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| Poliphonyc ciphers |
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Posted by: Juan_Sali - 19-05-2022, 12:35 PM - Forum: Voynich Talk
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I look for poliphonyc ciphers in the times of the VM, century up and down, with the following caracterictis:
Preferably in latin and/or spanish.
Polyphonic candidates: Q(U)-CA-G(U), L-I, S-X, V-B (V used as in Latin so B can be a V-U), ET-I (ampersand), ...
I would appreciate any other suggestion for polyphonics.
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| Words ain and dain |
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Posted by: Ruby Novacna - 09-05-2022, 12:06 PM - Forum: Analysis of the text
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The separate words ain and dain are not among the most frequent: less than a hundred for ain and two hundred for dain.
I propose to read them in Greek as ειν and τειν:
- ειν = εν - in;
- ειν - ου - where;
- ειν a (rare?) form of ειναι - inf. of ειμι - to be ;
- τειν - dative of singular pronoun συ - you, thou.
I don't know if statistics alone, without full or partial translation, can confirm or refute this reading.
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| Roman numerals and entropy |
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Posted by: Koen G - 05-05-2022, 10:06 AM - Forum: Analysis of the text
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Several people expressed their interest in the entropy behavior of Roman numerals. I decided to run a few preliminary tests to get a first basic idea of the numbers. These are just experiments, they do not represent any reality found in real manuscripts.
First I made a list of numbers from 1 - 3500 and placed them in a random order. Then I used Excel's ROMAN function to convert these to roman numerals. I made a second version of the roman numerals file where they use additive notation (XIIII instead of IX). Then I made versions of each of these where final letters are replaced with swooped versions (IIJ instead of III). This resulted in five files to test:
01: randomized list of numerals 1-3500
02: list (01) converted to Roman numerals
03: list (02) with additive notation
04: list (02) with swoops
05: list (03) with swoops
I compared the h1 and h2 numbers to those of some Voynichese sections and a normal text (Chaucer). The green dot in the square is a minimally modified EVA version. I drew some arrows from the "best performing" Roman numeral version to modified EVA to Chaucer, just to make the graph a bit easier to read.
As we see, a randomized list of Roman numerals has significantly lower h1 and h2 than Voynichese, as we probably could have expected. After all, Roman numerals only have seven characters, which can be increased to a dozen or so if some swooped versions are added. This lack of character variety explains why especially h1 is lower.
These numbers are pretty far off, but there may still be room for improvement. Apparently there were medieval practices that included additional symbols for some numbers, like O for XI. (See for example You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.). There is also mention of a system of lines or "brackets" to make numbers larger, for example | I | would be 100,000 or something like that. Or "( ( I ) )" is a way to write 10,000. If a bracket system is used to enlarge numbers, it might explain benched gallows. But testing this would require some more thought, time and planning than this initial experiment allowed.
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| Spaces and Entropy |
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Posted by: Koen G - 03-05-2022, 02:01 PM - Forum: Analysis of the text
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A couple of years ago, when I was playing around with entropy statistics, I also wanted to test the impact of spaces. I don't recall if I ever published these data, but I do remember mailing with Marco about it. We concluded that a good way to test spaces would be to remove the variable entirely. Remove all spaces from all texts tested to level the playing field.
Predicted outcome:
- H1: "space" is a frequent character, so removing it may increase h1.
- H2: I'd expect an increased h2 in all texts, because removing spaces will create novel bigrams where the endings and beginnings of words meet.
Results:
The big red cloud is the comparison corpus of medieval texts in various languages. Purple is the same corpus with spaces removed. As predicted, there is a general shift towards the top-right. The h2 of all texts increases by 3% (some Latin texts) to 16% (an English text). The median increase is 9%.
The green dots are various sections of the VM in EVA. Their h1 does not change much, but h2 does increase, as predicted. The increase for EVA texts is around 10%, close to the median. In other words, taking spaces out of the equation does not help EVA at all to catch up with other texts, since their h2 increases just as much (if not more).
Finally, the blue dot is a slightly modified Herbal A, which tries to mitigate EVA's most entropy-reducing characteristics. Benched gallows were unstacked, then benches replaced by novel glyphs. "Ain" and "aiin" were also replaced. Here, h1 does increase like in normal texts. Moreover, h2 goes up by 15%, which would be the biggest gain if it weren't for one English text.
Here is the same graph again, but only with texts that had their spaces removed:
Conclusion: accounting for some of the more obvious effects of EVA and eliminating spaces as a variable is not enough to fix Voynichese's entropy problem.
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| To what extent should the translation respect the grammar? |
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Posted by: Ruby Novacna - 03-05-2022, 01:18 PM - Forum: Analysis of the text
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One of the reasons why the various translations of Voynich were not accepted was that they did not respect the grammar of the proposed language.
This morning I am leafing through the manuscript, listening to a song by Vianney, whose refrain is :
If me to love you, me to hurt
if me to love you
when me to love you, me to hurt
when me to love you. (I hope my translation is close to the moose)
If this text is discovered in a few centuries by cryptologists, what will be their reaction, bad translation, coded message, misidentified language?
What might have been the manuscript author's demands on his grammar?
Are there any known manuscripts in which the grammar is not respected at all?
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| Scribe counting |
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Posted by: RobGea - 02-05-2022, 07:58 PM - Forum: Analysis of the text
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Here are the numbers and folios, i get from Lisa Fagin Davis' "How Many Glyphs and How Many Scribes?" paper.
If someone could check this data, that would be great. (see Note )
Summary
Scribe_1: 113 pages :: Herbal, Pharma, 57v(circular text),
Scribe_2: 046 pages :: Herbal, Balneo, rose dorse, [12 lines on f115r]
Scribe_3: 033 pages :: Herbal, Recipes, (bifolia 58/65 and 94/95)
Scribe_4: 027 pages :: Cosmo (circular foldouts and astrological diagrams), Rosette
Scribe_5: 007 pages :: Herbal (bifolia 41/48) , bifolia 57/66 [except for 57v])
Scribe_1:
Code: ['f1r', 'f1v', 'f2r', 'f2v', 'f3r', 'f3v', 'f4r', 'f4v', 'f5r', 'f5v', 'f6r', 'f6v', 'f7r', 'f7v', 'f8r', 'f8v', 'f9r', 'f9v', 'f10r', 'f10v', 'f11r', 'f11v', 'f13r', 'f13v', 'f14r', 'f14v', 'f15r', 'f15v', 'f16r', 'f16v', 'f17r', 'f17v', 'f18r', 'f18v', 'f19r', 'f19v', 'f20r', 'f20v', 'f21r', 'f21v', 'f22r', 'f22v', 'f23r', 'f23v', 'f24r', 'f24v', 'f25r', 'f25v', 'f27r', 'f27v', 'f28r', 'f28v', 'f29r', 'f29v', 'f30r', 'f30v', 'f32r', 'f32v', 'f35r', 'f35v', 'f36r', 'f36v', 'f37r', 'f37v', 'f38r', 'f38v', 'f42r', 'f42v', 'f44r', 'f44v', 'f45r', 'f45v', 'f47r', 'f47v', 'f49r', 'f49v', 'f51r', 'f51v', 'f52r', 'f52v', 'f53r', 'f53v', 'f54r', 'f54v', 'f56r', 'f56v', 'f57v', 'f87r', 'f87v', 'f88r', 'f88v', 'f89r1', 'f89r2', 'f89v2', 'f89v1', 'f90r1', 'f90r2', 'f90v2', 'f90v1', 'f93r', 'f93v', 'f96r', 'f96v', 'f99r', 'f99v', 'f100r', 'f100v', 'f101r', 'f101v', 'f102r1', 'f102r2', 'f102v2', 'f102v1']
Scribe_2:
Code: ['f26r', 'f26v', 'f31r', 'f31v', 'f33r', 'f33v', 'f34r', 'f34v', 'f39r', 'f39v', 'f40r', 'f40v', 'f43r', 'f43v', 'f46r', 'f46v', 'f50r', 'f50v', 'f55r', 'f55v', 'f75r', 'f75v', 'f76r', 'f76v', 'f77r', 'f77v', 'f78r', 'f78v', 'f79r', 'f79v', 'f80r', 'f80v', 'f81r', 'f81v', 'f82r', 'f82v', 'f83r', 'f83v', 'f84r', 'f84v', 'f85r1', 'f85r2', 'f86v4', 'f86v6', 'f86v5', 'f86v3']
Scribe_3:
Code: ['f58r', 'f58v', 'f65r', 'f65v', 'f94r', 'f94v', 'f95r1', 'f95r2', 'f95v2', 'f95v1', 'f103r', 'f103v', 'f104r', 'f104v', 'f105r', 'f105v', 'f106r', 'f106v', 'f107r', 'f107v', 'f108r', 'f108v', 'f111r', 'f111v', 'f112r', 'f112v', 'f113r', 'f113v', 'f114r', 'f114v', 'f115r', 'f115v', 'f116r']
Scribe_4:
Code: ['f67r1', 'f67r2', 'f67v2', 'f67v1', 'f68r1', 'f68r2', 'f68r3', 'f68v3', 'f68v2', 'f68v1', 'f69r', 'f69v', 'f70r1', 'f70r2', 'f70v2', 'f70v1', 'f71r', 'f71v', 'f72r1', 'f72r2', 'f72r3', 'f72v3', 'f72v2', 'f72v1', 'f73r', 'f73v', 'fRos']
Scribe_5:
Code: ['f41r', 'f41v', 'f48r', 'f48v', 'f57r', 'f66r', 'f66v']
Note:
A possible cause for confusion is the pharma folios viz:
f101r and You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
f101v1- foldout sometimes classed as 2 folios, sometimes just one You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. ie TT-ivtff-0a
Here i have ['f101r', 'f101v' ] and not counted 'f101r2' --Is that an error or not...discuss 
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| Cardan grille or substitution cipher |
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Posted by: Ruby Novacna - 01-05-2022, 03:05 PM - Forum: Analysis of the text
- Replies (10)
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I have just reread Rene's article about the Cardan grille applied to the manuscript and I have a question: is substitution cipher contrary to the idea of the grille or rather complementary?
Is it necessary to decipher the text first, with good grammar or not, and then apply a grid to discover a particular message?
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