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]
It is clear that one of the problems with the Voynich when trying to place it in history in the context of other manuscripts and documents is of course that it has no obvious parallels. Certainly we can find similarities elsewhere in manuscripts, so it isn't as though it emerged from the ether with no relation to anything else.
But we all, naturally, try to find what seems to be the best place to situate it relative to other manuscripts or texts, despite its incongruity.
So how do we reconcile its uniqueness with it having a place amongst other documents in history?
(One thing, I think we can say is that even once it has been read or demonstrated as meaningless it will still have a significance in history, because of its uniqueness, though once this happens it will I daresay slide from public interest to some extent.)
A few days ago I made a You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. that the speed at which the vocabulary stabilizes itself in a text might be an indicator as to the type of the text contents. In a fiction novel, where one could expect any change of the plot, and where artistic descriptions and depictions constitute the essence of the writing, each new page can introduce notable additions to the cumulative vocabulary. In contrast to that, a narrow-topic professional text would probably have a limited base vocabulary, which is then watered by special terminology which can well arrive up to the last page, but the rate of the vocabulary growth would be slow towards the end of the text.
Hence, by plotting the vocabulary growth curve of the VMS we can potentially make conclusions as to the nature of the contents thereof. Of course, we should separate sections of apparently different topics - because in the framework of this discourse, they present different texts.
Just an idea. I have not run any tests. What do you think?
Since approximately eight months I followed a theory, originally discussed by Prof. Stephen Bax and Derek Vogt, who suggested that Voynichese could be related to Romani or Old Romani and added my own findings, which came from the Basque language, to this.
[font='Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif]After this, I think, the Voynichese could be a relative of the so called "Erromintxela", the Creol of Basque and Kalderash (a Romani dialect).
I´ve therefore did a comparison of the my and their suggested Voynichese sounds with the actual Erromintxela phonetic inventory. And it turns out, that all known Erromintxela sounds would be covered by the Voynich glyphs. Also there are seven more sounds (two accompanied vowels, and five consonants) in the Voynichese, that filled some unusual gaps. As it seems, two of came from the Arabic, two from the Basque, two from the Spanish and one from the Hindi language.[/font]
But there are some irregularities:
[font='Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif]Concerning the vowels it´ s possible, that their use is not as straight as for example in English. There seem to be two main vowels, which can be accompanied by consonants, like "al/ar" in Arabic and "el" in Spanish. The consonants can stand in front or behind the vowels. So "ar" could also turn into "ra" depending on the context. As far as I can say for the moment, the connected consonants (n,l,r, and final sch) are all apico- alveolar except the finishing bilabial "m".
If two coronal consonants of the same type are standing on the end of a word, each of them is seemingly followed by a vowel.
The "k" may exist in an initial form and a final form.
Also there two special rules with the "h", as it seems:
[/font]
If a standard "h" followes "n", "l" or initial "k", or is followed by a closed vowel, it turns into "her" or "har" or "hir" or similar constructions with an "n" if it is standing next to an "n". If a standard "h" followes "p" it turns into "q". If a standard "h" followes "b" it turns into "v".
[font='Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif] 2. If an "h" (with an hamza above) followes a Plosive, it aspirates the Plosive (for example "p" turns into "ph").
[/font]
[font='Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif]That´s quite strange even to me.[/font]
-----------------------
[font='Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif]With my findings, in the meantime, I have checked two other theories of Andres Eloy Martinez Rojas (folio 68r3 shows the circular solar eclipse of April 15th, 1409) and Tom E. O'Neil (folio 68r3 shows Halley´s Comet in 1910) and as you can see it turns out, that the eclipse theory seems to be much more likely than the Halley´s Comet theory.
I´ve found eleven stars and a mythological being which were next to the position of the eclipse in 1409: [/font]
[font='Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif]1a.) the dragon of the eclipse, a well known demon in Asian cultures, [/font] [font='Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif]1b.) the Pleiades and Aldebaran in Taurus[/font] [font='Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif]2. two stars in Andromeda[/font] [font='Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif]3. one star in Aries and two in Pisces, [/font] [font='Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif]4. four stars which today belong to Eridanus, Fornax and Cetus, but could be one constellation in older times, which was maybe called Elephant.
For me at least this chart is an hint that Voynichese is a real language and is authentic for the early 15th century, when the Romani people came to Spain.
What I can´t refute is the possibility, that the VMS could also be a work by the Arabic conquistadors of the Iberian Peninsula, but their connection with the Basque people wasn´t very tight. So for me its more unlikely, than the Old Romani origin.[/font] By the way, the plant names, which Bax transcribed in his essays and presentations and my phonetic inventory are different from each other. But it seems, that my transcription is a little more precise than the transcription of Bax.
[font='Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif]I´m ready for your opinions![/font]
Simply question - why encrypt the VM?
Assuming it is first half of 15th century - nothing was encrypted. It just wasn't necessary. Maybe a short message from one court to another would have been partially encrypted.
Yes, we had philosophical interest from the Arabs. But this isn't backed up with actual messages. What we have are intellectuals discussing the idea.
The same, but reduced, in Europe. Hildegard. Gonzanga. Rudolf IV. They all want to keep messages secret (Hildegard was frankly mad, and wanted to keep her ideas secret. She's probably the closest to a Voynich template).
But the simple fact of the matter was that nobody in the era thought it was necessary to create a more complicated code. Why? Because at the time, nobody could crack a more complicated code.
So we have short messages between intellectuals, in which nouns are written in a lookup code or substitution alphabet. It is one hell of a jump from that to a massive encrypted book.
So let's look at the mindset. Why would anyone encrypt a whole book? Because they thought it was full of personally important and confidential information? In which case, it would be the most important book from the era we have - because it would be unique. Nobody else from the era thought it important enough to encrypt their entire notebooks, let alone create an entirely new unbreakable encryption system.
Therefore, I think we can discard the notion it's encrypted. What's more, anybody arguing it is encrypted - or encoded - is arguing that it's nonsense. Because after so many attempts, until, or unless, a codebook arrives, the encryption system is lost forever, and is probably mathematically impossible to retrieve.
Can someone point me in the direction of some good historical reading about pedagogy in medieval Europe? I'd be particularly interested in writings that go into some detail about the mundane aspects of schooling, especially the materials typically used, the way lessons were structured, and what a student was expected to do. Obviously I'd be most interested in a historian who used source materials dating from the approximate time and place the VMS was written, but I'd be happy with just a general overview of pedagogy in the early fifteenth century, for those fortunate enough to receive any schooling at all.
What inspired me to want to look up medieval educational methods is that I noticed a number of clues about the VMS would fit together nicely if it were a student's notebook. I'd like to explore and flesh out this hypothesis a bit more (or abandon it if it keeps crashing into anachronisms), but I need to know more about the historical background of the Alpine region of Europe at the time, particularly who learned the arts / sciences / "natural law", and how they learned it.
Something else entirely, for those more experienced with handwriting than me. I've only recently learned about the IHS Christogram through this thread. I just noticed that (I know it's a stretch) it's kind of present in the scribble inside the large "sun"-flower on You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. . This would leave a protrusion on top and a mark at the bottom though.
I think it's time we fish this out of the depths of the off topic section and give it its own proper thread.
Anton suggested that investigating word entropy would be an interesting exercise. Thanks to Nablator's code I gathered some initial data, which can be viewed in my You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. under the word entropy tab.
What I did right now is make some quick graphs to see whether there is any signal in the noise. My favorite way of visualizing lots of data is in scatter plots, so that's what I used. For the second value I used MATTR 500, because I know this forms "language clouds", and additionally I wanted to find out whether there would be any correlation between this and word entropy (both are about vocabulary, after all).
Also, I wanted to get an idea of which values might be most useful to focus on.
Note: in most graphs, I left two VM outliers, those are te labels and the GC transcription. It is best to focus on the main VM cloud, which sits somewhere between Latin and German.
Note2: Greek is usually somewhere in the middle, but since there are so many dots of it, visibility is impaired, so I turned it off for these graphs.
An effect is visible, but less pronounced than in h1-h2.
Conclusion: Voynichese does not behave abnormally as far as word entropy goes. It sits somewhere between Latin and German. Some other languages like Italian and Slavic are also close, but I didn't include those in these graphs.
Are there good clues as to what direction and order the strokes of each Voynichese character was drawn?
I'm a word and language nerd who has studied Chinese and Japanese as second languages, including the closely related writing systems for both. The key to mastering Chinese characters is mastering, and adhering to, the rules about how strokes are drawn. These rules were formulated over centuries of the brush and paper becoming the preferred writing media in China, and ensure that the result is as legible and aesthetically pleasing as possible. In short, for those curious:
[*]Every character is a uniform sized square, no matter how many strokes
[*]General progress in writing a character is from the upper left corner of the square to the bottom right
[*]Ticks and tails can go off in any direction, but straight lines should only ever be drawn left to right and/or top to bottom
[*]Begin an enclosure, draw the interior, then close the enclosure
As with really any writing system, reading cursive Chinese characters is really a matter of recognizing the order in which the strokes were drawn. Draw them differently, and the character will likely be hard to read.
I've never learned to do calligraphy in any script or language, and I'm certainly not as versed in it as many of you here who have looked at a lot of old manuscripts. But it's on my list of things to learn when I retire, and it's an art I've always had an appreciation for. The argument was made in the basic character decomposition thread that the scribes of the VMS were likely used to writing cursive, not book hand, and the VMS character set looks cursive-ish. This should be helpful, then, for looking for the stroke qualities typical of the pen's starting point, ending point, and general direction.
Which brings me to my next question: Do we have any good idea what kind of writing utensil the scribe used, and how it was likely wielded? This should be an easy question for our paleography gurus here. I only bring this up because the writing utensil and medium of choice had a major effect on the development of most scripts. The Chinese script, as I mentioned, was shaped by the a revulsion to pushing a paintbrush against its bristles, by a hand that never made contact with the paper during the writing process. The Thai script was designed to be easy to scratch on palm leaves. If the VMS represents a lost script of perhaps a lost language, it is possible that it was a script originally designed to be written with a different type of utensil on a different type of medium. This could explain why it is left-leaning and not full of strong vertical lines. Also if the traditional writing medium was not durable, and the users of this script had no custom of putting writing on anything durable (or even making anything durable at all) due, that might explain why only one item has been found that uses it.
In You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view., focusing on the specific subset of zodiac labels, Rene observed that words that are very common in the text do not appear in labels.
In You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view., considering the whole set of all labels in the manuscript, I observed that common words are very rare in single-word labels, but more frequent in multi-word labels (bottom of this post).
In this thread, I will try to collect some more information about multi-word labels. It is not a huge set, so it should be relatively easy to examine it in detail. My ambition is to also consider other manuscripts, seeing what readable labels can suggest about the labels in the VMS. I expect I will make errors, but I am sure that the subject is interesting and maybe others will carry on the task with more accuracy. Rene's approach of focusing on a single section is likely more robust, but for this first post I considered all the labels together. Separately examining label subsets is one of the things I hope to do in later posts.
In order to have a first readable manuscript to compare with, I have transcribed the labels in You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. (see attachment). I encountered a number of difficulties in the process:
* I opted for expanding all the abbreviations I could interpret, so that the text in the labels can be compared with normal Latin. This was not an easy choice, and I understand that a diplomatic transcription would have had its advantages too.
* The labels are written in several different hands. I only considered those that seemed to me reasonably close to the hand who wrote the main text.
* Labels are often interrupted by the image of a plant. I considered the two halves as a single label.
* Labels sometimes occur on two lines: I considered these as two distinct labels (I understand that this is also what Voynich transcriptions do).
* In a few cases, there are labels for illustrations that were never drawn. I still included these in my transcription.
* It is not always clear what should be considered a label. For instance, some include as many as seven words.
In total, 232 labels were transcribed.
I compared the set with the 1023 lines marked L (label) in the Zandbergen-Landini VMS transcription, both ignoring and considering uncertain spaces (commas). A handful of labels corresponding to special characters were ignored.
The following histogram compares the number of words in the sets of labels. The numbers are presented as percentages: keep in mind that the VMS has many more labels than Egerton 747. Single-word labels are about 888-926 (with and without uncertain spaces) vs 147 in Egerton 747. In the VMS, labels with 4 or more words are extremely rare (at most 4 in total) and will not be discussed in this post.
I also examined the position of the most frequent word in multi-word labels. In order to assess the frequency of the text in Egerton 747, I typed about 1000 words from those parts of the transcription of the manuscript published by Iolanda Ventura that are available on You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view..
Of course such a small text is not enough to measure frequencies, in particular with Latin that has so many different word-types. So I relied on a composite lexicon made of the small fragment from Egerton 747 and more extensive parts of the Vulgate Bible, Virgil's Aeneid and Mattioli's commentary on Dioscorides, collecting a total number of words (tokens) comparable with that of the Voynich transcriptions (about 38,000 words).
Most common word in two word labels
The following is the position of the most frequent word for labels made of two words. The counts for two-word labels in the three sets are:
While in the Tractatus the most frequent word tends to appear in the second position, in the VMS it tends to appear in the first. In the Latin text, the two positions typically correspond to different stypes of plant names:
* Most common word in the first position (the less frequent case). The name of the plat is made of a noun and an adjective, both words make integral part of the plant's name. E.g.: pes leporinus (hare's foot)
In other cases, the first word is the generic type of plant and the second word the specific name: arbor abiete (arbor=tree, abiete=fir: fir tree) herba vitis (herba=plant, vitis=grapevine: grapevine plant)
* Most common word in the second position (twice as frequent as the other case). Typically, the first word is a specific plant name; the second word is an adjective that identifies a variant of the plant "family". Examples: centaurea maior (greatest centaurea) papaver nigrum (black poppy) vitis alba (white vine) centaurea, papaver, vitis are plant names maior, nigrum, alba are generic adjectives that are obviously more common words.
In most cases (68%), 2-word labels are made of a noun followed by an adjective: of course, both words are in the nominative case and agree in gender and number. Labels that consist of two nouns (6%) also are in the nominative case and tend to have the same gender. A few cases feature a first noun in the nominative case and a second one in the genitive (e.g. sponsa solis, the wife of the sun).
A possible task for future posts could be checking if 2-word labels in the VMS exhibit signs of extensive concordance (e.g. sharing the same suffix).
Most common word in three word labels
Counts of three-words labels:
16 ZL VMS ignoring uncertain spaces
27 ZL VMS with uncertain spaces
17 Egerton 747
The Tractatus only shows that the most common word tends not to occur at the end: it is frequent both in the first and central position.
* Most common word in the first position. 6 of the 8 occurrences follow the pattern "nomen herbe/herba X".
* Most common word in the central position. 4 of the 7 occurrences present two different names for one plant, separated by a disjunction ("sive" / "vel" two occurrences each).
f.18r.1 brusci sive bruscus
f.40r.2 fragia sive fragula
f.74v.1 tapinum vel pinea
f.92r.2 sauma vel brachteos
* Most common word in the last position. The only two cases actually are labels that are split on two lines (f.5r, f.52v).
The VMS shows a preference to present the most common word in the central position. It is tempting to speculate that this might be due to the presence of a disjunction, but this does not seem likely. The most obvious check is seeing if the central word in Voynich 3-word labels tends to be constant, or at least clearly biased towards a limited set of choices, but this is not the case. Among the 27 labels in the ZL-with-uncertain-spaces transcription, only two words repeatedly appear in the central position, and each only appears twice: ar and char. They also appear consecutively in one of the labels:
<f69r.9,&L0> dcho char ar
Also, nothing as simple as the "nomen herbe ..." pattern seems to occur in Voynich 3-word labels.
![[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 
