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Interchangeable ch/sh and k/t characters - Printable Version

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Interchangeable ch/sh and k/t characters - ololololo - 28-06-2026

I don't have any statistical research of my own, but that hasn't stopped me from replacing the ch/sh and k/t pairs. Interestingly, they seem to be interchangeable in many words.
Most words with ch have an equivalent with sh:
chedy(501) - shedy(427) 
chey(344) - shey(283) 
cheody(89) - sheody(50) 
chckhy(140)-shckhy(60) 
chdar(20)-shdar(9) 
chodaiin(44) - shodaiin(23) 
With the exception of chckhy and chdar, you can see that the frequency of sh words is slightly lower than that of ch words, but the difference is quite small.
The situation is similar with k/t:
kedy(44) - tedy(42)
okedy(118) - otedy(115)
okey(64) - otey(57)
okeody(37) - oteody(39)
okeos(14) - oteos(29)
okeor(22) - oteor(12)
The difference is also insignificant, sometimes only a few units.
The reason for this pattern is partly positional equality (the symbols are in the same position), but then the question is what caused it.
By the way, there is no such pattern between f and p, and these letters do not have words that can be compared (well, or I didn't find them).

What do you think?

RE: Interchangeable ch/sh and k/t characters - MarcoP - 28-06-2026

We discussed ch/sh several years ago:

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It's very interesting, bit I still don't know what to think.

RE: Interchangeable ch/sh and k/t characters - ololololo - 28-06-2026

(28-06-2026, 06:31 PM)MarcoP Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.We discussed ch/sh several years ago:

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It's very interesting, bit I still don't know what to think.
Thank you very much! I always have trouble finding out whether a particular topic has been discussed.
In general, the idea that sh is a contraction related to ch doesn't really work with statistics. What does it shorten? Why do the words end up looking the same? 
But we can definitely say that sh is a variant of ch, and the letter s is not involved. You see, the upward curl that's identified as part of the s can be on the left, in the middle, or even on the right (Takakari considers these cases to be cs). On my old screenshot from voynichese.com (I can't tell you what folio it's now) the curl is completely coming from below:
   
In the case of a numeric cipher, this "equality" can be explained by the fact that sh is a small deviation from ch. For example, if ch = 50, then sh = 51 or 49.

RE: Interchangeable ch/sh and k/t characters - Ruby Novacna - 28-06-2026

We are dealing with words that differ by only one consonant, such as, for example, in French the words "bateau" (boat), "château" (castle), "gâteau" (cake), and "râteau" (rake). 
Do they all mean the same thing?
And what about the verbs: "disait" (was saying), "gisait" (laying), "lisait" (was reading), "misait" (was betting), "visait" (was aiming)?

RE: Interchangeable ch/sh and k/t characters - ololololo - 28-06-2026

(28-06-2026, 06:55 PM)Ruby Novacna Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.We are dealing with words that differ by only one consonant, such as, for example, in French the words "bateau" (boat), "château" (castle), "gâteau" (cake), and "râteau" (rake). 
Do they all mean the same thing?
And what about the verbs: "disait" (was saying), "gisait" (laying), "lisait" (was reading), "misait" (was betting), "visait" (was aiming)?
That's true, but we can't say from here that d is the same as g, and you can't replace d with g in all French words. 
In the case of Voynichese, this analogy is hardly appropriate, or are you trying to say that you are a great seer who knows what is written in the manuscript?

RE: Interchangeable ch/sh and k/t characters - Ruby Novacna - 28-06-2026

(28-06-2026, 07:11 PM)ololololo Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.are you trying to say that you are a great seer who knows what is written in the manuscript?

Not just a great seer, a super great seer.

RE: Interchangeable ch/sh and k/t characters - ololololo - 28-06-2026

(28-06-2026, 07:21 PM)Ruby Novacna Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
(28-06-2026, 07:11 PM)ololololo Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.are you trying to say that you are a great seer who knows what is written in the manuscript?

Not just a great seer, a super great seer.
Then I believe you Smile

RE: Interchangeable ch/sh and k/t characters - rikforto - 28-06-2026

The high density of words 1 edit distance apart means that there are many, many such relationships. Ruby's examples are a good reminder it is not safe to assume they are related by anything but orthography---though, for what it's worth, given that the system is apparently designed, I tend to think they might.

RE: Interchangeable ch/sh and k/t characters - ololololo - 28-06-2026

(28-06-2026, 07:39 PM)rikforto Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.The high density of words 1 edit distance apart means that there are many, many such relationships. Ruby's examples are a good reminder it is not safe to assume they are related by anything but orthography---though, for what it's worth, given that the system is apparently designed, I tend to think they might.
Anyway, you should be careful with assumptions. There is a very high risk of making a mistake or drawing false conclusions. 
I also don't deny that the reason for the connection is orthographic, but I don't know if the concept of orthography can be applied to Voynichese, which is not a standalone language.

RE: Interchangeable ch/sh and k/t characters - MarcoP - 29-06-2026

(28-06-2026, 06:55 PM)Ruby Novacna Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.We are dealing with words that differ by only one consonant, such as, for example, in French the words "bateau" (boat), "château" (castle), "gâteau" (cake), and "râteau" (rake). 
Do they all mean the same thing?
And what about the verbs: "disait" (was saying), "gisait" (laying), "lisait" (was reading), "misait" (was betting), "visait" (was aiming)?

That’s an interesting parallel and a great opportunity to remember how peculiar Voynichese is. First, character entropy tells us that Voynichese isn’t a phonetic rendering of a European language: we know that Voynichese glyphs do not behave like vowels and/or consonants in French, English, German, Latin, Greek, Italian etc.

Second, while in ordinary European languages it is possible that an initial character can be replaced with a different initial, this is much rarer than in Voynichese (where the phenomenon is systematic). In You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view., I only find 190 couples that differ by only the first character, while I find 1004 for the top 1500 Voynichese words.
For instance, daiin has these variants among the top 1500 word types:
daiin 850 / saiin 127
daiin 850 / kaiin 79
daiin 850 / raiin 64
daiin 850 / taiin 45
daiin 850 / oaiin 25
daiin 850 / laiin 14
daiin 850 / paiin 7
daiin 850 / yaiin 5

Third, word frequencies for matching pairs in French often differ by a whole order of magnitude.
E.g. t/b matches:
ton 15513 / bon 11483
tout 47221 / bout 4571
tete 11999 / bete 1706

This of course makes sense, since the words in a couple typically are semantically unrelated and the match is "coincidental". This also happens for most of the 'daiin' examples above, but it usually doesn't happen for ch/sh.

Also, in most cases the t/b replacement doesn’t work in French:
trouver 16833 brouver?
temps 16785 bemps?
toujours 14336 boujours?
…

Compare with the top ten Voynichese ch/sh matches:
chedy 507 / shedy 434
chol 395 / shol 185
chey 352 / shey 278
chor 211 / shor 95
cheey 185 / sheey 149
cheol 173 / sheol 108
chy 164 / shy 98
chdy 146 / shdy 45
chckhy 140 / shckhy 60
cheor 93 / sheor 47

Here the replacement almost always works and typically results in comparable frequencies (max/min < 3).

EDIT: as always, it's possible that I made errors, but the differences with European natural languages are so huge that I think you can get the idea in any case.