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Phonetic Borderland Hypothesis - Oliver Martin Rarrek - 26-06-2025
# ? A Multilingual Recipe Structure in the Voynich Manuscript
Dear all,
I'd like to share a new approach I’ve been exploring with assistance from a language model. It’s based on the hypothesis that the Voynich Manuscript might be written in a **phonetically encoded contact language** from a multilingual **border region**, possibly located in Central Europe (e.g., the Alps–Adriatic or Pannonian area). The working theory is that the text is **written as spoken**, without conforming to standardized spelling conventions of any known medieval language.
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## ? Key Hypothesis
- The text reflects a **mixed oral vernacular** influenced by Romance, Slavic, and Germanic elements.
- The Voynichese words may be **phonetic spellings** (or ciphered approximations) of these spoken forms.
- Especially in the **recipe-like sections**, the internal structure mirrors known medieval formats:
- `Ingredients → Preparation → Medium → Application`
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## ? Example Segment
**Voynich (EVA):** `qokedy shedy qokal ol dal dain`
**Phonetic reconstruction:** `koket skedna kocha ol daal dain`
**Possible interpretation:** *“Cook (it), strain (it), give (it) then (on), divide (it) finely”*
This structure is surprisingly similar to entries in early recipe books like the *Liber de Coquina*, Czech and Slavic herbal traditions, and entries in the [CoReMA database](You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.).
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## ? Why it might be promising
- **Word-length distribution** of the reconstruction aligns well with medieval medical/cooking texts.
- **Consistent morphological markers** appear at word endings (e.g., functional endings for verbs or instructions).
- **Segmented text structure** makes semantic patterns more recognizable (like recipes).
- The phonetic base allows **plausible natural language patterns** without invoking random text generation.
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## ? Full PDF Summary
I’ve compiled an exploratory paper outlining the hypothesis, methodology, and examples here:
? [Download PDF: *Phonetic Borderland Hypothesis*](sandbox:/mnt/data/Voynich_Grenzraum_Hypothese.pdf)
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## ? Call for collaboration / feedback
I’d be very interested in your thoughts on:
- The linguistic plausibility of a Central European oral vernacular base
- Any parallels to known dialects, glagolitic or early Germanic–Romance scripts
- Ideas for testing this on larger sections of the manuscript
- Collaborative work on identifying candidate vocabulary using phonetic heuristics
Thanks for reading!
Looking forward to your insights and constructive critique.
BR
Oliver
RE: Phonetic Borderland Hypothesis - nablator - 26-06-2025
Hi,
The polyglot hypothesis is attractive but it's too easy to find words in dictionaries when you allow several languages and similar words.
If you haven't already, you may want to read about Gerard Cheshire's solution, the Turkish solution (several languages in the Turkic/Turkish family)...
We've had a polyglot solution here a few days ago: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
(26-06-2025, 11:31 AM)Oliver Martin Rarrek Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.**Voynich (EVA):** `qokedy shedy qokal ol dal dain`
**Phonetic reconstruction:** `koket skedna kocha ol daal dain
Please, not again the unimaginative "kinda like EVA" AI solution.
RE: Phonetic Borderland Hypothesis - nablator - 26-06-2025
(26-06-2025, 11:31 AM)Oliver Martin Rarrek Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.This structure is surprisingly similar to entries in early recipe books like the *Liber de Coquina*, Czech and Slavic herbal traditions, and entries in the [CoReMA database](You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.).
Is this website publicly available? It's not in there: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. -> coming soon
RE: Phonetic Borderland Hypothesis - Mauro - 26-06-2025
I think the 'phonetic borderland' hypothesis is surely possible. But I also think that trying to decode the VMS by multi-lingual phonetic assonances is hopeless, there are so many ways to do this that one is bound to find 'solutions' which are due to pure chance. And it's especially hopeless when starting from an arbitrary assignment of phonemes to glyphs, such as EVA.
By the way, in your phonetic reconstruction you also made the additional hypothesis that EVA 'q' = EVA 'k' (= EVA 'h').
RE: Phonetic Borderland Hypothesis - cvetkakocj@rogers.com - 26-06-2025
Slavic languages inherently share a lot of similarity and grammar, and other European languages share a lot of common roots or common words that sometime are used for the same or different meaning, like the words charm (čar), dol-dale-thall (valley), the names of the months etc. It is not enough to find out correct transcription alphabet. While some EVA letters, such as a, e, i, o, l, r, s actually correspond to Latin letters, not all do. Besides, some transliterations, particularly minims, are ambiguous.
After finding transcription alphabet, the writing convention must be determined: Which letter or letter combination was used for particular sound. That is where the same words become different: Slavic 'ki' was written by Italian as 'ki', Slovenian 'huditi' was written in Croatian 'kuditi' or in Italian 'cudit'. Slovenian word 'zhudit' (wonder, marvel) was written in Italian 'cudit'. It would be expected that the author of the VM used the spelling convention consistently.
After finding the alphabet and spelling convention, it might be possible to define the language family - Romance, Slavic, German. While medieval Latin writing used a lot of mixed vocabulary and spelling, resulting in different Romance languages, and different Germanic languages incorporated many words from non-Germanic people, Slavic speaking people peasant population retained quite pure language in their everyday life and in Slavic liturgy. Most of Germanic words were introduced into Slavic languages at the time of Protestantism in the 16th century.
The proper translation of the VM is not just converting Voynich glyphs into Latin letters and assign the meaning of words based on spelling or phonetic similarity. A lot of research into medieval languages, grammar, phonetics and spelling is necessary. Also, to compare Voynich text with the text in contemporary Wikipedia articles, knowing the evolution of the languages is also necessary.
As far as I can tell, there is no computer application that can do all these steps. A lot of manual work is necessary.
RE: Phonetic Borderland Hypothesis - Ruby Novacna - 26-06-2025
(26-06-2025, 11:31 AM)Oliver Martin Rarrek Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I'd like to share a new approach I’ve been exploring with assistance from a language model.
...
## ? Call for collaboration / feedback
I have a strange feeling of rereading the same messages but with different authors' names. Imaginary texts, non-existent links, can we have a guarantee that behind these "models" seeking collaboration, there are real humans?
RE: Phonetic Borderland Hypothesis - nablator - 26-06-2025
(26-06-2025, 03:21 PM)Ruby Novacna Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I have a strange feeling of rereading the same messages but with different authors' names. Imaginary texts, non-existent links, can we have a guarantee that behind these "models" seeking collaboration, there are real humans?
A lot of people are discovering how easily they can get ChatGPT to suggest apparently sensible ideas and even translations of words. Nothing suspicious IMHO, it happens all the time.
I don't understand the You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. link. Maybe it existed in the past. The Wayback Machine has not archived that URL, so... I don't know. It's plausible: huma-num.fr stores text corpuses and other databases, its subdomains are assigned to projects. The CoReMA project seems to have ended in 2021 according to You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. I guess it was shelved and disappeared from the web.
I asked ChatGPT. It claimed that its database of texts is public and hallucinated an official website: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
RE: Phonetic Borderland Hypothesis - nablator - 26-06-2025
(26-06-2025, 06:44 PM)nablator Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.A lot of people are discovering how easily they can get ChatGPT to suggest apparently sensible ideas and even translations of words. Nothing suspicious IMHO, it happens all the time.
A Reddit user claimed to have made a MAJOR BREAKTHROUGH (all caps, so it must be important) a few months ago. He was very impressed by the deceptive AI. You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
He sent me the link to his ChatGPT chat. I don't know if I can share it here. It's awesome. 23000 words, including translations of alchemical recipes from the VM, "strong evidence that Voynich’s text encodes a hidden esoteric medical-alchemical system", endless (speculative) claims...
RE: Phonetic Borderland Hypothesis - Koen G - 26-06-2025
This is driving me crazy. CANT PEOPLE WRITE LIKE PEOPLE ANYMORE? I'm so tired of these low quality AI generated pseudo theories. At least theorists used to put their heart and soul into it. They spent blood, sweat and tears to come up with their nonsense. Now people just chat with a language model that isn't made for this kind of exercise and burden our brains with the results that contain a lot of words (so many words!) but no content.
RE: Phonetic Borderland Hypothesis - ReneZ - 27-06-2025
(26-06-2025, 07:30 PM)nablator Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.a hidden esoteric medical-alchemical system
This is one of several dead giveaways for an AI (ChatGPT) generated solution. I have seen it at least half a dozen times.
The other thing is that AI already 'knows' that simple substitution (with minor variations) cannot work, so it never comes up with such things.
Except when told to do so, I am sure.
It is kind of odd that the people who come up with this do not seem to realise that they are not the only one doing this.
Just a few days ago I got a mail from someone who would not disclose his result just yet, but said: "just remember k, t, p, f. From that you will recognise my solution when it is made public".
Well...