The Voynich Ninja
The oddities of the bigram "ed" - Printable Version

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RE: The oddities of the bigram "ed" - Jorge_Stolfi - 18-02-2026

(17-02-2026, 07:32 AM)ReneZ Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.my question about "eed" was related to the suggestion that "ed" might be a single unit. While this is tempting, this then leaves the question whether "eed" is another unit, or should be read as "e" + "ed". Neither seem satisfactory to me. (words ending -edy can also end -ey, or -eedy, or -eey)

Rene, you know my view.  My proposed "true alphabet" has the following elements:

  12443.625000  0.09984 {a}
  21543.125000  0.17285 {o}
  15120.250000  0.12132 {y}

  5192.000000   0.04166 {q}

  11388.500000  0.09137 {d}
   9220.250000  0.07398 {l}
   5792.375000  0.04647 {r}
   2081.750000  0.01670 {s}

   5664.500000  0.04545 {ch}   3906.250000  0.03134 {che}
   3842.250000  0.03083 {ee}    324.000000  0.00260 {eee}
   2085.500000  0.01673 {sh}   1869.250000  0.01500 {she}

   7295.000000  0.05853 {k}    1519.000000  0.01219 {ke}
   4173.750000  0.03349 {t}     786.000000  0.00631 {te}

    452.500000  0.00363 {ckh}   169.500000  0.00136 {ckhe}
    591.000000  0.00474 {cth}   148.000000  0.00119 {cthe}

    316.000000  0.00254 {f}
   1197.375000  0.00961 {p}

     36.000000  0.00029 {cfh}
    104.500000  0.00084 {cph}

    113.500000  0.00091 {n}     868.250000  0.00697 {m} 
   1665.500000  0.01336 {in}
   3779.000000  0.03032 {iin}
    159.000000  0.00128 {iiin}
   
My You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. listed a few others, like {cphe} and {ir}, but now I am almost convinced that they are errors at some stage. 
  
Thus, in my model, 
  • A single e is always a modifier for the previous element, which must be a "bench" Ch, Sh, or a "kite" (k/t gallows) possibly with platform.
  • A double e is always an element {ee} by itself, in the same "benches" class as Ch and Sh.
  • A triple e can be an element {eee} by itself; but if it comes after a bench or kite, it is ambiguous. Like, Cheeed could be {ch}{eee}{d} or {che}{ee}{d}. One day we may know the rule, but for now either parsing may be the right one.
  • A quadruple e may be ambiguous too, but they must be too rare to matter.
This model would "explain", for instance, why ed is never word-initial.  And it predicts that de is possible only as dee, not with a single e. Is this the case?

All the best, --stolfi

RE: The oddities of the bigram "ed" - Dunsel - 18-02-2026

(18-02-2026, 12:54 AM)ReneZ Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.OK thanks!
This means that, while 'ed' is essentially absent on about half the pages, these pages are relatively shorter, and if one counts 'normalised pages' by splitting the longer B pages into several parts, 'ed' is essentially absent on much less than half these normalised pages.

Correct. I did not normalize the count in the one chart you liked. Now, in the third chart with the section boundaries, that was normalized by word count on the page.  And you are also correct in that the folios where ed does not occur, the word count is about 1/3 of that on the ed+ pages.  It mostly doesn't occur in herbal which is much less dense than say recipes.  But, to answer your question.

I think I got this math close. If not, tell me what you'd like to see and I'll give it a shot.

I counted the average word length of 0ed pages to 86.4 and then divided the total Voynich word count by that to get a new number of pages.  Hopefully, I averaged all that out correctly.  I also normalized the y axis on this to better show what you're looking for.   1.0 is the count of 0ed pages, so if it shows up on more, it'll have a higher count.

Here's the chart but it looks pretty much the same as the others.

   

RE: The oddities of the bigram "ed" - Aga Tentakulus - 18-02-2026

It seems to me that you are overlooking something.
In my example, there are two forms.
First person and second person. In the sentence, ‘I did it this way’ is first person, and in second person, ‘You should do it this way’. So not only has the person changed, but also the tense. Past and future.
Now there are also several writers involved.

What exactly are you trying to explain to me?

A forest is full of trees, and you want to explain where an oak tree should grow and where a fir tree should grow.

RE: The oddities of the bigram "ed" - Dunsel - 19-02-2026

(18-02-2026, 08:41 AM)Aga Tentakulus Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.What exactly are you trying to explain to me?

A forest is full of trees, and you want to explain where an oak tree should grow and where a fir tree should grow.

I'm not saying anything. I'm showing numbers. And those numbers say, over there are a whole bunch of trees.  But out there, in the middle of that field is one lone oak.

RE: The oddities of the bigram "ed" - Aga Tentakulus - 19-02-2026

There is an oak tree (constant) in the field and trees (variable) in the forest. Oak tree = ‘ed’. What is ‘ed’ an oak tree?
So now you know what ‘ed’ means.