I'll give an example...
EVA-shody
In Latin, tr/cr/ti/ci is frequently written as a ligature that looks like a bench character (I have hundreds of examples from medieval Latin texts).
If you put a cap or squiggle over it, in Latin, it becomes ter or cer or tir or cir or cit or rit (or one of the other interpretations, depending on whether the second char expands to c/t/i or r—which are all valid expansions in Latin).
Also, in Latin, the 9 at the end becomes -um or -us (and occasionally others, but -um and -us are overwhelmingly the most common).
Now let's say that the figure-8 character in the VMS can be either d or t (some languages don't make a distinction between d and t—to a foreign ear they are sometimes treated as the same, to a hearing-impaired person they can also be difficult to distinguish).
So, in Latin, it is justifiable to read it as cerotum/ceratum (waxy liniment/waxy ointment)—which would fit the context of the VMS.
People find a word or two or three like this (the VMS is full of them) and they get all excited... they think they've decoded it. The problem is that most don't take the next step, to see how often it occurs, WHERE in the sentences it occurs, and to confirm that it is correct in context with surrounding text in at least a semi-grammatical way or some way that would indicate poetry, notes, lists, etc. (which may be looser grammatically, but still have certain structural regularities).
Once they do notice the level of inflexibility of the letter positions and the unusual amount of repetition, many of them give up or they start taking liberties with the translation that are difficult to justify.
I pay no attention to claims of proposed solutions unless they reveal their method. Even when they reveal the method, I often discount it because if the method only yields a handful of words out of tens of thousands, it's probably a coincidence.
EVA-shody
In Latin, tr/cr/ti/ci is frequently written as a ligature that looks like a bench character (I have hundreds of examples from medieval Latin texts).
If you put a cap or squiggle over it, in Latin, it becomes ter or cer or tir or cir or cit or rit (or one of the other interpretations, depending on whether the second char expands to c/t/i or r—which are all valid expansions in Latin).
Also, in Latin, the 9 at the end becomes -um or -us (and occasionally others, but -um and -us are overwhelmingly the most common).
Now let's say that the figure-8 character in the VMS can be either d or t (some languages don't make a distinction between d and t—to a foreign ear they are sometimes treated as the same, to a hearing-impaired person they can also be difficult to distinguish).
So, in Latin, it is justifiable to read it as cerotum/ceratum (waxy liniment/waxy ointment)—which would fit the context of the VMS.
People find a word or two or three like this (the VMS is full of them) and they get all excited... they think they've decoded it. The problem is that most don't take the next step, to see how often it occurs, WHERE in the sentences it occurs, and to confirm that it is correct in context with surrounding text in at least a semi-grammatical way or some way that would indicate poetry, notes, lists, etc. (which may be looser grammatically, but still have certain structural regularities).
Once they do notice the level of inflexibility of the letter positions and the unusual amount of repetition, many of them give up or they start taking liberties with the translation that are difficult to justify.
I pay no attention to claims of proposed solutions unless they reveal their method. Even when they reveal the method, I often discount it because if the method only yields a handful of words out of tens of thousands, it's probably a coincidence.