Tahoma, Verdana, Arial, sans-serif][font=sans-serif][font=Tahoma, Verdana, Arial, sans-serif][font=Tahoma, Verdana, Arial, sans-serif][font=Tahoma, Verdana, Arial, sans-serif][font=Tahoma, Verdana, Arial, sans-serif]Now my final image "Possible match" are possible explanation for certain weird character for each vords.[/font][/font][/font][/font][/font][/font][/font][/font][/font] The * is a responds to...[font=Tahoma, Verdana, Arial, sans-serif]
(21-09-2019, 12:14 PM)RobGea Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
[/font]why so many words end in 'y' i personally would love to hear it.
[font=Tahoma, Verdana, Arial, sans-serif][font=Tahoma, Verdana, Arial, sans-serif][font=Tahoma, Verdana, Arial, sans-serif][font=Tahoma, Verdana, Arial, sans-serif][font=sans-serif][font=Tahoma, Verdana, Arial, sans-serif][font=Tahoma, Verdana, Arial, sans-serif][font=Tahoma, Verdana, Arial, sans-serif][font=Tahoma, Verdana, Arial, sans-serif][font=Tahoma, Verdana, Arial, sans-serif][font=Tahoma, Verdana, Arial, sans-serif]This character "[font=Tahoma, Verdana, Arial, sans-serif]了" could be why the EVA: y end every vords or the two below it. Though I can't explain what the EVA: dy, because d has been eluding so far. I will also[/font]show this video to show possible connecton between EVA: y and 了. Alright, commence trial by fire.[/font][/font][/font][/font][/font][/font][/font][/font][/font][/font][/font]
![[Image: image.jpg?q=f68v2_3-1326-368-70-38]](https://voynich.ninja/extractor/image.jpg?q=f68v2_3-1326-368-70-38)
I thought it was just 昴 which is Subaru (yes, I thought it was Japanese at first, there is another hypothesis before this one.) Then I ask the question: " what do the Chinese called Pleiades?" So I look up Chinese constellation ![[Image: image.jpg?q=f2v-382-304-105-81]](http://voynich.ninja/extractor/image.jpg?q=f2v-382-304-105-81)
EVA: kooiin. So I went to google translate ( I admit a bad source to use, but unfortunately I don't know Chinese very well, yet.) and type in water lilies(English --> Chinese(traditional)). I got