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| New Phonetic-Pedagogical Theory: MS 408 as a Parental Survival Guide |
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Posted by: Rodrigo - 20-02-2026, 09:15 AM - Forum: Voynich Talk
- Replies (2)
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Hi everyone,
I’ve been studying the manuscript from a human perspective. My theory is that this isn't a complex military code, but a phonetic guide for oral transmission from parents to children.
Key points of my hypothesis: - The "8" symbol: I believe it represents a polarity marker (YES/NO), used as a quick visual cue for a child's behavior or safety.
- Repetitions: These are not errors. They represent the musical rhythm of a voice (like a lullaby or a mantra) to help the child memorize survival advice.
- Initial glyphs: They mark the beginning of a "lesson" or a song.
The manuscript is a tool to preserve a family’s voice and knowledge. I’d love to know if anyone else has looked at the "8" as a simple binary instruction for phonetic teaching.
Best regards!
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| Scribes and elaborate gallows |
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Posted by: Koen G - 19-02-2026, 06:39 PM - Forum: Analysis of the text
- Replies (9)
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I've been wondering for a while whether there is any connection between LFD's scribes and the use of ornate & special gallows. I just spent some time skimming each page of the manuscript, paying special attention to top lines. This is far from exhaustive, but should be sufficient to start a discussion.
Some preliminary notes:
- I did not pay too much attention to circular diagrams and left Scribe 4 out of the equation. The ornate gallow is more of a thing for paragraphs. There are some clear exception in f57v, with some very loopy gallows. This is the only diagram not done by scribe 4. It is also part of weird Quire 8, and hence cursed.
- Long-P stretching over various glyphs is omnipresent and cannot be used as a discriminating factor.
- Some areas of the MS are more prone to get fancy gallows than others. (Relative scarcity in some pharma and Q20 pages). This may be due to layout, text type or scribal preference.
Observations
- Scribe 1 masters the "bridging gallow", connecting one word with another. I found only one modest instance by scribe 2 (f80r), though there may be more that I overlooked.
- Moving one tier down, we also notice that Scribe 1 likes to add extra loops. This is rare in other scribes. However, notice the top red arrow. Scribe 1 and scribe 3 have the exact same shape here. This cannot be a coincidence.
- One tier down again from the red arrow, scribe 2 comes in with the "twist" (f76v mark), moving the top of the gallows to the right of the legs. Scribe 1 also has twists, but Scribe 2 has his own recognizable varieties.
- One tier down again (f22r, You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. mark), I noted that all scribes have a few lanky, awkwardly looped gallows.
- At the bottom, there are some uniquely embellished ones. Scribe 1 mikes dots. Scribe 2 has the "ribbon" and groups of 3 lines.
- The second red arrow shows another instance where scribe 3 does exactly the same thing as Scribe 1: scallops on top of the long horizontal, dots beneath. (These are only a few folios removed in the current binding! 102r-105r)
Conclusions
Abnormal/ornamental gallow usage has constants throughout the manuscript (long P, taller gallows on top lines), but some scribes leave their own marks. Scribe 1 likes the most variation, with bridging gallows and extra loops. Scribe 2 thinks about going there sometimes, but us much more careful and restrained. Despite having produced a lot of text, scribe 3 does not use many ornamental gallows. When he does, he acts very much like Scribe 1.
Finally, there is also this page, but I'm not even sure which scribe this is supposed to be. The Rosettes foldout is one of those where several scribes were active. I see TWO instances of rare gallows on this one odd page: a modest bridge, and a Scribe 1-style extra loop.
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| The ofchdady nymph of Gemini (the Twins) - February 2026 |
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Posted by: pjburkshire - 19-02-2026, 04:37 PM - Forum: Imagery
- Replies (11)
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When I look at the nymph in the top-left of f72r2 - Gemini (the Twins), it looks to me like she is standing on grass. What do other people think?
The ofchdady ( ofchdady ) nymph of Gemini (the Twins)
- It looks like she is standing on grass
- It looks like she is standing on a bed of nails
- It looks like she is standing on something else
- She is not standing on anything
- Not sure, can't tell, image too damaged to know
Also, there is something on her left ankle. I don't know if that is a smudge or part of the illustration. If it is part of the illustration, what is it? An ankle bracelet? A bandage?
..........................
Edit: I probably should have made the option as "unidentified" and not "something else". If you think it could be either grass or a bed of nails, I count that as "unidentified" and would mark it as "something else".
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| The oddities of the bigram "ed" pt. 3 : It's not just "ed" |
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Posted by: Dunsel - 19-02-2026, 03:41 AM - Forum: Analysis of the text
- Replies (18)
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Here are links to my previous posts in this series.
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In those you'll find what leads up to this post.
"ho"mogonized
In my first post, I lead off with the striking chart that everyone seemed to like. I'll start this post the same way.
What you're looking at there is the bigram "ho" compared to "ed" normalized with my 0ed pages on the left, ed+ pages on the right.
Ok, that chart is a bit jagged. Let me bring that into focus.
That is the count of ho and ed normalized by 1000 tokens. The vertical bar represents where my ed0 ends and ed+ begins. These two charts are essentially showing that the bigram ho and the bigram ed are swapping midfix dominance. All of those pages in the ed+ where they do swap is where ed has it's lowest counts. So even pages where ed occurs only a few times, ho is still the dominant midfix.
In this chart, I've sorted by ho/ed count where ho's higest count is on the left, ed's highest count is on the right. Their counts are normalized by page word count. I've shaded the background to show my ed0 in grey, ed+ in blue. Now this chart is striking. And it begs the question, "Is Currier A and B languages and my ed0 and ed+ correct???"
Here's ho compared to ok, which is also a midfix token and shares a similar word count. What's different about ho from other bigrams introduced in 0ed, it's count doesn't increase with the folio word count.
It's density per folio changes.
0ED: 0.264
ED+: 0.056
Here's ed's density for comparison
0ED: 0.00068
ED+: 0.182
ho isn't the only one that changes but it's by far the largest and that 0ed density is exactly what makes it seem completely opposed to ed. There are other changes in bigrams but not nearly this drastic.
In this chart, blue is the 0ed pages, orange the ed pages. What I did for this chart is chop off the unigram prefix and suffix of every word and look at what was left in the middle. I then took that top 100 cores by count and looked at letter count. H and O dominate the 0ed side. And they're very much present in the ed+ side. But e and d see a large change in count. Also notice that the counts of h and e are almost perfectly interchangeable between 0ed and ed+
Now, looking at the top 100 bigrams across both 0ed and ed+ you can easily see where ho got demoted, ed got promoted, along with a lot of bigrams. None of those other bigrams work like ho. None have a doppelganger in the 0ed side. (that I've found)
What Currier Saw & Theory
So, I hope this makes you ask a few questions. I can tell you that I have lots more charts that try to prove why this happened. I've looked into novelty, bigram usage, bigram depletion and just a gob more aspects of these two regimes and I can't come up with one solid answer. All of the tests that I've performed says that nothing stood out. Well, except for one thing. Curriers eyes.
This is going to delve into theory. And I'm not saying I'm right, I'm saying this is what it suggests to me. Please don't be too brutal, my theories change on a daily basis.
I think I've already shown that Currier spotted these differences some 50 years ago and that my ed0/ed+ pretty much aligns with his language A and language B. He had the time, desire and I believe some punch cards, to make spotting this difference easier. I think I've also shown that this is not section specific. There are plenty of Herbal pages with the bigram ed in prominence. So, the question is, why has nobody until Currier spotted this? And why has nobody been able to show this distinction to this degree until now?
Compare these two charts. The first one is split on my ed0 and ed+ The second, is in original folio order.
Had the Voynich been in my 0ed/ed+ order, I "believe" that spotting this regime shift would have happened much earlier. I "believe" it would have been blatantly obvious. 100+ pages you have gobs of ho in the middle of the word and then, it's mostly gone and ed is in the middle of lots of words.
In my first post, I demonstrated how ed pages are on specific sheets (with one low count exception) in the herbal section. If you look at the 2 charts above, had they been in 0ed/ed+ order there would have been over 100 pages (2/5) of the book with no ed and then, it would suddenly appear as a midfix and become dominant. And I demonstrated how these sheets are wrapped around sheets with 0ed (firsts post). By interleaving those sheets, that 100 page gap was cut roughly in half (f26r is where ed begins in folio order).
Now, I'm going to have to freely admit, I did not have the mathematical skills to come up with this. I knew what I was looking for but the math was a bit beyond me. I asked chatGPT to come up with a formula that would allow me to detect visual differences in pages by their text composition. And here's what it came up with and what I plugged into a python script.
So, if you have the mathematical skills, PLEASE confirm this is a valid method. I've looked it over, it makes sense to me but I'm not a mathematician.
GPT:
For each page, we compute five very simple surface features:
- HO density per word
- ED density per word
- Gallows density per word
- Mean token length
- Top-5 bigram concentration (how dominant the most common bigrams are)
Then we build a vector like this for each page:
[1, HO_per_word, ED_per_word, Gallows_per_word, Mean_token_length, Top5_bigram_share]
That leading 1 is just the intercept term.
Then we fit a simple linear regression:
score = w₀ + w₁·HO + w₂·ED + w₃·Gallows + w₄·Length + w₅·Top5
The weights (w’s) are solved with ordinary least squares to best separate:- 0ED pages → target = 0
- ED+ pages → target = 1
And here's the chart sorted in ed0 - ed+ order
So, it is claiming that by just measuring those surface textures with that formula, that it can predict whether a page is 0ed or ed+ with a 89.8% accuracy rate.
Now, here's what the same chart looks like sorted in folio order.
So, here's my theory. The reason this regime shift wasn't detected until Currier was that it was intentionally obscured by shuffling pages around and, by skipping over to other sections (pharma and zodiac) and then, coming back to finish the herbal section. I believe, that if they hadn't shuffled those pages, and if this were written in the 15th century, then anyone with linguistic skills, like an adept scribe or cryptographer, would have spotted it back then.
Now, this shuffling of pages in no way excludes an intentional production process and that the folios are mostly in chronological order or that it was the result of it being rebound once or twice. Right now, my Occam's Razor detector is saying obfuscation.
Conclusion
This concludes my 3 part series on the oddities of "ed". I'm hoping I've given everyone a lot to think about. I have one more series planned and I hope it's going to be no less... erm... informative. It's going to turn the focus back on repair with an attempt to reverse engineer the Voynich.
Thanks for all the great replies and good hunting.
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Comprehensive Decipherment of the Voynich Manuscript: A New Linguistic Approach |
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Posted by: kentalbix - 18-02-2026, 07:27 PM - Forum: The Slop Bucket
- Replies (1)
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The Albi Tirado Method: A Definitive Solution to the Voynich Script Mystery
Dear Voynich Community,
My name is Ronald Alexander Albi Tirado. Today, February 18, 2026, I am formally presenting the foundational results of my research regarding the decipherment of the Voynich Manuscript (Beinecke MS 408).
I. Methodology
The Albi Tirado Method is based on a systematic linguistic reconstruction that bridges the gap between the "Voynichese" glyphs and their botanical/semantic referents. Unlike previous statistical approaches, my work utilizes a morpho-linguistic anchor.
By identifying the precise botanical species in the illustrations, I have successfully isolated recurring phonetic patterns in the accompanying text. This cross-referencing has allowed for the identification of a stable and consistent syntax throughout the manuscript.
II. Evidence: Analysis of Folio 9v
To demonstrate the functional application of this method, I submit for your review the analysis of Folio 9v.
Taxonomic Correlation: The illustration in Folio 9v has been identified as Viola tricolor (commonly known as the Wild Pansy).
Morphological Evidence: The serrated leaf structure, the tri-colored petal arrangement, and the specific striated primary root depicted in the folio align perfectly with the linguistic labels decoded through my method.
Decipherment Result: The labels surrounding the plant do not represent random characters but precise descriptors of the plant’s properties and classification in a Medieval Romance/Latin dialect.
III. Call for Peer Review
I am officially recording my authorship of this research today. While many have claimed to solve this mystery, the internal consistency of the Albi Tirado Method provides a replicable framework that holds across multiple sections of the codex—including the pharmaceutical and astronomical folios.
I look forward to a rigorous technical discussion with the members of this community. I will be posting further translations and grammatical breakdowns in the coming days.
Respectfully,
Ronald Alexander Albi Tirado
Lead Researcher
February 18, 2026
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Amendment to Voynich MS 408: The Syntaxis Volvella |
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Posted by: PandaRosa - 18-02-2026, 07:14 PM - Forum: The Slop Bucket
- Replies (1)
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Hi everyone,
I’ve been following the discussions here for a while regarding the rigid morphology of Voynich "words". I approached MS 408 not as a linguist, but from a Forensic Engineering perspective.
My hypothesis was simple: What if the rigidity isn't grammatical, but mechanical?
After mapping the transition probabilities of 35,000 tokens, I have isolated the hardware architecture responsible for generating the text. I call it The Syntaxis Volvella.
![[Image: default.png]](https://zenodo.org/api/iiif/record:18684047:stator_rotor.png/full/!800,800/0/default.png)
I am sharing my findings here because I need this community's critical eye on the data.
1. The Architecture: A 17:13 Differential. The statistical "dead zones" in the text suggest a stator disk with 17 Semantic Sectors (providing the Suffix/Context) interacting with a planetary rotor of 13 teeth (providing the Stem/Root). This specific 17:13 ratio explains the cyclical repetition and the "State-Memory" transitions that purely linguistic models fail to predict.
Volvella architecture JSON:
Code: {
"artifact_designation": "V-2206 Syntaxis Volvella",
"theoretical_basis": "Mechanical Generative System (Non-Linguistic)",
"architecture": {
"stator_unit": {
"description": "Outer fixed disk defining the semantic context (Suffixes)",
"segments": 17,
"sector_topology": [
{"id": "AIIN", "function": "ITEM_LISTING", "mechanical_bias": "High_D_Lock"},
{"id": "IIN", "function": "GENERIC", "mechanical_bias": "None"},
{"id": "IN", "function": "GENERIC", "mechanical_bias": "None"},
{"id": "EEDY", "function": "SYNC_NODE_1", "mechanical_bias": "Cam_Lobe_Contact (QOK)"},
{"id": "HEDY", "function": "PROCESS_DESCRIPTOR", "mechanical_bias": "Hard_C_Lock"},
{"id": "EDY", "function": "SYNC_NODE_2", "mechanical_bias": "Cam_Lobe_Contact (QOK)"},
{"id": "DY", "function": "VARIABLE_INPUT", "mechanical_bias": "Low_Friction"},
{"id": "AM", "function": "GENERIC", "mechanical_bias": "None"},
{"id": "OM", "function": "GENERIC", "mechanical_bias": "None"},
{"id": "OS", "function": "DATA", "mechanical_bias": "CHE_Bias"},
{"id": "US", "function": "GENERIC", "mechanical_bias": "None"},
{"id": "AL", "function": "NULL_SEPARATOR", "mechanical_bias": "Empty_Stem"},
{"id": "AR", "function": "NULL_TERMINATOR", "mechanical_bias": "Empty_Stem"},
{"id": "OL", "function": "NULL_SEPARATOR", "mechanical_bias": "Empty_Stem"},
{"id": "OR", "function": "NULL_TERMINATOR", "mechanical_bias": "Empty_Stem"},
{"id": "EY", "function": "SYNC_NODE_3", "mechanical_bias": "Cam_Lobe_Contact (CH)"},
{"id": "KY", "function": "FRICTION_ZONE", "mechanical_bias": "QO_Bias"}
]
},
"rotor_unit": {
"description": "Inner planetary gear with 3-Lobe Cam geometry",
"gear_ratio_stator_to_rotor": "17:13",
"core_lexicon": ["QOK", "CH", "SH", "OK", "D", "S", "C"],
"synchronization": {
"cam_profile": "Triangular (Eccentric)",
"phase_alignment": ["EEDY", "AIIN", "EY"]
}
},
"interface_unit": {
"description": "Radial Alidade with 3 sighting windows",
"modes": {
"NORTH_WINDOW": {"trigger": ["P", "F"], "content_pool": "RING_A (Consonants)"},
"SOUTH_WINDOW": {"trigger": ["T", "K"], "content_pool": "RING_B (Vowels)"},
"NEUTRAL_WINDOW": {"trigger": "NONE", "content_pool": "RING_C (Rotor)", "usage": 0.85}
}
},
"rings_content": {
"RING_A": {
"description": "Consonants / Hard prefixes (accessed by NORTH_WINDOW)",
"top_teeth_freq": [
["CH", 0.52],
["C", 0.20],
["CHE", 0.12],
["SH", 0.08],
["OL", 0.08]
]
},
"RING_B": {
"description": "Vowels / Soft connectors (accessed by SOUTH_WINDOW)",
"top_teeth_freq": [
["CH", 0.30],
["E", 0.22],
["C", 0.19],
["A", 0.08],
["EE", 0.07]
]
},
"RING_C": {
"description": "Rotor core stems (accessed by NEUTRAL_WINDOW)",
"top_teeth_freq": [
["QOK", 0.24],
["D", 0.23],
["CH", 0.21],
["S", 0.14],
["OK", 0.13]
]
}
}
},
"operational_physics": {
"batch_processing_inertia": {
"description": "Operator tends to stay in the same sector group (data batching)",
"mean_sector_jump": 5.71,
"median_sector_jump": 5.0,
"percentage_repeat_sector": 13.43
},
"stochastic_emission": "Output = P(Stem|Sector) * P(Sector_t+1|Sector_t)",
"mechanical_rigidity_examples": [
{"sector": "HEDY", "forced_tooth": "C", "observed_frequency": 0.30},
{"sector": "AIIN", "forced_tooth": "D", "observed_frequency": 0.30},
{"sector": "EY", "preferred_tooth": "CH", "observed_frequency": 0.16},
{"sector": "EEDY", "preferred_tooth": "QOK", "observed_frequency": 0.17}
]
}
}
2. The QOK Anomaly. This is the strongest physical evidence. In my telemetry analysis, the token QOK is not a word, it’s a mechanical synchronization artifact. It appears with statistical significance at exactly 120-degree intervals on the stator (Sectors equivalent to EEDY, AIIN, EY). This phase-lock strongly implies the internal rotor is driven by a 3-Lobe Triangular Cam.
![[Image: default.png]](https://zenodo.org/api/iiif/record:18684047:Fig2_QOK_Synchronization.png/full/!800,800/0/default.png)
3. The Turing Test (Simulation Results) I wrote a Python script to simulate this hardware. I fed it zero linguistic rules—only the physical constraints of the gears and the probability matrix of the sectors.
Result: The synthetic text matches the real MS 408 with a 99.6% Zipf Law correlation.
![[Image: default.png]](https://zenodo.org/api/iiif/record:18684047:Fig1_Zipf_Comparison.png/full/!800,800/0/default.png)
The complex "language" behavior is actually just the friction and geometry of a machine.
The Paper & Data: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
I have uploaded the full breakdown, the Python code, and the CSV telemetry logs to Zenodo. I invite you to audit my code and the "Hard Lock" tables.
I am not claiming to have translated the meaning YET, but I believe I have successfully reverse-engineered the source. I would appreciate your thoughts!!
Regards
Steven Quevedo
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| Measuring Long-Range Structure in the Voynich Manuscript |
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Posted by: quimqu - 18-02-2026, 05:29 PM - Forum: Analysis of the text
- Replies (49)
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Hello again!
I've taken a break from studying the Voynich for a few months. It's such a complex subject that I think you need to mentally disconnect from it every now and then. 
Lately, I've been doing a simple statistical test on the manuscript, which in principle doesn't depend on any linguistic interpretation. The idea is to measure to what extent the identity of a character at position t gives us information about the character at position t+d. In more technical terms, I'm measuring mutual information, which can be calculated for different distances d. If the text has only very local structure, this dependence, however small, should quickly disappear. If there is a deeper structure, some of the dependence should persist even at larger distances.
In the case of the Voynich, mutual information is maintained at a certain level even at distances of 50 to 100 characters (very similar to natural languages). When the same text is globally shuffled, the signal collapses. This seems to confirm that the effect depends on the actual order of the characters and not just their frequencies.
I have also tried a control that preserves local patterns but destroys the global order by shuffling entire lines. In this case, the short-range dependence is maintained, but the behavior at longer distances is lost. This suggests that the signal is not limited to regularities within each line.
To make sure that the result is not just due to the fact that the manuscript has different parts with different letter styles or frequencies, I did a very simple test. I created artificial texts divided into blocks. In each block, the letters appear in the same proportions as in the original text of that part, but they are placed randomly, with no real order.
So the artificial text preserves the slow changes in frequencies between sections, but removes any real structure in the sequence. When I apply the same measurement to these artificial texts, the signal disappears almost completely. This means that the pattern we see in the Voynich cannot be explained simply by the fact that different parts of the manuscript have different letter frequencies. There is more than just variation between sections.
I also trained simple generative models on the Voynich text itself. A 1st-order Markov model captures local transitions but fails to reproduce the structure over longer distances. Moderate-order character n-gram models reproduce short-range effects, but they do not match the persistence observed in the original text.
Importantly, the pattern is robust whether spaces are removed or if one changes from EVA to an alternative transliteration (CUVA). The overall behavior remains qualitatively the same.
For comparison, I have applied the same analysis to several natural language corpora. The Voynich curves fall within the same general range as those of these texts: they do not behave like mixed noise or like sequences generated by simple local models. On a purely statistical level, the Voynich character sequence shows a structured long-range dependence comparable to that of natural texts.
This does not prove that the manuscript encodes a natural language. But I do think it shows that its character sequence behaves like a structured system with persistent long-range dependencies, and not like a mixed or purely local construct.
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| Two Preprints: Bayesian Model Selection ($\Href$) & Cognitive Mechanism (The Zero-Pat |
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Posted by: durdanovic - 18-02-2026, 05:26 PM - Forum: The Slop Bucket
- Replies (8)
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Colleagues,
I am sharing two companion papers that address the Voynich Manuscript through the lens of Bayesian Model Selection and Cognitive Science.
Paper 1: Epistemological Hygiene & The Zero-Patch Standard
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This paper argues that the field has been constrained by the Patching Fallacy: the acceptance of hypotheses (like Natural Language or Ciphers) that only fit the evidence by introducing unconstrained auxiliary parameters.
By applying a strict Zero-Patch Standard, the paper demonstrates that a Structured Reference System ($\Href$) is the information-theoretically minimal model. It is deduced directly from the corpus invariants (Rigid Morphology, High Hapax, Sectional Disjointness) rather than postulated and patched.
Paper 2: Cognitive Optimization in External Memory Systems
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This follow-up provides the mechanistic explanation for that structure. It reinterprets Stolfi’s "Crust-Mantle-Core" and Currier’s partitions not as linguistic anomalies, but as Cognitive Optimizations for manual retrieval in a paper-based database:
- Prefixes: Classifiers/Index markers (working memory limits).
- Roots: Visual "Combination Locks" for parallel search (minimizing lookup latency).
- Sectional Shifts: Namespace Partitioning (referential integrity).
The papers aim to link the well-documented statistical topography of the VMS to a concrete, falsifiable functional architecture.
Best regards,
Igor Durdanovic
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| Voynich Manuscript as an (imperfect) phonetic transcription of spoken Friulian |
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Posted by: funkylibrarian - 18-02-2026, 12:48 AM - Forum: The Slop Bucket
- Replies (4)
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Let's start with my assumptions:
- Voynichese has been compared with several known languages; while patterns have been perhaps identified, none have allowed for interpreting the text.
- The script was written smoothly, as if by a native speaker, not someone who was encrypting the text in real time.
- The manuscript is believed to originate in NE Italy, roughly in the 15th century.
- If you look at the languages spoken in NE Italy around that time, one of the most common languages was Friulian.
- While many people spoke Friulian, it was primary a spoken linage, not written, unlike the other languages of the region at that time: Latin, Venetian, or Italian.
- The Benandanti and other folk medicinalists in NE Italy around that time primarily spoke Friulian.
And here's my hypothesis: What if Voynichese isn't primarily a written language, but a native speaker who tried to transcribe their primarily oral (not written) language phonetically into the text. If the language had distinct sounds, the transcriber might need to invent new characters to reflect those sounds in the phonetic transcription.
The evidence would be that Voynichese would follow linguistic patterns that would mirror such patterns if a speaker of Friulian invented a phonetic vocabulary to transcribe spoken Friulian. Also, some specific words in the Voynich text, especially those included in or next to images, could be shown to correlate to meaningful words in Friulian.
Here is some evidence that I would like to so share, and admit that I was aided with AI in generating this information. But please, do not reject this simply because it was aided with AI. I hope someone with more experience on these topics could either refute this idea, or further explore it. I'm sharing it here because I saw very few references on this site or elsewhere to the Friulian language's relevance to the manuscript.
Friulian (Furlan) is a Rhaeto-Romance language spoken in the Friuli-Venezia Giulia region of northeastern Italy. In the early 15th century — when the manuscript's vellum was prepared — it occupied a unique position in the European linguistic landscape. It was a living vernacular spoken by hundreds of thousands of people, yet it possessed no established written standard. Legal documents in the region were written in Latin, then Venetian, then Italian. Friulian was the tongue of the field, the market, and the hearth. It was heard, not read.
THE UNWRITTEN LANGUAGE PROBLEM
If a 15th-century practitioner — a healer, an apothecary, a folk scholar embedded in the Benandanti tradition of Friulian agrarian magic — wished to write down spoken Friulian systematically, there was no orthography to follow. He could not simply write Friulian in standard letters the way a Florentine could write Tuscan, because no standard spelling of Friulian existed. The solution, rational and elegant, would be to invent a phonetic script — one that captured the sounds of the language as heard, consistently applied, without the interference of competing orthographic traditions. Such a script, written by a single disciplined hand applying self-invented phonological rules, would produce exactly the statistical signature we observe in Voynichese: lower-than-natural-language entropy, rigid positional rules for characters (because the script encodes phonological constraints directly), and high word-form consistency (because one or perhaps two individuals are transcribing the spoken language).
FRIULIAN'S DISTINCTIVE PHONOLOGICAL FEATURES
Several of Friulian's phonological characteristics would produce distinctive statistical signatures in a phonetic transcription, and several of these match properties of Voynichese that have long puzzled researchers.- Preservation of final consonants. Unlike Italian and Venetian, which dropped most Latin final consonants, Friulian keeps them. Words end in -c, -t, -n, -l with a frequency unmatched in neighboring Romance varieties. A phonetic script for Friulian would require dedicated word-final consonant glyphs — and Voynichese has several characters that appear almost exclusively at word-end.
- The palatal /j/ consonant. Friulian preserves the Latin /j/ as a palatal glide, writing it "j" or "i". Italian palatalized this to "gi-"; Venetian affricated it to "z-". Only in the Rhaeto-Romance family does the sound survive as a clean /j/. This has direct consequences for how a Friulian speaker would transcribe certain words — evidence we examine directly in the month names below.
- Pervasive clitic pronouns. Friulian's spoken grammar deploys subject clitics — small unstressed pronouns — before virtually every finite verb. The masculine singular "al" (he) and third-person plural "a" appear so frequently in spoken Friulian that any phonetic transcription would be dominated by these short recurring morphemes. This matches Voynichese's most distinctive property: the dominance of short, highly repetitive word-forms.
The Month Names: Direct Testimony
The astrological section of the manuscript (folios f70v–f73v) contains something unique: ten month names written in readable Latin script, inscribed next to the zodiac signs in what researchers call the "Third Script." These are not in the unknown Voynich alphabet. They can be read directly, and they constitute our firmest linguistic anchor point in the entire manuscript.
- MARC: FINAL CONSONANTS AND RHAETO-ROMANCE IDENTITY
The spelling "Marc" (f70v2, Pisces/March) with its preserved final hard -c is phonologically impossible in standard Italian (Marzo) or Venetian (Marzo). Both have lost the Latin final consonant entirely. The form appears in Catalan and Occitan as "Març," but crucially it also fits Friulian perfectly — and indeed, final consonant preservation is one of the defining characteristics of Rhaeto-Romance languages, the family to which Friulian belongs. The writer who spelled March with a final -c was not writing Italian. They were writing from a phonological system that keeps what Italian discards.
- YUNY: THE PALATAL GLIDE THAT RULES OUT ITALIAN
The month name for June, written on folio f72r2 (Gemini), appears as "Yuny" or "Yony" — using a Y-initial to represent the /j/ sound. This is the single most diagnostic piece of evidence the month names provide. In Italian, June is "Giugno" — the original /j/ has been completely absorbed into the palatal affricate "gi-". In Venetian it is "Zugno" — affricated to "z-". Neither could produce a "Y-" spelling. But in Friulian, the palatal glide /j/ is preserved as a distinct sound, and a writer representing it phonetically would naturally write "y" or "j." The spelling "Yuny" is the phonetic transcription of a Friulian speaker's ear.
- AUGST: THE GERMANIC SUBSTRATE
The spelling "Augst" (f72v3, Leo/August) with its compressed consonant cluster "-gst" rather than the smooth Romance "Agosto" points to a speaker at the Italian-Germanic linguistic border. Friuli sits precisely at that interface, where Austrian and Tyrolean German influence on the calendar vocabulary was real and documented. The German form "August" with its Germanic consonant cluster was preserved in early Friulian usage in ways that smooth Italian "Agosto" never would be. The writer who spelled August as "Augst" was hearing the month through a Germanic substratum — an Alpine, border-region ear.
These examples describe, in their spelling choices, a phonological profile that belongs to the Friulian-Alpine borderland of the early 15th century: a Rhaeto-Romance speaker, at the Italian-German interface, whose ear had absorbed Germanic calendar forms but whose vowels and consonants were those of the mountains and the river valleys of Friuli.
The Rosettes Folio: A Map in Friulian
The six-page foldout known as the Rosettes folio (f85v–f86r) contains what most researchers now accept is a map or cosmological diagram featuring nine circular "rosettes" connected by causeways, with illustrations of buildings, towers, and what appears to be volcanic or mountainous terrain. The architectural detail is particularly significant: the castle in the northeastern rosette displays swallowtail or Ghibelline crenellations, a style closely associated with northern Italy and specifically with the Scaliger family of the Verona-Friuli region from the 14th century onward. The map, if it is one, could depict a Friulian landscape.- The word "otol", appearing directly before a tower marker in the Stolfi transcription, is the most convincing single word match this investigation has produced. Breaking it as "o" (prepositional/article prefix) + "tol" (→ Friulian tôr, tower, with diminutive lateral suffix -ol), we arrive at o tôrol — "at/of the little tower" or "turret." The diminutive suffix -ol/-ul is genuinely productive in Friulian: cjastelul (little castle), furnul (little oven) follow exactly this pattern. A map label meaning "turret" or "small tower" placed directly adjacent to a drawn tower is, if the reading is correct, a nearly perfect crib.
- The word "oal" in the same ring is potentially significant as an encoding of Friulian val (valley) — one of the most common geographic terms in northern Italian place names (Val Camonica, Valpolicella, Val Gardena). The "o/v" correspondence requires an assumption about the sound assigned to that glyph, but it is not arbitrary: in some 15th-century northern Italian handwriting traditions, the letters "o" and "v" shared visual ambiguity.
- The word "sarald" resists simple grammatical analysis and may be a proper name — exactly the kind of place-name label a map would carry. The sequence "-ald" appears in Germanic-influenced northern Italian place names (Reinald, Gerwald, Serravalle compressed), and Friuli's long history under Germanic rule (Lombard, then Frankish, then Patriarchate of Aquileia) left Germanic elements throughout its toponymy.
THE "-AIIN" FAMILY: A VERB PARADIGM
One of the most statistically prominent features of Voynichese is the family of words sharing the ending "-aiin": daiin, aiin, saiin, otaiin, qokaiin, okaiin. These six forms together account for thousands of tokens. Under the Friulian hypothesis, this family represents a single verb ending — the 3rd person plural present tense "-an/-in" combined with various Friulian clitic prefixes and verb stems. - In a text recording oral Friulian medical and botanical knowledge, the construction "they take... they add... they boil... they gather..." would appear constantly. The formulaic register of folk medicine — highly repetitive, structurally invariant — naturally produces exactly the low-entropy, high-repetition statistical profile that has puzzled Voynich researchers for decades. The low entropy is not a cipher artifact. It is the statistical signature of formulaic spoken language.
- Medieval star catalogues, following the tradition of Al-Sufi's Book of Fixed Stars (transmitted to Europe through Latin translations in the 12th–13th centuries), named individual stars by their position on the constellation figure: "the eye of the bull" (Aldebaran), "the tail of the lion" (Denebola), "the foot of Orion" (Rigel). The Voynich star labels, under our reading, follow this same convention — each label encoding "al-[position on figure]" in a Friulian phonetic rendering of the Arabic astronomical tradition. The suffixes "-ar" (arm/wing), "-am" (hand), "-al" (another positional term) would then be the Friulian or Venetian equivalents of these positional descriptors.
The Entropy Problem — Resolved?- The most persistent objection to any natural-language hypothesis for the Voynich Manuscript is its anomalously low entropy. Voynichese is more predictable, more constrained, more repetitive than any known natural language written in a conventional orthography. This has led many researchers to suspect the text is either a cipher, a constructed language, or deliberate nonsense. The Friulian phonetic hypothesis offers a genuinely novel account of this anomaly — one that does not require any of those explanations.
- When a language is written phonetically for the first time, by a single inventor applying self-consistent rules, the result is orthographically more regular than naturally evolved writing systems, not less. There are no inherited irregular spellings from Latin roots. There are no learned Latinate forms intruding on vernacular words. There are no competing dialect spellings. The inventor hears a sound, assigns a glyph, and applies that rule every time. The resulting text has lower orthographic entropy than, say, medieval Latin or Italian, precisely because it lacks all the historical noise that those traditions accumulated.
- Furthermore, the content of the manuscript — if our hypothesis is correct — would itself be low-entropy by nature. Oral folk medicine recipes are formulaic in every language and culture. "Take the root... add water... boil for... apply to..." repeated with botanical variation across hundreds of pages would produce a text whose statistical profile is not that of a narrative or a letter, but of a formulaic instructional corpus. The low entropy is not an artifact of encoding. It is the signature of formulaic oral genre, faithfully transcribed.
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