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+--- Thread: The 'Chinese' Theory: For and Against (/thread-4746.html)
RE: The 'Chinese' Theory: For and Against - Rafal - 12-02-2026
Quote:Is there a guaranteed daiin near the beginning of each paragraph?
No
That's how Quire20 looks on Voynichese.com
There are pages where it appears a lot and pages where it doesn't appear at all.
Sometimes it appears quite a lot as the first word in the line but it's not close to the paragraph beginning but in different lines. And it looks a bit like Voynich infamous vertical patterns which appear everywhere.
RE: The 'Chinese' Theory: For and Against - Rafal - 12-02-2026
Quote:And you, Rafal, of all people here, should understand these points better. How did you discover the meaning of all those symbols in the Rohonc codex? Did you categorically determine the translation of all of them? Can you describe the language's grammar?
I could talk forever about Rohonc Codex
and describe its grammar but will it help us here ?I actually did the same thing as you here - assumed that some text in unknown script matches another text known in plaintext. In my case the plaintext was the Bible. And it worked for me, just like it worked to Lev Kiraly And Gabor Tokai before me. It wasn't and exact translation but rather a story retelling. I hope one day it will be accepted.
The funny thing is that even if I am able to somehow understand the Rohonc text, I am still not 100% sure about the language because Rohonc words most probably aren't phonetic just like Chinese signs. And I am 100% unable to read them alound.
Maybe you could try something similar? Assign the meaning to Voynich words from the context before recognizing the language and pronounciacion? Check if it works for you with more words, not just "use".
RE: The 'Chinese' Theory: For and Against - nablator - 12-02-2026
(12-02-2026, 05:33 PM)Rafal Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Sometimes it appears quite a lot as the first word in the line but it's not close to the paragraph beginning but in different lines.
There are 5 "<%>=daiin" in starps-fu.ivt. You can ignore the rest because errors or something.
RE: The 'Chinese' Theory: For and Against - JoJo_Jost - 12-02-2026
Perhaps that easy test could help to clarify the dispute a little bit more.
I understand why the two longest texts were chosen if one does not know exactly which texts belong together. We now know that there is an interesting correspondence here.
Couldn't one then also take the two shortest ones? Or the shortest one that still contains 3 (or 4) daiin/zhu. And examine them according to the same rules? Or is that nonsense?
RE: The 'Chinese' Theory: For and Against - Jorge_Stolfi - 12-02-2026
(12-02-2026, 06:01 PM)nablator Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.There are 5 "<%>=daiin" in starps-fu.ivt. You can ignore the rest because errors or something.
As I wrote in the paper, there are several places in the SPS where it looks like two or more parags were joined by the Scribe in one parag, with two or more stars in the margin but no obvious break. In particular, there are large blocks like that on You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. (with estimated 3+11 parags, based on the number of stars) and You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. (6+4 parags) . (Curiously those are two facing pages of the bifolio currently at the center of the quire, but the missing bifolio should have been between them.)
In the transcription, the parag boundaries within those blocks had to be guessed based on secondary clues like the spacing and parallelism of the baselines. You will find all those cases listed and discussed in You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.. At the time I still had not discovered that daiin probably meant use, so sometimes I (and previous transcribers) guessed a parag break just before a line that stared with daiin. But anyway the correct breaks must be in the middle the lines, so they will only be determined by comparison with the SBJ.
If you care, You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. is a transcription with all those dubious line blocks excluded. It has no parags beginning with daiin. (And You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. is the script that removes the bad blocks.)
All the best, --stolfi
RE: The 'Chinese' Theory: For and Against - Jorge_Stolfi - 12-02-2026
(12-02-2026, 06:09 PM)JoJo_Jost Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Perhaps that easy test could help to clarify the dispute a little bit more. Or is that nonsense?
Not at all! I am working on it, please stay tuned...
Quote:Couldn't one then also take the two shortest ones?
That's easier. The shortest entry in the SBJ is recipe b3.4.093 (8 chars) in my files "bencao-fu.utf" and "bencao-fu.pys".
The shortest parag in the SPS is f112v.35 (one half-line, 6 words). It is a dubious case since it has no star nearby and the previous line is almost full-width. But it starts with a puff (p/f gallows). (I suspect that the Scribe wrote the text first, then drew the stars where he saw short lines. But, on this page at least, he missed the parag breaks when the tail line was nearly full-width. Twice -- on line 25 too.)
The next shortest parag would be f111v.1-1 (10 words); but it is part of the big block of You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. where the parag breaks had to be just guessed, so we don't know its actual size.
Here are they:
<b3.4.093> 鼯鼠：主堕胎，令易产。
<b3.4.093> wú shǔ zhǔ duò tāi, lìng yì chǎn.
<b3.4.093> Flying squirrel: It is associated with miscarriage and makes childbirth easier.
<112v.35> pChed.Shedain.qokaiin.okar.Chedy.CheCKhy
The 主 zhǔ here is a word by itself, meaning "mainly". It is not part of the compounds主治 "main use" that comprises 6 of the 7 occurrences of 主 in the big example of the paper.
The next two characters 堕胎 duò tāi mean "abortion".
The character 令 lìng means "make".
The character 易 yì means "easy".
The character 产 chǎn means "birth".
These translations are from Google Translate and have various alternatives. But I suppose that a more literal translation would be "Flying squirrel: mainly [for] abortion, facilitates childbirth."
In Cantonese 主堕胎 would be read as "zyu2 do6 toi1".
The translation to Vietnamese would be "người chủ ra lệnh phá thai". But the translation of that to English gives "the Master ordered an abortion". Erm...
That SPS entry is shorter than the Chinese entry by 2 words. There is no daiin, but there is a dain and a kaiin at roughly the right place. But maybe the "mainly" was skipped and the entry says just "Flying squirrel: abortion, make childbrith easier". Or "Flying squirrel: cause abortion, facilitate childbrith". Or something like that...
One day we will know...
All the best, --stolfi
RE: "IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT" revealed at last - Battler - 13-02-2026
(10-02-2026, 07:45 PM)eggyk Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.(10-02-2026, 06:45 PM)Jorge_Stolfi Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.As you will see there, daiin (the most common word in the SPS) corresponds quite closely to the Chinese character 主 zhǔ (the most common character in the SBJ). Strictly speaking that character has the general sense of "main" or "mainly", but seems to occur almost always in the compound 主治 zhǔ zhì which can be translated as "indications:", or "the main uses are" or "is mainly used for". The SBJ is a list of ~360 drugs and their uses; 主治 is a "key" in the rather uniform formula of the SBJ entries, that introduces the list of diseases.
Really interesting Jorge.
Out of interest, are there any other sections/recipes that match daiin as well as that one?
And do you have any suspicions for how the VMS text would have been created if this was the case? I can imagine a european attempting to transcribe chinese characters in a way that made sense to them, like something like below. (I do like how the 3 lines somewhat match..)
You may actually be on to something! This is, in fact, exactly how I would expect a European who does not know Chinese, to transcribe a Chinese text, not realizing it is supposed to be read vertically from top to bottom, right to left. He would likely rotate it so that the text flows left to right and then attempt to copy the characters. Someone should rotate the Voynich manuscript so that the text flows vertically and see if it begins to make more sense.
RE: The 'Chinese' Theory: For and Against - dashstofsk - 13-02-2026
(12-02-2026, 04:29 PM)Jorge_Stolfi Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Paragraph f105v.32-38 was not cherry-picked: it is the longest parag in the SPS.
You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. might have the longest paragraph, but you did pick the page in quire 20 with the oddest language. You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. shows that this page is poorly correlated with all other pages in quire 20. This seems to be because it has the lowest frequency of
( q20 S words )
( q20 q prefix )
( q20 aiin suffix )
( q20 ain suffix )
As far as I can see your analysis is based on the fact that the longest paragraph is high in aiin words, and that these words in this paragraph are a positional match for the 'zhu' words in the Rooster text. And you are asking us to believe that this is statistically significant?
It seems to me rather that the match with 'zhu' is only there because of the oddity of f105v, and that it is just a coincidence that You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. has both the longest paragraph and also the highest frequency of aiin.
RE: The 'Chinese' Theory: For and Against - Jorge_Stolfi - 13-02-2026
(13-02-2026, 01:29 AM)dashstofsk Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.f105v might have the longest paragraph, but you did pick the page in quire 20 with the oddest language.
Interesting analysis. But the SBJ is organized into three sections according to the "grade" (potency/toxicity) of the remedies, and each section is divided into six subsections according to the source of the drug: minerals, herbs, trees, animals, fruits, and grains.
The herbs subsections are the largest, but that longest recipe ("rooster") is smack in the middle of the "high grade/animals" subsection, which is only 15 recipes long. The longest parag of the SPS ("poar keeo") is at the bottom of page f105v, which has 10 parags (counting by the stars and by short lines).
While the SPS bifolios may have been scrambled and folded in the wrong order, the recipes within each page are probably consecutive recipes in the SBJ. If so, page You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. must be basically the first half of the "high grade/animals" subsection. That could explain why it is somewhat different from the other pages.
It would be interesting to apply to the SBJ the same analysis you did on the SPS. Say, by splitting each subsection into 10- or 15-recipe blocks, computing the frequency of 主 and other common characters in each block, building the similarity matrix for those blocks, etc.
Quote:As far as I can see your analysis is based on the fact that the longest paragraph is high in aiin words
Not any aiin words. Of the seven occurrences of 主, five match the five occurrences of the word daiin (2) or words ending in daiin (3). The other two match an occurrence of dair and one of laiin, both as whole words. There is one extra occurrence of dair that does not match a 主. Those are the only aiin words I considered.
And it is not just the number of daiins. It is the fact that the positions of those seven words in that SPS parag match very closely the positions of the seven 主s in the "rooster" recipe -- apart from the fixed shift, that can be explained as the omission of the "taste and warmth" field of the SBJ recipe.
Quote:And you are asking us to believe that this is statistically significant?
Yes, because it definitely is.
Quote:It seems to me rather that the match with 'zhu' is only there because of the oddity of f105v, and that it is just a coincidence that You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. has both the longest paragraph and also the highest frequency of aiin words
So you are saying that it is only a meaningless coincidence that the "rooster" recipe matched 105v.32, because that after all is the only page that happens to contain a parag that happens to match the "rooster" recipe.
It is like saying that it is just a meaningless coincidence that the cage labeled "lion" at the zoo has a lion in it, because previous analysis had already identified the cage labeled "lion" as the one that had the highest number of big cats with manes in it.
All the best, --stolfi
RE: The 'Chinese' Theory: For and Against - ReneZ - 13-02-2026
From my point of view, the reasonable match of the paragraph lengths histogram, and the pattern of the most frequent word in one paragraph are intriguing.
What might be interesting to check is whether a re-ordering of pages or bifolios is possible such that the pattern of consecutive paragraph lengths shows some correlation. But perhaps this was already attempted?