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+--- Thread: Choice of glyphs (/thread-2729.html)
RE: Choice of glyphs - davidjackson - 07-04-2019
Can someone post how often rare glyphs are used
On the rate occasions that an uncommon glyph is used, there must be a reason.
RE: Choice of glyphs - bi3mw - 07-04-2019
When it comes to numbering systems, I have to think of an old paper by Nick Pelling.
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RE: Choice of glyphs - -JKP- - 08-04-2019
Number systems don't have to be literal (it could be numbers that don't necessarily match the number shapes).
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Okay, I'm glancing through Nick's paper (thanks for the link).
I see the first part is basically relating it to Roman numerals. I agree, there are parts that do look like Roman numerals. I think I've seen this possibility mentioned by other researchers too. I noticed it long before I knew anyone in the Voynich community, so I imagine quite a few people have independently noticed the similarity.
But I don't know how many have tried to resolve it into a full system. Clearly Nick took the time to do that (I haven't seen this paper before). I'm looking at page number 2 and Nick has tried to work out a way to make out the whole numbering system. Probably many people who noticed the similarity to Roman numerals but never bothered to follow it up (I've been following it up, but in a slightly different way, so I find this interesting).
Haha... Under the chart for numbers up to 98, Nick says in his rationale for component characters:
[font=Eva]ch [/font]I believe that this is steganography: rearrange the strokes to get "V". OK, this isn't the strongest argument around, but please read on…
Actually Nick, this is funny. I've actually considered whether this might be "v" not only because of position, but also because of the shapes. You don't have to change the strokes, just turn it upside down and you get a flat-bottomed "v". Okay, it's not a perfect "v" but it does actually kind of work.
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Okay, now he gets to "gallows" characters. What Nick has done is point out the parts of the gallows that intersect, which gives you increasing intersections. It's a perfectly reasonable argument in light of the progressions of the shapes and the previous logic for the lower numbers, but...
I guess this is where we part ways in how we interpret the shapes...
I spent a lot of time studying Greek acrophonic numbers and a couple of other numbering systems used by the Greeks and Copts (including one that is similar to Roman numerals). Shapes akin to the VMS gallows glyphs are almost all used in Greek number systems.
- In one of the most common Greek systems, letters are numbers and some of the larger numbers include the Greek letter rho written like a capital. Greek rho looks like a P. And, these numbers were sometimes benched and sometimes stacked. It's a very Greek way of thinking about things (examples have been posted on my blog).
- Also, there are some very specific ways that an actual "gallows" shape was written. I looks quite a bit like a hangman stick figure game. I have probably described it on one of my blogs. The numbers are created by adding shapes under the crossbar of the gallows shape and they are reasonably logical.
- Also, I've mentioned the rare shape with the staircase plus dot is Greek. It's a perfect example of the Greek way of thinking—to make a boxy or angular shape and add a dot. This kind of shape was used for both abbreviations and numbers and does not appear to have been adapted into Latin scribal conventions. Many of the other Greek conventions were adapted into Latin, but not this one.
- AND there is another shape which looks like a big P that has a half-bench (the benches and half-benches indicated different quantities and were used on old Greek coins (I have posted an example on my blog)). Not only this, but sometimes this bench or half-bench HAS A STRAIGHT LEG instead of a c shape. This is so much a part of the Greek repertoire that even modern Greek fonts include it. If you've only looked at transcripts and not at the VMS itself, you probably don't understand what this has to do with the VMS, but there are places where the leg has VERY SPECIFICALLY been drawn straight.
Bummer, just got called away for something important. I'll try to finish and include screensnaps if I can get back.
RE: Choice of glyphs - ReneZ - 08-04-2019
I can think of several reasons why there could be rare glyphs in the text.
In the style of Jacques Guy in the old days, it is possible to point to languages that have this. Thai is an example. There are characters that are simply used very rarely. For example the ฌ . It is completely to be expected to find books in which this character does not occur at all. I only know two words that use it. Others are ฑ ฬ ฎ that might just occur a handful of times in a book, or ฏ ฆ ฒ that may occur once every dozen or so pages.
But is is not necessary to go to exotic languages. These rare forms might stand for symbols that are rarely used, such as symbols for the planets or zodiac signs.
My favourite explanation is that we need to always keep in mind that, if the Voynich MS text is somehow a translation or encoding of a plain text, then this plain text was a handwritten one. This handwritten text naturally has normal handwriting variations, and depending on how this 'encoding' was done, they simply may represent rare forms that the encoder either did not understand, or decided to preserve as 'separate'.
The fact that You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. has many of such rare forms should mean something too.
Finally, one can think of explanations that fit in the scenario in case the MS text is meaningless.
RE: Choice of glyphs - Koen G - 08-04-2019
It's interesting to consider the rare glyphs, but most of the work is done with the core set. I think the problem of how to parse i-clusters is much more pressing. We simply don't know how many glyphs they represent.
Jkp: I must check the Greek numbers when I'm home.
RE: Choice of glyphs - -JKP- - 08-04-2019
I've posted some of these on my blogs, including examples on Greek coins, but I've grabbed a group of them together to show how the idea of benching is natural to the thought process of those using Greek characters.
The Greeks did this with both letters (usually when stacking them vertically) and with numbers, and the Coptic alphabet (which was the Greek alphabet used to write Egyptian) also adapted it. Here is a quicky example of the Rho character benched in a number of ways to write numerals. These are found quite frequently in medieval Greek calendars:
If you shorten the center stem, you can see how similar some of them are to the VMS benched P-shapes. The stem was not always long. In calendars it sometimes reached the baseline and sometimes sat on top of the bench part (which also happens in the VMS). These also occur as half-benches.
RE: Choice of glyphs - Koen G - 08-04-2019
Right. In a way, the Christogram (chi-rho) could be the same as a benched gallow. This was also known to Latin scribes, but only as a symbol, not a productive process. So you'd almost say the glyph set is an exhibition of Latin and Greek scribal tricks.
RE: Choice of glyphs - -JKP- - 08-04-2019
(08-04-2019, 10:25 AM)Koen G Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Right. In a way, the Christogram (chi-rho) could be the same as a benched gallow. This was also known to Latin scribes, but only as a symbol, not a productive process. So you'd almost say the glyph set is an exhibition of Latin and Greek scribal tricks.
I've said for a long time Voynichese might be designed to "look" like Latin.
It might be numbers designed to look like Latin.
For example, taking a cc shape and connecting it makes it look like a common Latin ligature (ci, cc, cr, etc.), but maybe it's ee in disguise. Maybe sh is three cees in a row (in disguise).
Quite a few glyphs can be either numbers or letters (e.g., o, a, i, e, d, g, p...).
But then you get one like the 9 symbol. It resembles a number BUT it is positioned like a Latin abbreviation. If the VMS has nulls (I'm not sure whether it does), the 9 might be one of the strongest candidates.
RE: Choice of glyphs - -JKP- - 08-04-2019
When we see something like polkeedal it's just natural for the brain to want to process it as text.
For example, it's so easy to see it as Nox horas (substitution cipher) if one decides that EVA-l can be both x and s (this kind of one-to-many decryption is common among Voynich "solutions"). With this moderately simple substitution, you can make thousands of words. I have no trouble at all finding words and phrases in several languages doing it this way. But the emerging words are like islands that don't quite connect. The bridges are missing.
So, perhaps the strange parts in between are nonsense text, or numbers, or perhaps the bridges aren't there because it's NOT text (at least not on the upper level). Now... numbers can be resolved into text, obviously, but numbers can be written in a way that you have to do it in a two-step process so you can't go directly from A to C as you would if it were straight substitution. If there are additive processes or different combinations to create the same numerals, then it has to be A to B to C.
I don't think it's intended to be added up like Kabbalah. Kabbalah is not an encryption system. It's a way of looking for spiritual correspondence between words with the same values. That's completely different from encryption.
If the glyphs are numbers, then there's a dilemma, even if it resolves to text in another step... these number systems have many different versions. In some, "o" means zero, in some "o" means 5, and so on for many of these shapes. Are the cee shapes 100s? They would be in some systems, but not in others. Or maybe, if they are numbers, they have been assigned in a personal way, with no specific dependence on other number systems.
I have pages and pages of notes where I tried to resolve the seeming-numbers into letters, but there are so many ways to do it for so many different languages, it's an almost intractable problem.
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The process of designing the Voynichese glyphs does seem very rational. One of the reasons I pointed out to Emma that there are flaws in the Takahashi transcription is because there are sequences of eeee that Takahashi didn't record (as though he were reluctant to acknowledge that the shape could occur four times in a row, which would be pretty strange in a linguistic system). But if it were a numeric system, and if the minims iiii were intended as numbers, in a system with as much internal consistency as Voynichese, eeee not only would not be strange, it would be expected.
RE: Choice of glyphs - Koen G - 08-04-2019
I'm not sure if I follow the last bit. Four c's are only problematic if you don't see them as minims. Before i's were dotted, the word "minim" itself would have been a sequence of no less than ten strokes. That's why I think i- and c-clusters are one of the foremost hurdles we face. There are so many ways to interpret them, and doing so incorrectly can cripple even the most advanced computational attacks.
Now let's say they are numbers. Then still the chunks of numbers are ordered in a specific way. In a decimal system, any digit can appear anywhere in a number - 12345 is as valid as 54321. But this is not the case in Voynichese.