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+--- Thread: How to prove that the B-language is not Greek? (/thread-3904.html)
How to prove that the B-language is not Greek? - Ruby Novacna - 24-11-2022
For several years I have been trying to understand the text, believing that it is not the code, at least for certain parts of the text.
The B language presents, in my opinion, several words which could be Greek, at least with phonetic values which I currently give to the glyphs.
However, I realize that the speed of my investigation remains very poor.
And if to speed up we proceeded in the opposite way, looking for clues that could exclude ancient Greek?
Do you know of such clues?
RE: How to prove that the B-language is not Greek? - davidjackson - 25-11-2022
I would suggest that, logically, if you can't prove it is Greek, you can't prove it isn't Greek.
RE: How to prove that the B-language is not Greek? - nablator - 25-11-2022
(24-11-2022, 06:08 PM)Ruby Novacna Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Do you know of such clues?Do you have any words starting with N (nu)?
RE: How to prove that the B-language is not Greek? - Ruby Novacna - 25-11-2022
(25-11-2022, 06:50 PM)nablator Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Do you have any words starting with N (nu)?Yes, some of the words featured on my Word List start with n.
I remind you that it is k EVA that I read as n or m, depending on the position of the horizontal bar.
RE: How to prove that the B-language is not Greek? - tavie - 25-11-2022
I don't think it's possible to rule out Greek or any other language that is a reasonable candidate within the timeframe for the manuscript. If someone proposes a particular Greek solution, we could rule out that particular Greek solution for being inconsistent with known Voynichese properties. But we can't rule out Greek itself as the language.
This is because we know that if it is language (and not meaningless gibberish), multiple things have been done to the text to give it the myriad un-language-like characteristics that it has, such as the entropy issue, the line patterns, etc. We don't know what these processes applied to the text are, and until we do have a better idea of them, we can't rule out the possibility that they could make a Greek text look rather "un-Greek". And the same for other candidate languages.
In contrast, if a simple substitution cypher were the solution, we would be able to eliminate candidate languages very quickly.
RE: How to prove that the B-language is not Greek? - nablator - 25-11-2022
(25-11-2022, 08:14 PM)Ruby Novacna Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I remind you that it is k EVA that I read as n or m, depending on the position of the horizontal bar.I had no idea. Do you have all the possible substitutions written down somewhere?
RE: How to prove that the B-language is not Greek? - Ruby Novacna - 26-11-2022
(25-11-2022, 10:41 PM)nablator Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Do you have all the possible substitutions written down somewhere?Writing all the possible substitutions seems difficult, it would be feasible for a computer program. However, the substitutions I currently use are presented on the Word List page of my blog.
RE: How to prove that the B-language is not Greek? - Ruby Novacna - 26-11-2022
(25-11-2022, 06:23 PM)davidjackson Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I would suggest that, logically, if you can't prove it is Greek, you can't prove it isn't Greek.Indeed, it is the first idea that comes to mind.
Certainly, to be able to confirm or invalidate the choice of a language, it would be necessary to have a minimum knowledge of this language.
This is why, while waiting to acquire more skills, I am thinking of the possible existence of useful clues for amateurs.
RE: How to prove that the B-language is not Greek? - Ruby Novacna - 26-11-2022
(25-11-2022, 08:41 PM)tavie Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I don't think it's possible to rule out Greek or any other language...For the moment I am more interested in the identification of the language, than in the explanation of the value of entropy.
This is because we know that if it is language (and not meaningless gibberish), multiple things have been done to the text to give it the myriad un-language-like characteristics that it has, such as the entropy issue, the line patterns, etc.
Moreover, if I understood the Wikipedia article correctly, the notion of entropy is quite recent, much later than our manuscript and the large number of coded letters. How did decoders proceed without calculating entropy?
RE: How to prove that the B-language is not Greek? - tavie - 26-11-2022
That's not what I'm saying. I'm saying entropy is a symptom, along with line patterns, that tells us that whatever we're dealing with, it is not a simple substitution cypher. And that this has consequences for our ability to exclude candidate languages.
By symptom, I mean that the entropy levels and the Voynichese line patterns are characteristics that we do not see in normal, meaningful text, including one that has been through a simple substitution cypher. These symptoms tell us that if there is meaningful text here, a lot of things have been done to this plaintext to generate these effects.
Individually, these "things" may be simple or complex. Together, they may constitute an extremely complex cypher system that was advanced for the era, as some here have suggested. Or they may constitute a system that has a simple design at its core with added bells and whistles, including some aspects that weren't intended for concealment purposes but which have the effect of it being more complex, e.g. parsing issues. Or whatever. We don't know.
My point is that whatever those things are, their complexity as a whole makes it hard to exclude a specific language. Let's say someone points out that the relative frequencies of Voynichese initial and final characters don't come anywhere close to matching the relative proportions we see in the contemporary Greek. That would exclude Greek if the system were a simple substitution cypher. But since it's not, we can't exclude the possibility that the complexities of the system have altered the plaintext Greek words in a way that generates artificial, unGreeklike letter distributions. Indeed, if we did exclude Greek on that basis, then I think we'd end up excluding all other candidate languages on similar bases.
If it were that easy to exclude a language, we probably would have found the right language by now. So while people could come up with characteristics of Greek that are inconsistent with your theory to give you a better sense of where it might need modification or areas for further investigation...I can't see how we could exclude Greek.
(26-11-2022, 04:21 PM)Ruby Novacna Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Moreover, if I understood the Wikipedia article correctly, the notion of entropy is quite recent, much later than our manuscript and the large number of coded letters. How did decoders proceed without calculating entropy?
I was answering your question about excluding Greek; I didn't say that calculating entropy is necessary for decipherments. It isn't. But as a "symptom", it is useful, along with other Voynichese behaviours, in getting a sense of what could - or could not - have been done to a plaintext to generate these symptoms or effects.