Old Czech (Bohemian) or Moravian

[pjburkshire]

Background:  Bess and I disagree on many basic interpretations so I probably shouldn't continue to post my ideas in her thread.

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Review:  I strongly suspect that the mystery language of the Voynich Manuscript is Old Czech (Bohemian) or Moravian.  I am working on updating the EVA alphabet.  So far:

EVA  →  Update

a  →  ?
d  →  d
l  →  r
r  →  ?
s  →  s
t  →  v
v  →  ?
y  →  a


The "Rules" so far:

- May need to drop the first "o" character.
- Update the EVA characters.
- Vowels are flexible.


Like many people, I think the words on the top of page You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. are the Five Classical Greek Elements.

Air:  olkchs  →  lkchs  →  rkchs →  ?? "rauch" (wind)
Water:  otedy  →  tedy  →  veda →  ? "voda" or "vodou" (water)
Aether:  otork  →  tork  →  vo?k →  ?? "vrch" (the upper atmosphere)
Fire:  otol  →  tol  →  vor / var →  ? "var" (fire, heat)
Earth (Land):  dchdy  →  dchda →  ?? "deža" (earth, clay)

The only ones I feel really good about are "voda" (water) and "var" (fire) but I think the other three may work out if I can figure out more letters.


I previously talked about the solo "s" character meaning "with" in Czech. 

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It looks like the solo "a" character means "and" in Czech.

If I am reading EVA "y" ( y ) as "a", then the solo EVA "y" ( y ) could mean "and".  If I counted correctly, it looks like the solo EVA "y" ( y ) appears 50 times in the 20 pages of Quire 13.

Woo-hoo!!  Do we have two confirmed Czech words?

I know, two solo character words aren't going to convince anyone but it supports "otedy" ( otedy )  →  "voda".

[ololololo]

a → ?
d → d
l → r
r → ?
s → s
t → v
v → ?
y → a

How can this be justified?

otedy" ( otedy ) → "voda".

You received the translation “veda” (and “ved” (вед) in Slavic languages does not always mean “water”), and then they changed “e” to “o” without any justification (by the way, I cannot find any parallels to this in Slavic studies. There is a change of “e” to “o” in late Old Russian, but that is due to phonetics).

Air: olkchs → lkchs → rkchs → ?? "rauch" (wind)
Water: otedy → tedy → veda → ? "voda" or "vodou" (water)
Aether: otork → tork → vo?k → ?? "vrch" (the upper atmosphere)
Fire: otol → tol → vor / var → ? "var" (fire, heat)
Earth (Land): dchdy → dchda → ?? "deža" (earth, clay)

The problem with this approach is that it relies on what we see. You fit the word from VMS to the desired word (otedy to water), starting from that, but without knowing whether it will work with other words...

Secondly, it might not be water at all, but a humor . Humorous elements had alternatives to the elements.

To work confidently with languages, you need to be well‑versed in linguistics so that you can quickly identify your mistakes...

[pjburkshire]

The problem with this approach is that it relies on what we see. You fit the word from VMS to the desired word (otedy to water), starting from that, but without knowing whether it will work with other words...

The goal is to find the other words.  This is not the end.  This is only the beginning.  I expect it will be a long road.

If anyone else can find a better fit solution that is accepted by the majority of the forum community, I will be the first to applaud.  It will save me a lot of trouble!

We have been waiting for how many years?  Decades?  So far no one has gotten the job done.  I never wanted to do this but I'm tired of waiting.

[RadioFM]

Air:  olkchs  →  lkchs  →  rkchs →  ?? "rauch" (wind)
Water:  otedy  →  tedy  →  veda →  ? "voda" or "vodou" (water)
Aether:  otork  →  tork  →  vo?k →  ?? "vrch" (the upper atmosphere)
Fire:  otol  →  tol  →  vor / var →  ? "var" (fire, heat)
Earth (Land):  dchdy  →  dchda →  ?? "deža" (earth, clay)

[pjburkshire]

RadioFM, I am aware of the challenge and I appreciate your enthusiasm.  I will follow the schedule that I believe will be the most productive.  I do not read Czech.  I am learning the language small steps at a time.  If you can recruit people who do read Czech and are interested in participating in this adventure, that would be marvelous.

[Rafal]

Pjburkshire, I don't want to spoil the party but how do you explain that people like Jakub Hořčický of Tepenec, Jiří Bareš or Jan Marek Marci who owned Voynich Manuscript and spoke Czech were unable to crack it?

[pjburkshire]

Pjburkshire, I don't want to spoil the party but how do you explain that people like Jakub Hořčický of Tepenec, Jiří Bareš or Jan Marek Marci who owned Voynich Manuscript and spoke Czech were unable to crack it?

They didn't know the Voynichese alphabet.

It is time for the next step.  It is explained here:

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"The purpose of transliteration of the text is the conversion of the handwritten text of the Voynich MS into a computer-readable format (file). The aim of this is to allow computer software to analyse the text, for example in order to derive statistics or to aid the interpretation and ideally translation of the text."

EVA was never intended to be an accurate alphabet.  It was just to get it into the computers.  We now need to move on to the next step.  We need an accurate alphabet. 

Computers all over the world are full of representations of the Voynichese characters.  Now we need to know the accurate meaning of those Voynichese characters.

[nablator]

Now we need to know the accurate meaning of those Voynichese characters.

Yes! Good thinking! Nobody tried simple substitution!

[pjburkshire]

Yes! Good thinking! Nobody tried simple substitution!

I see your profile lists that you speak Serbian.  How close is Serbian to Czech?

[nablator]

Yes! Good thinking! Nobody tried simple substitution!

I see your profile lists that you speak Serbian.  How close is Serbian to Czech?

I don't understand much: almost nothing (maybe 10% of words, or less, are similar). Serbian is closer to Bulgarian and very close to Croatian.