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| [ey] and [dy] Feature Patterns |
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Posted by: Emma May Smith - 06-08-2024, 06:16 PM - Forum: Analysis of the text
- Replies (12)
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One of the questions from my talk on Voynich Manuscript Day was about the differences between words ending [ey] and [dy], and the word immediately following them. I thought I would provide some more statistics and thoughts around this, and also ask for the opinions of others. (There were other questions too from my talk, but I'm so sorry, I didn't have chance to record them. I'm happy to look into anything people want me to follow up.)
All the scores below are for a given feature (glyph or biglyph) occurring in the word immediately following a word ending [ey] or [edy]. They are expressed as z-scores, but I'll set the "interesting" threshold to +/- 2, which has a 95% probability. So most are likely to be valid/worth considering seriously. The data is all Language B, with feature 1 needing to occur at least 100 hundred times in the text, and feature 2 needing to occur at least 200 times in the distribution +/- 8 around feature 1. (These are the same for the data I presented.)
(I've changed [dy] to [edy] to more clearly identify [dy] as a potential suffix. I believe (though it's not important to these patterns) that [ey] + [dy] = [edy]. Hence we're actually looking at the difference caused by the addition of this suffix. Of course, what "suffix" even means here is anybody's guess.)
The scores all show an instance where one pattern is at > +/- 2 and the other is different in some way. I'll try to provide some thoughts, but would welcome others.
End--Start
('ey.', '.d') 0.4
('ey.', '.da') 1.6
('edy.', '.d') -2.9
('edy.', '.da') -2.3
Words ending [edy] are less likely to be following by words starting [d]. Note that if [a] = [y] then part of this might be avoiding [dy.dy] across a space. (Though see below about words ending [dy].)
('ey.', '.k') 2.6
('ey.', '.ka') 3.2
('ey.', '.ke') 0.7
('ey.', '.te') 2.9
('edy.', '.k') -2.6
('edy.', '.ka') -2.8
('edy.', '.ke') -2.4
('edy.', '.te') 0.3
The contrast before words beginning [k] was mentioned in the talk. It's interesting that [te] has the same kind of bias, but not so extreme.
('ey.', '.l') 3.3
('ey.', '.lk') 3.2
('ey.', '.lo') 2.3
('ey.', '.lsh') 2.5
('edy.', '.l') 1.9
('edy.', '.lk') 0.9
('edy.', '.lo') 0.0
('edy.', '.lsh') 0.8
Words beginning [l] are more common after [ey], though after [edy] they're not less common than average, just not so strongly positive.
('ey.', '.ot') -2.1
('edy.', '.ot') 1.4
The pattern is reversed before words beginning [ot]. (Though other words beginning [o] show no difference, so maybe this is just noise?)
('ey.', '.r') 3.0
('ey.', '.ra') 3.2
('edy.', '.r') 1.4
('edy.', '.ra') 0.4
Much stronger preference for [ey] before [r] than for [edy]. But not sure what to make of this.
End--End
('ey.', 'edy.') -2.1
('ey.', 'ey.') 2.2
('edy.', 'edy.') 2.1
('edy.', 'ey.') 0.0
We can see the contrast between [ey] and [edy] before others words ending [edy]. It may be that words ending [edy] cluster, but I'm not sure that would account for after [ey]. Likewise, there's a similar (but less strong) contrast for words ending [ey].
('ey.', 'in.') 2.8
('ey.', 'ain.') 2.5
('ey.', 'iin.') 2.3
('edy.', 'in.') -0.7
('edy.', 'ain.') 0.5
('edy.', 'iin.') -1.1
All kinds of words ending with combination of [i] and [n] prefer after [ey] than [edy].
('ey.', 'o.') -0.2
('edy.', 'o.') -2.3
A smaller contrast with words ending [o].
Thoughts?
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| Solutions |
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Posted by: tavie - 06-08-2024, 01:07 PM - Forum: Curated threads
- No Replies
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Here is a master list of all purported decipherments or readings or language claims for Voynichese that have been discussed on the forum since its start in 2016.
This will be updated every time a new solution or claim is posted to the forum. If you spot any that aren't on the list, please PM me. If you want solutions currently posted outside the forum to be added, please create a new thread for discussion on this forum.
Current total as of 08-09-2025: 65 plus 8 unidentified/unclear theories
- Aramaic (?) by Lorek and Lorek. You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view..
- Arabic (with Hebrew and Syriac) by Mike P. You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view..
- Arabic by Fletcher C. You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view..
- Basque by Gavin G. You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view..
- Castellan by Alisa G. You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
- "Cisalpine Celtic" with Lepontic Syntax" (?! or Medieval Irish?) by Doireann. You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view..
- Czech by Irena H. You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
- Czech by Elena K. You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
- Czech (Moravian & ?) by Bess A. You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view..
- English (Middle) by Geoffrey C. You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
- English (Middle) by Stellar. You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
- English (Middle/plant names) by Siv. You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
- English (numerical) by Mike. You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
- English (Middle/Galwegian) by Katie T. You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
- English (with lots of other languages) by Michael. You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view..
- Finno-Ugric (with Estonian) by Claudette C. You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view..
- French by K. Danielle S. You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view..
- Germanic (Unknown language, including possibly "Norse") by Eleonora M.You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view..
- Greek by Ruby N. You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
- Hebrew by Monika Y. You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
- Hebrew by Hannig. You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
- Hebrew (phonetic) by Stephen W-B. You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
- Hebrew by Rebekah. You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
- Irish by Petrasti. You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view..
- Italian (?) by Karen O. You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
- Italian (Northern dialect) by Jamie Y. and AI. You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view..
- Italian (Shorthand) by Gino C. and Agnese F. You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view..
- Judaeo Greek by Geoffrey C. You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view..
- Landa Khojki script by Sukhwant S. You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
- Latin by Julia M. You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
- Latin (vowelless) by Farmer John. You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view..
- Latin (abbreviated) by Nicholas G. You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
- Latin (abbreviated) by Helmut W. You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
- Latin (phonetic/modified) by MarkWart et al. You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
- Latin (abbreviated) by Maria Rita L. You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
- Latin by Patrick L. You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
- Latin by Paul. You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
- Latin by Rustandi. You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
- Latin by Stellar. You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. and a You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view..
- Latin (Vulgar) by Tim K et al. You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
- Latin by Michael H. You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. and a You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view..
- Latin by Sygula and Kaluzna. You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
- Latin (microscopic?) by Wolfgang99. You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
- Latin (abbreviated) by Ianus van A. You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view..
- Latin by Jessica L. S. You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
- Latin by amilppc and AI. You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
- Logographic/visual code by Kris. Forum discussion You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
- Mayan by Ahmet Baris K. You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
- Medieval conlang by Luis C. You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. and a You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view..
- Mesoamerican by J. and T. You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
- Morse Code by Stellar. You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
- Musical chant by InkandGrace. You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
- Nahuatl by Jacinto G. You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
- Pahlavi script by J. Michael H. You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. and a You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view..
- Persian by Pardis M. You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
- Polish (Old) by Geoffrey C. You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
- "Proto Romance" by Cheshire. You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. and a You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. and a You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. and a You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
- "Senzar" by Andy123 et al. You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
- Slovak by Luis C. You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
- Slovenian by Cvetka. You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
- Turkic (+Aramaic/Persian) by escape. You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view..
- Turkic by Ahmet et al. You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
- Turkic by Vfind. You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
- Welsh (Early) by Tim A. You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
- Welsh by Stellar. You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
Unidentified/unclear language theories:- You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.. Suspected Jewish-Arabic
- You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.. Suspected conlang
- You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view..
- You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.. Partial decipherment - Arabic?
- You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.. "Ancient language"
- You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.. Will not say system yet.
- You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.". Post does not say system yet.
- You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.. Extinct unknown language/ "ancient outsiders"
Nick Pelling also You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. a list of older theories in 2012 (including authorship) but this is not maintained.
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| Brian Roemmele, AI and Rupescissa question |
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Posted by: Barbrey - 06-08-2024, 09:28 AM - Forum: News
- Replies (20)
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I wasn’t sure what category to put this in. I just happened upon an X posting by a Brian Roemmele (AI expert) from March that says he has detracted the Latin from the last page. It says, “the wine multiplies in the bowl”. The phrase is the same as one from John Rupescissa. He says the AI has since located other indications of Rupescissa, and so he’s building an AI around the Voynich and Rupescissa to decipher more. That’s about it. No mention of what his parameters were. To see more, I had to subscribe to this account, so I did but there’s been no news since March.
The thing is, my analysis of the images turned up Rupescissa at every turn. Koen and b1Mw (sp?) can confirm. That’s why I subscribed, but I don’t want to pay the big bucks of $7 a month if this is some kind of a scam!
Does anyone know anything about this???
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| VMS Day 2024: Nymphs Suite |
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Posted by: Lissu - 04-08-2024, 03:49 PM - Forum: Fiction, Comics, Films & Videos, Games & other Media
- Replies (6)
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Hi everyone and happy Voynich Day!
Here's a link to my music piece:
You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
The suite has three parts:
Part 1: Centaurea
Part 2: Nymphs
Part 3: Moon
I had so much fun with this project! The atmosphere is quite calm and I got inspired by the various sections and illustrations of the manuscript.
I used Sibelius and FL Studio as tools. I really hope you enjoy this and feel free to check out my other songs if you want to. My main genre is electronic but I've composed stuff for live bands too.
Thanks once again for an amazing sunday afternoon!
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| VMS Day 2024: Converting the Voynich MS text to music |
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Posted by: ReneZ - 03-08-2024, 11:14 AM - Forum: Fiction, Comics, Films & Videos, Games & other Media
- Replies (3)
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VMS Day 2024: Converting the Voynich MS text to music
(If there is going to be a dedicated group for this event, this thread may of course be moved there).
Writing on the eve of VMS Day 2024...
As announced, I developed a method to convert the Voynich MS text to music.
This method takes into account numerous known properties of the MS text in order to produce a result that can be listened to without too much discomfort.
I have used this to create one piece of music per page of the MS, for a representative group of pages, and the links to the music will be available from 4 August onward, via this link:
You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
From 13:30 to 14:00 CEST I will give a short presentation how this music has been generated.
For those who cannot attend, or wish to know more in advance, there is also a paper about this. This does not include some of the basic music theory that will be part of the on-line presentation, and goes into some other details.
It can be found at my academia page, but also simply via You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view..
This may appear in your browser, but in order for the hypertext links to work, one has to download the pdf file first, and read that copy.
The above link to the music files will be activated at the start of the event.
I will add a short note here at that time.
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| How Different is Each Topic Each Other - Term Frequency Across Topic |
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Posted by: A.Wilmarth - 30-07-2024, 03:45 AM - Forum: Analysis of the text
- Replies (6)
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I haven't seen much on this forum discussing term frequency across topics. Some examples I did find were the "interesting Vwords" series by -JKP-, You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view., and obviously Topic Modeling in the Voynich Manuscript by Sterneck et al.
This could very well be because the results are already common knowledge or because the data is functionally meaningless, but either way at the very least I hope posting this will save someone the potentially wasted effort of doing it themselves.
While the VMS has intrigued me for some time my background is in GIS/cartography, so while data science may be familiar to me, applying them to text and language is not. My amateurish-ness will be very apparent. I apologize in advance. If you have a moment to spare some criticism for my process or for misusing a term, it would be appreciated. While I am naturally inclined to just play with my data and not to post anything, making mistakes and being called out on them the fastest way I know to learn.
My goal was to quantify how difference each topic is from each other, and to build profiles for each 'vord' which could shed light on its potential meanings. For example if a term is used at a much higher frequency in herbal than astrological, we could presume the vord's meaning is more relevant to herbal than astrological. Terms which appears at similar frequency in 2 topics but not in the other 3 might indicate a different meaning than if that vord was equal across all topics, or only highly frequent in one, and so on.
Process
I tried to follow some the same initially methodology as Sterneck et al. I also used the Takahashi EVA transcription as corrected by Zandbergen and Stolti, and sectioned the VMS into 5 topics: 1. herbal, 2. astrological, 3 balneological, 4 pharmaceutical, and 5. starred. Each topic was then considered a separate document.
Where I differed was I assumed full text pages go with the closest illustrations and didn't analyze anything by hand or scribe. These are places where I could improve if this has any value. Additionally, as I was not looking to measure importance, I used a simple term frequency percent. Code: tf = raw count/ total terms in document * 100
Each term's frequency was calculated for per topic and then each topic's frequency was subtracted from each other to get the absolute difference. Afterwards, for visualization purposes, the results were z score normalized; frequency across topic, and differences across all differences within that topics. Differences were then totaled in order to give an overall idea of how "different" each topic is. This process was repeated with a 2 frequency cut-off just to see what impact of unique terms had on the metrics, if any.
RESULTS
Topic Totals
Topic profiles top 40 terms.
Spreadsheet of all terms included as attachment.
TOPIC_FREQUENCY.xlsx (Size: 1.25 MB / Downloads: 20)
Observations
Differences
Assuming contents were indeed related to the illustrations, I had gone into this process expecting herbal to be least like astrological and most like pharmaceutical. While pharmaceutical does to have less difference when compared to herbal I wouldn't say there is strong evidence this is because the content is similar, as herbal seems to be fairly to be similar to nearly all the other topics. This included astrological which surprised me.
I was also not expecting balneological to be so different from everything else, excepting the starred topics. These two were quite similar. Like herbal the starred 'recipes' were similar to all the other topics, but curiously not pharmaceutical. I wonder if there is any evidence here that the starred section originally followed balneological.
For the most part, filtering unique words did not change the overall patterning, just exaggerated it. The one exception is removing the unique words makes astrological appear more similar to pharmaceutical. To me this speaks to the text actually reflecting differing topics rather than gibberish as I would have expected removing unique words would universally make the text more similar.
Observations - Term Patterns
While it might be interesting to look at individual vords, I think in order to save this being a huge block of text I will illustrate some of the potential uses.
As an example here is 3 comparisons. The first two are similar in structure, but by looking at their raw frequencies/histograms alone we might not be able to tell much from them. However by creating a topic frequency profiles we may be able to learn a bit more from these. For instance both cheol and sheol as well as cheey and sheey have a fairly similar profile, where as comparing daiin and ol, these two vord have much different profiles. Could this indicate that that C and S are prefixes which alter the meaning but not significantly? As an analogy, consider the purpose vs re-purpose; both words have similar structure, a related meaning, but one would still be used more often in certain discussions. Of course I don't know, but it may be a different way to look at terms.
"Reading" the VMS
With some effort it may be possible to possible to "read" passages of the VMS by looking at term topic profiles. What I present here is more a proof of concept than anything else. If any of this has any value this process could be improved by better understanding and better parsing of the profiles, as well as potentially by classifying differences from std into high median and low categories.
<f106r.7,+P0> olched.qoiin.ychedy.qokam.sheol.qokor.cheees<$>
This becomes:
vord weighted towards balneological | vord unique to starred | vord weighted towards astrological and away from pharmaceutical | vord weighted away from pharmaceutical | vord weighted towards pharmaceutical and away from herbal | vord weighted against astrological | unique starred word
It might be then possible to assign potential words to these weights based on building profiles for known works that cover similar topics (assuming the contents are even related to the illustrations). So that a program could pick words based on a similarly matching topic difference/frequency profiles. For instance the above could become:
water. stirred. night. running. inside. dirt. abracadabra.
Obviously, I'm pulling these words from thin air to illustrate the concept and I doubt word tables could be built for balenological or starred sections, but maybe for herbal, pharmaceutical, and astrological. It's a stretch for sure.
Improvements?
Assuming any of this has value, I have written some questions I have been asking myself.
Is it important to differentiate by hand or scribe? Should all-text pages be separated into their own category or removed entirely?
Should I build and test a control?
Can I use this to build similar profiles for character n-grams to shed light on if spaces are legit. For example if ok and aiin have the same profile, it might indicate they are part of the same term (okaiin), but if they differ greatly it might indicate they are separate words.
Can I use to word bi-grams and tri-grams to shed more light on their meanings? For example how often does daiin ol show up in herbal vs balneological?
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| Voynich Manuscript Day 2024 Schedule |
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Posted by: Koen G - 22-07-2024, 11:34 AM - Forum: News
- Replies (30)
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Here is the final and definitive schedule for #VMD24!
All times are in CEST. I will be hosting a continuous zoom meeting which can be joined freely. I will upload the whole thing to YouTube afterwards, but of course it would be great if you are able to be part of the live audience. This will also give you the opportunity to ask questions to presenters.
Voynich Manuscript Day 2024
Sunday August 4, 2024
12:00-17:00 CEST
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12:00-12:40 - tavie
Reducing the noise: identifying constraining patterns in Voynichese
12:40-13:15 - Koen Gheuens
Too blue?
13:30-14:00 - Rene Zandbergen (music presentation)
14:00-14:30 - Patrick Feaster
The Qokeedy and Choldaiin Loops
14:30-15:00 - Koen Gheuens
State of the Voynich 2024
15:00-15:45 - Keagan Brewer
Overview of "The Voynich Manuscript, Dr Johannes Hartlieb and the Encipherment of Women’s Secrets", Social History of Medicine, Oxford Press, March 22, 2024.
16:00-16:30 - Michelle Lewis
A New Source of Comparative Illustration for the Voynich Manuscript - Church Tapestries
16:30-17:00 - Emma May Smith
Feature Patterns in the Voynich Manuscript
With a Voynich-inspired musical composition by Lissu Hänninen and Voynich art by Cary Rapaport.
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![[Image: 33aa.png]](https://i.ibb.co/1b9sQnf/33aa.png)
Old French Letter ![[Image: 1.png]](https://i.ibb.co/jJTMJt3/1.png)
Voynich letter
