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+--- Thread: [Poll] What *are* vords? (/thread-4775.html)
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[Poll] What *are* vords? - RadioFM - 30-06-2025
Poll no. 1 (see above): Nature of vords
When decoded, most (if not all) Voynich vords will turn out to be... (Choose 1 option)
a) Words or almost whole words
b) Syllables, bigrams, n-grams
c) Single letters (or phonemes)
Assume any dummy/null vords or characters removed
Poll no. 2: Nature of the cipher
I believe the bulk of the text was ciphered using... (Multiple choices allowed)
☐ Dummy (null) characters or strokes
☐ Dummy (null) words
☐ Transposition within words
☐ Transposition within lines
☐ Indexed codebook (not just for a minority of words, but for the bulk of text)
☐ Auxiliary devices for encoding (wheels, matrices)
☐ State or context-dependent encoding
☐ Something else
☐ ☑
Considering that good progress has been made in showing that VMS is certainly not Latin, Italian or German ciphered through simple substitution, I was wondering what do you think VMS vords would look like, when decoded.
I'm aware of the many nuances you all may hold about differences in Currier/RZ languages, topics, dummy words and padding text, etc. I'd appreciate it if you could try to cast your vote within the (limited) options given and explain further in the comments.
I'm interested in polling those who hold the more "traditional" views, namely that it's likely ciphered Latin, Romance, Germanic, or the like.
RE: [Poll] What *are* vords? - RadioFM - 30-06-2025
Although a mapping of vords to single letters/phonemes is a tempting guess for me, as it would resolve the infamous reduplication patterns w/ these plaintext languages, the amount of resulting text would be severely shortened to the point I'd question if it the knowledge condensed would even be useful and worth writing down with such a complex cipher. I feel that an n-gram mapping would be so much practical for the authors - assuming they wrote the MS to recall or pass down knowledge. Whole words, even with a codebook, are incompatible with a few of the stats gathered so far I believe, even though TTR and word entropy would seem to back it up.
These would be my choices if I had to guess within the hypotheses of the 2nd Poll.
☑ Dummy (null) characters or strokes
☑ Dummy (null) words
☐ Transposition within words
☐ Transposition within lines
☐ Indexed codebook (not just for a minority of words, but for the bulk of text)
☑ State or context-dependent encoding
☑ Auxiliary devices for encoding (wheels, matrices)
The seemingly varying structure and frequency of vords, the word-order patterns and other phenomena suggest to me that there's a lot of dummy words and or characters involved - possibly generated through an "auto-copying" mechanism as suggested by many researchers.
RE: [Poll] What *are* vords? - ReneZ - 30-06-2025
(30-06-2025, 12:32 AM)RadioFM Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Although a mapping of vords to single letters/phonemes is a tempting guess for me, as it would resolve the infamous reduplication patterns w/ these plaintext languages, the amount of resulting text would be severely shortened to the point I'd question if it the knowledge condensed would even be useful and worth writing down with such a complex cipher.
Consensus would most certainly be achieved if the resolved plain text warrants it.
This means, a consistent mapping leading to meaningful text in some known language of the time.
It would be even better if any of the following were true:
- the resulting text is also known from other sources
- the mapping of single characters to words is based on some simple rule.
If the plain text is good enough, these are not even necessary.
EDIT: when responding, I should also answer the polls:
Poll 1: I don't know.
I would favour (b) slightly above the other two.
Poll 2: Again I don't know, but (also again) some appear more interesting than others
Null characters or strokes: I could see that
Null words: not really, but if so, then position-based (e.g. right half of each line)
Transposition: no
Indexed codebook: no
Auxiliary devices: no
Something else: yes.
RE: [Poll] What *are* vords? - RadioFM - 30-06-2025
(30-06-2025, 01:49 AM)ReneZ Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.It would be even better if any of the following were true:
- the resulting text is also known from other sources
- the mapping of single characters to words is based on some simple rule.
100%. Within the frame of these hypotheses (cipher + main western European language family), the concept of a few simple rules over a complicated ciphering mechanism is surely seductive - and depending on those rules it may prove super difficult for us to even deduct them while puzzling together the whole thing. Still, I think if the core ruleset would be so simple, someone would have figured something out by now after decades (centuries) of attacking the text. The fact that so many cryptographical attacks by experts have failed always leads me to believe that any cipher here (if there's any) has to be somewhat convoluted.
Thank you for participating in the poll
I forgot to add State/context-dependent encoding (to be taken in a broad sense) as an option to Poll no. 2.
RE: [Poll] What *are* vords? - MarcoP - 30-06-2025
Labels make me favour option 1, but of course it's just a guess, reduplication is a problem, and I don't know what the cipher system could be. Also, it could be an artificial language.
RE: [Poll] What *are* vords? - Jorge_Stolfi - 30-06-2025
(30-06-2025, 12:20 AM)RadioFM Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Poll no. 1 (see above): Nature of vords
When decoded, most (if not all) Voynich vords will turn out to be... (Choose 1 option)
a) Words or almost whole words
b) Syllables, bigrams, n-grams
Both (a) and (b): as in "Chinese" languages, the unit of meaning is the syllable, which in Chinese script is one character. However a large part of the vocabulary is two-syllable compounds whose meaning is related to but not determined by the meanings of the two syllables; like English "typewriter", "paramedic", "highlands", "pineapple", etc. The strings of Voynichese glyphs that are delimited by the "word" spaces will turn out to be mostly syllables, some two-syllable compounds, plus maybe some other symbols, like abbreviations or isolated tone marks.
Quote:Poll no. 2: Nature of the cipher
I believe the bulk of the text was ciphered using... (Multiple choices allowed)
☐ Something else
Not ciphered at all, just a phonetic rendition of the language in an invented spelling system.
Quote:I'm interested in polling those who hold the more "traditional" views, namely that it's likely ciphered Latin, Romance, Germanic, or the like.
Reminds me of the old educational joke:
- Walking home at night, a Good Samaritan sees another man on all fours, looking for something on the sidewalk, under a lamppost.
- "I lost my keys" says the man, who is obviously quite drunk.
- "OK, let me help", says the first guy. But after looking everywhere in vain, he asks:
- "Are you sure you sure you lost the keys around here?"
- "Actually, I lost them over there. But over there it is too dark to look for them."
All the best, --jorge
RE: [Poll] What *are* vords? - oshfdk - 30-06-2025
(30-06-2025, 12:20 AM)RadioFM Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I'm interested in polling those who hold the more "traditional" views, namely that it's likely ciphered Latin, Romance, Germanic, or the like.
I'm certainly in this group, but I cannot really answer the poll as it is now, because for me the most likely option is that "vords" do not exist. Spaces are likely pure convenience or maybe a trick to make the encoding look more language-like in appearance. In most tests I perform on the Voynich MS I treat the ciphertext as a stream of codes, ignoring the spaces completely.
RE: [Poll] What *are* vords? - Rafal - 30-06-2025
You missed "abbreviated words" option in the pool. Something like "dns" for "dominus" or "pp" for "papa". Many people hinted that the encoded text, if it exists, may be heavily abbreviated.
If you take into consideration that things in VM like "aiin" are probably a single symbol then vords become very short, unable to code as many letters as in words from European languages. Of course then there is the Asian hypothesis
But I personally believe they are rather some kind of numbers pointing to words (or syllables) in nomenclator list, something like page 6, column 2, word 7. Not all these stuff has to appear in a single word, short words probably appear on the first page or so.
Or maybe it's all gibberish after all???
So my answer is:
Poll 1: a) words or abbreviated words
Poll 2: Indexed codebook
RE: [Poll] What *are* vords? - RadioFM - 30-06-2025
I appreciate the input from you all
I'm well aware we all have our doubts when it comes to the nature of the text, whether it has any semantic meaning, whether there are any ciphers or plaintext languages under it. It's most likely the case that we are all quite open and perhaps actively exploring several other possibilities simultaneously, from the hoax/gibberish hypothesis, to the artificial language one, "exotic" languages and whatnot. I myself am quite open to most of these.
I'm interested however in getting a rough idea of the degree of verbosity we are expecting within the framework of the more "mainstream" hypotheses, and an insight into what kinds of encoding we're considering given all the stats that have been pulled out throughout the years.
(30-06-2025, 10:52 AM)oshfdk Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Spaces are likely pure convenience or maybe a trick to make the encoding look more language-like in appearance.
I totally get it. There are many schemes that don't exactly fit within the 3 options, even some substitution ciphers can fall outside those 3 options, but if you had to make a guess of what the "usual" vord will map to, in terms of quantity of plaintext characters?
Now, I've no idea what kinds of ciphers you're considering but say for instance, you have a cipher through which sequence of pseudo-repeated like oke+y oke+y vords map to a whole words, or perhaps ol ol maps to a single letter while maybe three k t k gallows are parsed separately ahead from the surrounding characters. In such cases you could perhaps average out the rough mapping to get an estimate of the verbosity you're expecting.
RE: [Poll] What *are* vords? - oshfdk - 30-06-2025
(30-06-2025, 04:32 PM)RadioFM Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I totally get it. There are many schemes that don't exactly fit within the 3 options, even some substitution ciphers can fall outside those 3 options, but if you had to make a guess of what the "usual" vord will map to, in terms of quantity of plaintext characters?
If I have to make a guess, I'd say that 5 Voynichese glyphs correspond to roughly 2-3 Latin characters. But this is just a guess, based on some general ideas about what's likely and what is not. Easily could be more verbose (say, 1 Latin per 5 Voynichese), the only issue with this is I won't choose a scheme like this for 200+ pages, too much extra writing. On the other hand, it's hard to imagine a scheme that would allow for 1-1 correspondence and still support the statistics of the Voynich MS.