I believe I found the translation for the word blue, flower, and spot!

[geujfys]

I originally posted this on the Voynich subreddit, but I will post here as well.

I did some analyses on the document, seeing if words followed certain types of illustrations. I looked at a bunch of pages with prominent flowers and found a word that consistently followed these pages (chckhy in EVA). I then looked for words next to my candidate for the word flower, and I found a word that consistently followed illustrations with blue in them (ykchy in EVA). This word for blue would act as a modifier for the word flower. I did the same kind of analysis again and found a word that followed illustrations with spots very consistently (chkeey in EVA).
I believe this is the first claim for a "translated" adjective. The chain of verification these words have with each other makes them at least a little more legitimate. I also did some more analysis, which you can see here: [color=var(--newCommunityTheme-linkText)]You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.[/color]

If you do not want to read the whole article, I encourage you to look at the pages "chkeey" appears on (7v, 17v, 30r, 33r, 39r, 50v, 82r, 93v, 99r, 100r, 111r, 11v). I use this link to view the manuscript: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.  If there is a word for spot in the Voynich manuscript, chkeey is certainly the best candidate for it.

Please tell me what you think. I would like some more input.

[Anton]

Hi geujfys, and welcome to the forum!

The method that you use makes sense conceptually. We've been doing something like that with RobGea in a yet unfinished experiment, the results of which are not published yet. The major problem with this methodology, however, is to correctly choose the rules (both association rules and filtering rules) when you are trying to establish the context. Basically, it's a blind shot most of the time in the hope that it might be on target, but it might not, as well. For example, you expect that the word "blue" would appear on pages where blue flowers are depicted. That might not be the case, for many possible reasons. Some of them:

a) The flowers are not actually blue, but purple. But due to the purple paint being rare and expensive, the artist used blue paint instead. However, the word used in the text would be correct - "purple".

b) The flowers are painted erroneously by a later owner, and we don't know their real color. What's worse, they may have been painted inconsistently, e.g. a pink and a yellow flower were both painted blue.

c) The text just does not mention flower colors. That would be perfectly possible for a pharmacopaea focusing on the plants' use, not on their botanical description.

As to the Pareto principle. Yes, it is applicable to the VMS. For example, consider the "Voynich stars" (f68r1 and r2). 17% of "dayside" (68r1) stars provide 75% of their occurrences in the text, 21% of nightside (68r2) stars provide 82% of their occurrences in the text, and 17% of all stars provide 75% of total star occurrences in the text.

[aStobbart]

Hello geujfys and welcome to the forum! I have seen your post on the VMs subreddit and submitted a short comment there, in the same line as Anton. Point B is specially important: we cannot be sure about what colours, if any, the author/authors had in mind when they wrote the text.

However, there has to be a word in voynichese for "figure": The author needs a way to point to illustrations ("As we can see in this figure..." "This figure depicts..."), unless one believes that the text and illustratios are not related at all.

I had this thought after discussing the Tratado de Astrologia (You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.) in a previous thread. In this MS the author uses the world figure (spanish figura) extensively when there are illustrations in the page.

Might be a very "broad" term to look for, though. But in the same line of your method. Maybe more experienced researches can provide more useful feedback to you.

[Koen G]

Astobbart, I'm not sure if we can take as a rule that texts in plant manuscripts refer explicitly to the figures. Off the top of my head, I can't even recall one example where a text is aware that it's illustrated.

The best we can hope for is that certain drawing elements consistently correspond to certain text elements. I do agree with the sentiment that colour is especially tricky for the reasons mentioned by Anton. Blue covers a lot of the palette.

[aStobbart]

I was thinking in the astrological section when I had that thought, while reading the Tratado de Astrologia. But yes, I can see why this could not be the case for herbals. You could describe the entire plant and it's properties without "pointing" to the illustration.

[geujfys]

Thanks for the response! I certainly agree with you here. The author(s) may have felt that "blue" didn't need to be mentioned for every blue plant. What we are left with is a somewhat arbitrary trail that makes candidates less trustworthy. I'm glad you are also attempting this, and I wish you success! The Parento principle with the stars is interesting by the way.

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Hello geujfys and welcome to the forum! I have seen your post on the VMs subreddit and submitted a short comment there, in the same line as Anton. Point B is specially important: we cannot be sure about what colours, if any, the author/authors had in mind when they wrote the text.

However, there has to be a word in voynichese for "figure": The author needs a way to point to illustrations ("As we can see in this figure..." "This figure depicts..."), unless one believes that the text and illustratios are not related at all.

I had this thought after discussing the Tratado de Astrologia (You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.) in a previous thread. In this MS the author uses the world figure (spanish figura) extensively when there are illustrations in the page.

Might be a very "broad" term to look for, though. But in the same line of your method. Maybe more experienced researches can provide more useful feedback to you.

Thanks. And that is interesting. I'm sure the word for "leaf", "medicinal", "woman", etc. can also be found with more analysis too.

[-JKP-]

I'm not convinced the flowers are blue (in real life).

The VMS illustrator was working with a limited palette. Blue seems to me to be a fairly generic color for flowers and seeds. A symbolic way of expressing them. There is very little color mixing for flowers. The viola plant is a little more naturalistic, but attention to flower colors is somewhat minimal.

The "tidier painter" put quite a bit of attention into mixing greens for different leaf colors, but seems to have given less attention to flower colors.

[Koen G]

I once counted the percentage of blue flowers in the VM compared to the percentage of bue-and-blueish flowers in other herbals. I didn't write down the results, but as you may expect the difference was ridiculously large. 

Red is also problematic because apart from one folio, it does not occur in Herbal B, while it is plentiful in Herbal B. And the remaining colors are various greens and many shades of brown.

[bi3mw]

What irritates me is the naming of "blau" as "blauem" (?) In German at that time, "blau" is probably "blaw, blā, or blāwes". New High German was neither spoken nor written around 1425.

[Anton]

What irritates me is the naming of "blau" as "blauem" (?) In German at that time, "blau" is probably "blaw, blā, or blāwes". New High German was neither spoken nor written around 1425.

Grobes Leintuch, that's how Lexer describes "blâ" or "blahe".