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+----- Thread: No other document written in Voynichese script has been found up to date (/thread-972.html)
RE: The VMS glyphs have not been found in their entirety in any other document - Emma May Smith - 26-10-2016
I think it should be a simple, "the Voynich script is not found in any other document."
The way which it is currently phrased suggests that we have, positively, found some of the characters in some documents. We have no idea if this is true as perceived similarities in shape may be misleading.
Remember that the script is a whole system. If we haven't found it all (or a substantial portion acting in the same way) elsewhere, then we simply haven't found it.
RE: The VMS glyphs have not been found in their entirety in any other document - Koen G - 26-10-2016
I'd agree with that as well, but why "is not found" instead of "has not been found"? Technically we don't know whether or not it exists in any other document. Alternatively you could change it to "any other known document".
RE: The VMS glyphs have not been found in their entirety in any other document - Anton - 26-10-2016
Maybe: "no other document written in Voynichese script has been found up to date"?
RE: The VMS glyphs have not been found in their entirety in any other document - ThomasCoon - 26-10-2016
(26-10-2016, 06:43 PM)Emma May Smith Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.The way which it is currently phrased suggests that we have, positively, found some of the characters in some documents. We have no idea if this is true as perceived similarities in shape may be misleading.
Maybe we should scrap my version and use Anton's then: "no other document written in Voynichese script has been found up to date" ?
RE: The VMS glyphs have not been found in their entirety in any other document - Koen G - 26-10-2016
That's the best one so far, elegant and takes all considerations into account.
RE: The VMS script has not been found in its entirety in any other document - -JKP- - 26-10-2016
(26-10-2016, 11:05 AM)Diane Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I agree "has not been found" is fair. I wonder if anyone has ever tried to do a comprehensive survey of known scripts.
Perhaps someone on the old mailing list did - but I've seen no mention of it.
I expect Stolfi looked at some Asian scripts, and recently Thomas Spande introduced the question of Armenian script and language. The Friedmans invited a couple of Egyptologists, I gather. I've mentioned Sabaic minuscule and Greco-Bactrian..
It would be an interesting research project. And in this, I keep thinking of a manuscript which was mentioned by Okasha el Daly. It is said to have a large number of scripts recorded in it, each with their equivalent sound in Arabic. It is said to be in the Topkapi serai, so if anyone feels like visiting during their hols...
I've looked at at least 300 alphabets, probably more (I lost count years ago), and at least 300 cipher systems that use oddball shapes.
I learned a small amount of Korean, Chinese, and Japanese some years ago, enough to be able to read simple phrases, so Asian scripts were already familiar to me, so I also checked out the east Asian and Malaysian and Indian scripts (dozens of them). I was already familiar with Cyrillic, Runic, and some of the ancient Mediterranean alphabets before I encountered the VMS so I checked those, as well. I'm an avid book collector and a few of my books are from the east, including a couple that are centuries-old from Tibet.
Many alphabets have VMS-similar glyphs, including Armenian (the P shapes), Syrian, Nabatean (the gallows characters), Arabic (the 9 characters) and many others if you pick through the shapes piecemeal.
But, you really don't have to look beyond Greek and Latin to find almost all of them. Almost the entire VMS glyph set exists within Latin and Greek letters, abbreviations, and numbers—there really isn't much missing. The main reason people don't recognize the shapes is because they are not familiar with 13th-to15th-century Latin and Greek and are not familiar with the abbreviations. Even the one-loop gallows shape is found in Latin and the line-across-the-gallows shape is found in Greek (I haven't mentioned this before because I was going to blog about it). Only a couple of the rare dotted letters are not found in Latin or Greek, but you can find one of those rare dotted glyphs in old Hebrew texts as an abbreviation.
On the cipher side of things...
Some of the old Arabic texts document hundreds of simple transposition systems, but what's interesting about them is that they drew page after page of original un-Arabic-like shapes to create the codes, and I've been able to find almost every VMS glyph in a single volume but... not together, not in any cohesive or deliberate way, and not the most ornate of the gallows characters because SOME of the gallows shapes in the VMS appear to have been embellished, as in illuminated texts, rather than intended as separate entities.
As for the cipher shapes, one thing you learn when going through these texts is that certain shapes just naturally come about when you start drawing every letter-like shape you can think of to create a new set of glyphs for a code, and straight lines with loops attached is one of the more common combinations.
RE: The VMS glyphs have not been found in their entirety in any other document - VViews - 26-10-2016
"no other document written in Voynichese script has been found up to date" ?
I'd agree with that one.
Also I know I'm going off topic here, but in response to the above, if we did find a single manuscript, pre-1400's, which was a collection of scripts like JKP and Diane suggest, in which all Voynich glyphs were found, but across several scripts... I think that would be highly interesting.
The Voynich script didn't happen out of thin air. The Voynich author may have owned such a book which offered him a collection of scripts from which to cherry-pick glyphs to create his Voynichese.
RE: No other document written in Voynichese script has been found up to date - ThomasCoon - 26-10-2016
Interesting, -JKP-, I was not aware of the gallows characters in Latin texts...
Anyway I updated the Statement as Anton suggested.
RE: The VMS glyphs have not been found in their entirety in any other document - Emma May Smith - 26-10-2016
(26-10-2016, 10:30 PM)VViews Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view."no other document written in Voynichese script has been found up to date" ?
I'd agree with that one.
Also I know I'm going off topic here, but in response to the above, if we did find a single manuscript, pre-1400's, which was a collection of scripts like JKP and Diane suggest, in which all Voynich glyphs were found, but across several scripts... I think that would be highly interesting.
The Voynich script didn't happen out of thin air. The Voynich author may have owned such a book which offered him a collection of scripts from which to cherry-pick glyphs to create his Voynichese.
I can quite imagine this being true. It's is something that we should be clear on though. The shapes may occur elsewhere in whole or part, but there's no evidence that the script as a whole does. Maybe once the script is deciphered the origin of the letter shapes will become apparent, but I'm doubtful that we will successfully identify the shapes' origins before that.
RE: No other document written in Voynichese script has been found up to date - Anton - 26-10-2016
And btw I think in terms of prefix this could be moved from "text" to "generic".