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In pursuit of otol - Printable Version

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RE: In pursuit of otol - ReneZ - 23-09-2017

Hi David,

rather than 'much the same' I would hope that the result would be 'exactly the same'.
Anything else, please let me know.

RE: In pursuit of otol - Davidsch - 25-09-2017

Regarding to the afix exercise, you should definitely visually check those words that are different; 

I've found that if there are between 1 to 15 words that are different, almost in every case these words could have problems:
for example, are  transcribed incorrectly;  are not one word but separated by a space or should be glued to another word;  (referring to my TT transcript experience)

for Anton: otol theory thread - geoffreycaveney - 17-04-2021

Recently in the "Regaining the lost order" thread, You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. provided a link to his You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. about what he recently describes as "discouraging results in the attempts to detect the structure of narration in the VMS text". Reading that blog post, by far the most striking point to me, as a linguistically oriented researcher, was the entire section and long discussion devoted to "The mysterious star of 'otol'". I trust that "otol" will not be an unfamiliar term to readers of this forum. Indeed Anton in his blog post summarizes its significance in the Voynich manuscript text as follows:

"So otol appears to be a widely used notion, suitable for the following applications:
  • serving as the name of some quite important celestial object;
  • possibly also serving as morphological part of other star names;
  • possibly serving for a certain generalization;
  • serving for description (direct or by means of association) of a number of unidentified objects: anatomic/distillation (?), leaf/root of some plant (?);
  • possibly serving as morphological part of description (direct or by means of association) of "personified" objects in the Zodiac pages.
What celestial body (Sun and Moon excluded) in what language could serve so many purposes at once? If a positive answer to this question is given, then that would be the confirmation of H5, let alone a huge advance in the Voynich research."


Doing a search for "otol" on this forum, I of course got many hits, including the interesting discussion last fall in the thread "You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.". But the last thread devoted to "otol" itself was "You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view." back in 2017, but alas it appears that Anton did not participate in this thread.

So I want to reopen the discussion of "otol" with this thread. I note that in the "What are labels?" thread, the idea was raised and discussed that "otol" is perhaps more likely to be an adjective than a noun. I see that ReneZ, DONJCH, and JKP ("something other than nouns") in particular were open to this idea. (This is a very general summary; please read the entire thread for the details of what each person said.) 

As folks on this forum know, recently I have been looking into this crazy idea that the Voynich ms text could represent Middle English. Please consult the "problematic...Germanic" thread You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. for more details. I also raised another crazy idea that the writing system could be so strange because it represents "lipogrammatic" text in which certain letters are prohibited from appearing, and I extended this historical concept, attested in the medieval period in the most prominent work of Petrus Riga, who was an influence on the major late 14th century English poet John Gower, to the extreme hypothesis (not attested) of lipogrammatic text that excludes the letters ABC. (Others excluded each letter separately in turn, but not all at once!) My thread on this topic is easy to You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. for those who are interested.

Anyway, at the end of the "problematic...Germanic" thread you will find You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. that could potentially map Voynich characters and combinations of characters to Middle English letters of the alphabet...if ABC are excluded entirely.

So here is my opening contribution to this otol theory thread: Following my Voynich : Middle English correspondence table, EVA [otol] is read as Middle English "fous". No interpretative steps here, this is just straight from the correspondence table. (Note: the "place" for "F" in the correspondence table only "opened up" as a result of considering the possibility that "B" could be excluded from the alphabet entirely under the "lipogram with no ABC" theory!)

Middle English "fous" is an adjective that has the following meanings: "ardent, zealous, passionate; brave, noble" and "eager, willing, ready; striving forward". 

Sources for this word and these definitions can be found You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. at the University of Michigan's online Middle English Compendium, and You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. on Wiktionary. 

By the way, if you are wondering what ever happened to this Middle English word in modern English -- as I was! -- there is a now obsolete English word "fouse" that comes from Middle English "fous". See You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. on Wiktionary. But I must admit, as a rather well-educated and literate native English speaker, that I had never heard of this word in my life, as far as I can recall, until I was researching some possible Voynich and Middle English word correspondences today. It seems that this old Germanic root survives in Icelandic, Norwegian, possibly Danish, and as an archaic word in Swedish. 

This is why I enjoy investigating specific language theories of the Voynich manuscript text, whether they prove to be right or wrong in the final analysis. 

Geoffrey S.

RE: In pursuit of otol - Anton - 17-04-2021

Merged the two threads.

otol is one fine test specimen for any substitution "language solution". Another one is aror sheey (the stuff that appears in line with plain text in f116v).

Just for fun, using the ME correspondence table for that, we get "ir[o]ur thee*", where asterisk stands for y (not present in the table). Not sure if that makes any sense.

But this is a bit offtopic.

RE: In pursuit of otol - geoffreycaveney - 17-04-2021

(17-04-2021, 05:31 PM)Anton Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.otol is one fine test specimen for any substitution "language solution". Another one is aror sheey (the stuff that appears in line with plain text in f116v).

Just for fun, using the ME correspondence table for that, we get "ir[o]ur thee*", where asterisk stands for y (not present in the table). Not sure if that makes any sense.


Middle English irour - "anger, wrath"

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Middle English thē - "thee, to thee, for thee" (2.sg.obj. pronoun)

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"As direct obj.: thee, you [...] (e) used for someone to whom rebuke, scorn, anger, etc. is directed;"
"As indirect obj. (broadly interpreted): thee, you; to thee, for thee [...] (d) used for someone to whom defiance is directed; "
"As dat. of interest or reference: to thee, for thee, concerning you [...] (d) used for someone to whom rebuke or abuse is directed"
"As reflexive: thyself, yourself; also, for thyself [...] (d) used for someone to whom challenge, displeasure, anger, etc., is directed;"

RE: In pursuit of otol - geoffreycaveney - 21-04-2021

(17-04-2021, 07:03 PM)geoffreycaveney Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
(17-04-2021, 05:31 PM)Anton Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.otol is one fine test specimen for any substitution "language solution". Another one is aror sheey (the stuff that appears in line with plain text in f116v).

Just for fun, using the ME correspondence table for that, we get "ir[o]ur thee*", where asterisk stands for y (not present in the table). Not sure if that makes any sense.

Middle English irour - "anger, wrath"
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Middle English thē - "thee, to thee, for thee" (2.sg.obj. pronoun)

Anton, I now realize I was mistaken about the second word, EVA [sheey], since my Middle English correspondence table at the time (which you also used) was treating EVA [y] as unknown, which meant in practice a "wild card", null, or "anything" value, which I now see was mistaken. As I hope you have seen in my recent posts in the Middle English theory thread, actually [y] = "K", where this letter may represent "k/c/g(h)", possibly along with an unwritten vowel in some places. (I found the "-gh" value in the ME word "thurgh" ("through") in the first line of the Voynich ms.) The facility of this character to represent "k", "c", "g", "gh", along with possible unwritten vowels in some places, begins to help to explain how this character can appear in as many as almost 44% of all words in the entire Voynich manuscript.

[shol], the actual reading of [sheey] is "theeK". Here once again as elsewhere we must rely on reading the word backwards, especially since it is the last word of the phrase: "Keeth". In this case, the interpretation is Middle English "geth", which is an alternate past participle form of the verb "geten" (i.e., "get"). The Middle English Compendium entry for "geten" ( You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. ) cites the various past participle forms of this verb as follows: "ppl. gē̆te(n, igē̆te(n, gē̆tten, igette, gē̆t, getein, (?) getẹ̄, geth, gheten, ikete & giten & gōte(n, igōte(n, gotte(n, gōtǒun, gōthen & ʒeten" [emphasis added]. The entry also gives the following explanatory etymological note: "The p. & p. ppl. have been affected by various analogies, both within the paradigm and with other ME verbs like bēren, stēlen." 

You will also find among the many particular precise meanings of "geten" (same entry and link above) such senses as "suffer (blows, death, shame, etc.)", among many others. [shol], the actual meaning of this phrase EVA [aror sheey] is "irour geth", meaning "[having] suffered/earned/begotten wrath", likely part of a phrase (the other words of which are presumably written in the other script on You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. ) such as "thou/he/ye/they  hast/hath/have  suffered/earned/begotten  wrath." 

yerffoe[y]