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RE: medieval Old Polish spelling - low entropy? - swigut - 03-01-2021
"VCI: <Pdzo rzcal #Pical cal #Pic# Mz cal terzw cicas izál#>
<#pw iz rzc#pdz# mic# brz jér al égo w alas astá(s)>
becomes:
pizdą rzucał, pizgał cal pięć, mąż cał trzeźwy chcicą-s jeżdżał
po zrzucił pizdę miecz, bryż dzierżał jego wała-s astą-s"
As a native speaker of the language in question I must salute your creativity but alas the deciphered text makes really no sense and your transformation from Voynichese to Polish is quite liberal and inconsistent I think.
BTW, to me nothing in this manuscript indicates any connection to Western or Eastern Slavic culture. Not the plants, not the ladies, not the tubes etc. Of course it could be some lost knowledge, but keep in mind that people in this region still keep rituals going to pre-christian times (going 1000 years back at least).
RE: medieval Old Polish spelling - low entropy? - Gab19 - 09-03-2021
(16-10-2020, 05:02 AM)geoffreycaveney Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I can now present my reading and interpretation of the entire last paragraph (last five lines) of folio page You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. 1 of the Voynich manuscript.
CAUTION: Readers should be advised in advance that my reading of the first three lines of this paragraph has revealed that this is a rather bawdy medieval Silesian / Old Polish verse (Silesian is a southern dialect of Polish along the Czech border). It contains the obscene language and vocabulary that one would expect in a bawdy verse. Naturally, to present an accurate reading and interpretation of the language and content of the text as I have analyzed it, it is necessary to include the obscene Silesian / Polish words and their most accurate colloquial English translations that preserve the spirit of the original text as I read and interpret it, without censoring the text or using euphemistic or neutral scientific biological translations of the words that do not convey the real idiomatic sense and meaning of the original. I hope that readers and members of this forum understand that the interpretation I present below is my honest best reading of the ms text according to my West Slavic theory of the script, and not by any means an attempt to produce an obscene interpretation of the text for its own sake.
EVA transcription:
[podaiin shdar ypchdar dar ypchdy qopol dar keshor dchdal cholairy]
[ytor chol shdytody qotchdy otchol chees ar eeodaiin or aral alkam]
[raraiiin shey osaiin otar ytar otedy or aiin otar alar olkeedy]
[ysheedy ksheey qokoror chod lkchedy qotody qokar shty otarar]
[sar chedar olpchdy otol otchedy]
my Slavic VCI reading and interpretation:
<Pdzo rzcal #Pical cal #Pic# Mz cal terzw cicas izál#>
<#pw iz rzc#pdz# mic# brz jér al égo w alas astá(s)>
<laló rze# chro bal #pal bec# w o bal asal zdéc#>
<#rzéc# trzé# nuw jdz sćec# mg# nal rzp# balal>
<ral jecal zbic# bz bjec#>
above text with spelling retained but word breaks re-segmented in line with my interpretation below:
<< Pdzo rzcal ~Pical cal ~Pic~ Mz cal terzw cicas izál~ >>
<< ~pw izrzc~ pdz~ mic~ brz jéral égo walas astás >>
<< laló rze~ chrobal ~pal bec~wo balasal zdéc~ >>
<< ~rzéc~ trzé~ nuw jdz sćec~ mg~nal rzp~ balal >>
<< ral jecal zbic~ bz bjec~ >>
my Old Polish / Silesian interpretation of these lines in modern Polish spelling:
"pizdą rzucał, pizgał cal pięć, mąż cał trzeźwy chcicą-s jeżdżał
po zrzucił pizdę miecz, bryż dzierżał jego wała-s astą-s
laluś że chorobał upadł, biedactwo! bałuszał dziecko
rzekł trzy 'no jedź!', cześć machnął, rzep bolał
rżał jechał zbić bez becz"
English translation:
"he threw and fucked her cunt five inches, the man completely sober rode with lust
When his sword threw off her cunt, her gorget held his cock like a branch
the dandy, well he got ill and fell, poor thing! a child made noise
he said three 'well, ride!', waved goodbye, the bur hurt
it neighed and he rode to conquer without a cry"
Notes on Old Polish and Silesian dialectal forms in my Polish interpretation above:
"cał" is an Old Polish form for modern Polish "cały", meaning "whole".
"bryż" is an Old Polish word meaning "gorget; embroidery". A gorget is a band of linen wrapped around a woman's neck and head in the medieval period.
"dzierżał" is an Old Polish and Silesian dialectal form for modern Polish "dzierżył", meaning "it held, it wielded".
"astą" is a Silesian dialectal form meaning "like a branch, like a bough". (This is the instrumental singular form of "asta".)
"bałuszał" or "bałuszył" is a Silesian dialectal form meaning "he made noise, he talked a lot".
It appears to me that there is still more wordplay in this verse that a translation cannot capture. For example, "rzucał" means "he threw", but it is quite similar to the verb "ruchał", which also means "he fucked". In the first line there occur both the word "cal" meaning "inch" and the word "cał" meaning "whole".
Geoffrey
Geoffrey, I speak Polish and this doesn't have much sense - I am sorry, I know how disappointing it is when we get nowhere. I considered Polish at the beginning (knowing how the 'simple' Latin was inadequate to this language) but I discarded it fast.
RE: medieval Old Polish spelling - low entropy? - geoffreycaveney - 01-04-2021
Dear swigut and Gab19,
I sincerely thank you for your honest feedback about my work as native Polish speakers. I appreciate your feedback very much.
If you do not mind, in the attachment to this message I have uploaded a document presenting one more attempt at an Old Polish interpretation of a completely different passage of the Voynich manuscript text. I interpret it as more traditional content than the passage I posted previously in this thread, so perhaps it may be easier for readers to comprehend. In the attached document, I include the original EVA transcription of the passage, my own "Slavic VCI" reading of it, my Old Polish interpretation of it, my English interpretation of it, and finally a complete "Voynichese-Old Polish-English glossary" of every word and word form that I interpret in this passage. In my Old Polish interpretation I have included 39 footnotes to explain my Old Polish readings in modern Polish.
The passage consists of all four rings of text around the diagram in folio page You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. 4. The word that drew my attention to this particular passage was EVA [odsheo], which reads perfectly in my Slavic VCI system as "grzech" ('sin'). The surrounding phrase [pchedar odsheo qody] reads in Slavic VCI as "Przecal grzech nc#", which matches rather closely with the Polish phrase "przeciął grzech nić", or "grzech przeciął nić", which seems to be a completely natural and comprehensible Polish phrase in a religious context meaning 'sin has cut the thread'. In footnote 2 of my attached document I include an example of the use of this exact phrase in a modern Polish religious passage.
I did this work last fall and just decided to let it sit for a while. But now with a couple of native Polish speakers and readers on the forum, I am posting this work of mine in case they find it more useful than the other passage that I posted and discussed previously in this thread.
I suppose that today I need to add an explicit disclaimer stating that the posting of this message on the date April 1st is purely a coincidence, on a day when I happen to have some free time to post this, and this is certainly not intended as any kind of "April Fools' Day" hoax post or document. It required far too much work for such a thing. It may be right or wrong, but it is sincere.
Geoffrey
RE: medieval Old Polish spelling - low entropy? - geoffreycaveney - 01-04-2021
One additional brief comment on my document that I just uploaded and posted above:
For those who do not speak or read Polish but who may be curious about some of the references mentioned in the footnotes and in the glossary, "Śląsk Cieszyński" and "Górny Śląsk" mean Cieszyn Silesian and Upper Silesian. These particular words and phrases in my interpretation appear to be similar to certain Silesian dialectal forms rather than standard Polish proper. As some readers may know, Silesia is a historical region of which part is located in modern southern Poland and part is located in the historical Czech land of Czech Silesia. Some consider the Silesian language to be a dialect of Polish, while others consider it to be a distinct language. Of course, the linguistic situation may have been different in the early 15th century.
Geoffrey
RE: medieval Old Polish spelling - low entropy? - geoffreycaveney - 01-04-2021
Some readers on this forum may be interested in the following lexical analysis of the words from this passage that I include in the glossary section of my document:
Of the 83 identifiable words or word forms, I find that 59 also occur elsewhere in the Voynich ms, while 24 are hapax legomena that only occur in this passage of folio page You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. 4.
The hapax legomena are frankly not all that useful for further investigation of this hypothesis, since their meanings cannot be confirmed or refuted by examining them in any other context.
Most interesting and useful are the words with distinctive lexical meanings (not just the most common grammatical and function words) that do occur elsewhere in the Voynich ms. It will be interesting to see if their proposed meanings in this passage can be helpful in attempting to interpret other passages where they occur, hopefully with the same meaning but in a different context.
For example, I interpret [oepor] as chlebów 'breads' in the phrase "Christ cut the white breads". The root [oep-] occurs in 3 other places in the Vms, and it would be interesting to see if the meaning 'bread' can also make sense for this root in a different context, such as in a recipe for example.
Likewise, I mentioned the word [pchedar], which I interpret as przeciał 'cut' (past tense) in both of the phrases "sin has cut the thread" and "Christ cut the white breads". This same word occurs in 9 other places in the Vms, and it will be interesting to see if the meaning 'he/she/it cut' will also make sense for this word in other, perhaps more mundane and practical, contexts in other sections of the Vms.
In other cases it is more likely that homonymy is involved in some of the Voynich words occurring elsewhere in the ms. I already note in footnote 27 of my document the difficulty of interpretation created by the homonymy of [otedy] as either będzie 'will be', biec 'to run', or bek 'a bleat, a cry' in this passage. Such homonymy clearly must be in the nature of the Voynich ms writing system and cannot be avoided entirely in the interpretation.
I have added to each glossary entry the number of occurrences of the word in the entire Voynich ms, and if it is a hapax legomenon, it is so noted. I am uploading a revised and updated version of my document as an attachment to this message, for those who are interested in having this information conveniently available for each word interpreted in this passage and included in this glossary.
Geoffrey
RE: medieval Old Polish spelling - low entropy? - geoffreycaveney - 03-04-2021
I can add here a brief and tentative interpretation of a different passage in a different section of the Voynich ms, based upon words in common with the passage in the document that I uploaded and attached above. In particular, I began by identifying the word [pchedar], which I interpret as przeciał 'cut' (past tense). Based on this and certain other words in common with the passage in the rings of text around the diagram on folio page You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. 4, I was able to work out the following tentative interpretation of the three lines of text beginning at the 8th star on folio page You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. :
EVA:
[pchedar qokaiin qotaiin dl ral cheodl cphaiin daiin ar qekeeey qoparaiin
olcheear chedar or arorsheey olkeechy or char cheeol sor or aiin otam
ysheo daiin shody yteedy cheedar or air cheoltar arodly]
Slavic VCI:
<Przecal no mo cs las jegs Przo co al né# Malo
żéal jecal w alwrzé# zdéj# w jal jéz rw w o bás
#rzech co rzg~ #péc# jécal w ál jezbal algs#>
Old Polish/Silesian:
'Przeciał no moc las(u) jego przociela, nie mało
że, ale jechał w aliż że zde, w jał(owe) jezioro, wo bas(en)
rzecz co rzekł "pech", jechał w aliż je zbijał algos'
English:
'Well, he cut a lot of his relative's wood, not a little,
but he rode until here, into the barren lake, into the basin
the word that he said "jinx", he rode until the pain broke him'
It must be said that the first line reads the most smoothly and coherently, the second line is clearer at the beginning and end but difficult in the middle, and the third line is more difficult to interpret, particularly the end of it. But it seems to be generally sensible, and it uses several of the same words from the other passage on You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. 4, with the same meanings, but in a quite different context, which is a good sign regarding the consistency of the interpretation from passage to passage and from section to section of the manuscript.
In brief, the point of this passage appears to be that a certain person cut down a lot of wood in his relative's forest, and apparently fate punished him with the misfortune (pech) of a barren lake and of pain while riding.
Some notes on the interpretation of the words and syntax where they diverge particularly sharply from standard modern Polish:
przociel or przociyl are Cieszyn Silesian dialectal word forms meaning 'a relative' (as in a family member)
aliż is an Old Polish particle and preposition meaning 'that' (Polish że) or 'until' (Polish dopóki)
zde is an Old Slavic form meaning 'here' that still exists in modern Czech but not in modern Polish
The verb phrase je zbijał is again more fitting for the Cieszyn Silesian dialect, in which je = Polish jest 'is' and is appropriate as part of this archaic compound verb phrase form to express the past or perfect tense, which in modern Polish would simply be expressed by zbijał without the helping verb je/jest.
I can only interpret algos as the Greek word meaning 'pain'. In defense of its use here, I observe that Polish has borrowed this root as a prefix algo- with this meaning in several compound words, so we may expect that the meaning of this word and root would be familiar to a Polish speaker. Even if such borrowings are not documented as attested in the written historical record until a later stage of the Polish language, an educated person could well have been familiar with the meaning of this word and root at the time of the Voynich ms.
I observe in particular the correspondence of moc 'a lot of, a large number of' and nie mało 'not a little' at the beginning and end of the first line.
My general working hypothesis is that the author was a native speaker of some Silesian dialect of Old Polish who possibly became a university student in Prague. He first became literate reading and writing in Latin, and this manuscript represents his attempt to express his native Silesian dialect in his own invented writing system. Naturally it would be difficult to achieve complete consistency in the expression of the complicated Polish/Silesian consonant system in particular in writing, if one only has familiarity with Latin as a written language. This would explain many of the difficulties, ambiguities, and inconsistencies in the expression of Polish/Silesian sounds in the Voynich ms writing system.
Geoffrey Caveney
RE: medieval Old Polish spelling - low entropy? - geoffreycaveney - 03-04-2021
I now have a reading and interpretation of the five lines of text beginning at the 7th star on folio page You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. . Thus it appears immediately prior to the passage in the message above that begins at the 8th star on page You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. . It appears to begin with a similar theme (a person cutting wood), but it tells a different and separate story. Thus each star seems to represent a different little mini-story.
I must say I am glad to now be interpreting what I regard as more "neutral" content and subject matter, which I think may be easier to comprehend, analyze, and discuss.
Once again I have made every effort to interpret words in this passage as consistently as possible with the same or very similar words in the other passages that I have interpreted. However, the nature of the writing system does create some homonymous words and roots that are different from each other. (That is, the words or roots are written the same or similarly in the Voynich writing system, but they represent different Old Polish / Silesian words or roots.)
EVA:
[tshedar chllo rl shed kchedy chokor cheedy opchar cheor chckhey taiin dam
ol sheo ckhey chol kechdy okeedal lkain chol keeody otchor aiir chol kar alol
daiin char qotal okechol olkeeor olkeeodal lkaiin chalkeeedy qokam
sar okair chckhey qodaiin chckhy checkhd l raiin otain ar aisam
shar sheey kar sheody]
Slavic VCI:
<przecal issch ls rzec ćec# jdw jéc# Bial jew iće# po cás
z rzech će# iz teic# dékas sto iz tég# biw ál iz tal asz
co jal mas deiz zdéw zdégas sto jastéc# nás
ral dál iće# nco ić# jećc s lo bo al árás
rzal rzé# tal rzeg#>
Old Polish/Silesian:
'Przeciał jeszcze las, rzecz czek(a), żdę, jest bijał ją iście po czas(ie)
z rzeczy, (i)ście iz tych, dekarstwo iz tego bywał, iż dałaś
co żal masz? deżdż zde? ż[e] dekarstwo je st(rz)ec nas
ra[czy]ł dał iście, nocą iśc[ie] jest słaby, ale raz
żął że, dał, rzekł'
English:
'he still cut wood, he awaits the word/thing/item, he waits, he beat it indeed for a while
from the thing/item, indeed from these, the roofing appeared from this, that you gave
why do you have sorrow? the rain here? the roofing is to protect us
he gladly gave indeed, at night indeed he is tired, but once
he reaped, he gave, he said'
The word which requires particular commentary in this passage is dekarstwo. It is indeed a Polish word meaning 'roofing', and the word is borrowed from the German root of the word Decke 'roof'. This word and root is attested in German going back to the 8th century, so it seems to be fully plausible that speakers of West Slavic dialects in regions neighboring German-speaking regions could have borrowed this root and word and formed Slavic derivatives of it such as dekarstwo by the 14th century. It may or may not actually be attested as such in extant West Slavic texts until a later date, but this may well have more to do with the lack of existing texts about such subject matter dating back to this time period, rather than the lack of the actual word in spoken West Slavic dialects in this time period.
As for the representation of this word dekarstwo in the Voynich writing system (as I interpret it in the Slavic VCI system) as <dekas-sto>, this may be seen as comparable to, for example, the representation of the Greek word spermon as "pe-mo" in the Linear B writing system. In fact my Slavic VCI renderings are rather more faithful to the actual Old Polish / Silesian words that they represent, than the Linear B written forms are to the actual Greek words that they represent. But it is a reasonable comparison and may help readers comprehend and make sense of the differences between the Slavic VCI versions and the Old Polish / Silesian words.
Geoffrey
"women floating (rapidly)" as Old Polish word play? - geoffreycaveney - 04-04-2021
In my research of Old Polish / Silesian lexicon, I came across an interesting verb that may possibly explain the strange apparent topic of the bathing / floating women section of the Voynich manuscript (from You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. to You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. ).
Those who are familiar with any Slavic language will recognize the root of the common Polish word żona. It means 'wife' in modern Polish, but formerly it also simply meant 'woman'.
Well, it so happens that there is an Old Polish verb żonąć, which apparently had a variety of meanings, including 'to rush', 'to seize', and 'to swim/flow/float violently/abruptly/sharply' ! Those who read Polish can review these various definitions of this Old Polish verb at this link: <https://pl.wiktionary.org/wiki/%C5%BCon%C4%85%C4%87#pl> .
Thus, "women floating/flowing/swimming rapidly/abruptly/sharply" could have been a kind of pun or play on words in an Old Polish / Silesian dialect: żony żoną.
According to my Slavic VCI interpretation of the phonetic values of the Voynich ms character inventory, the root of each of these Old Polish words could have been expressed by a vord combination such as EVA [shey qo-]. (In my interpretation, [qo/qok/qof] represents <n>. According to this system, Voynich vords often represent syllables rather than complete Old Polish words.)
And in fact, I find the vord combination [shey qo-] occurring rather frequently in the bathing / floating women section of the Voynich ms: I count it occurring 8 times on You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. , 9 times on You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. , 9 times on You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. , and then 9 times on You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. , 9 times on You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. , 4 times on You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. , and 7 times on You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. . This vord combination occurs multiple times on other pages of this section as well.
[Note: The vowel <e> that I interpret from EVA [shey] is not necessarily inconsistent with the roots and words discussed here, since /e/ was the original phonemic value of this vowel in this root in Proto-Slavic, and even within modern West Slavic languages and dialects there remains a substantial split between žena/zena in Czech, Slovak, and Polabian, vs. żona/žona in Polish, Kashubian, and Sorbian. Likewise, the Old Polish verb discussed here appears to have exhibited o/e ablaut within the conjugation itself: 3rd person singular żenie, 3rd person plural żoną. Naturally, the particular dialect or dialects represented in the Voynich ms text may have exhibited different variations of these vowel qualities in various forms of these roots.]
Geoffrey Caveney
RE: Old Polish (geoffreycaveney's theory) - Koen G - 04-04-2021
Hi Geoffrey, an important unwritten rule on the forum is that specific theories about deciphering the text should stick to one thread. I merged them for you and generalized the title.
RE: medieval Old Polish spelling - low entropy? - Gab19 - 09-04-2021
Geoffrey, I know how frustrating is when after all your effort, somebody tells you no, but I keep what I said before. I took a look at the link and, unfortunately, the texts doesn’t have any sense. What appears to me is that it required a lot of free interpretation to get from your translating to actual “words” and once you have them they don’t make much sense put together. I don’t see a grammar in the text that comes out.
Polish is a very “attractive” possibility for Voynich as it’s a phonetically challenging language and I also thought about it at the beginning (also for let’s call it “patriotic” reason) but it doesn’t fit in Voynich aspects of the texts and, like somebody said before, of plants.
Sorry not to have e better thing to say.