09-11-2017, 02:12 PM
Okay now I'm lost. I'll share my mail and then his reply:
Quote:Hi Gerard
I'm sorry to say that there are serious issues with your work. Don't feel too bad about it, hundreds of people have attempted to somehow read MS Beinecke 408 and they all hit the same walls - even professionals in relevant fields.
Specifically to your paper, I see significant problems related to linguistics, history and the specificity of the Voynich manuscript.
- Linguists have used the comparative method to reliably reconstruct the proto-Italic language and it does not correspond to what you propose. See the Wiki: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. . The method you used ignores fundamental laws of language change and cannot produce reliable results.
- The proto-Italic language was spoken before the Homeric poems were written, just to provide a comparison. By that time, it had already evolved to Old Latin, which is attested mostly in inscriptions. The earliest know author in any Romance language was You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. , who lived in the 3rd century BCE, over half a millennium later than the extinction of the proto-Romance language. It is absolutely impossible for any large text in proto-Italic to have survived, even in transmission.
- Proto-Italic changed into languages like Latin. It would not have been understood anymore by the time we get the first Latin authors, and certainly not 2 millennia later, when the Voynich MS was written.
- The Praeneste fibula bears the oldest known inscription in a Latin language: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. . It is clear that at this time the Latin culture was in an "inscriptions" stage (like runes on Viking swords) and longer texts were not made. The language you propose for the VM is still much older than this! No linguist or historian could take this seriously, since it's simply not compatible with the evidence.
- I don't know where to begin listing the problems with the VM itself. The text in MS 408 is statistically very odd, leaving us scratching our heads when we compare it to real languages. I'll give just one example (but there are many like this).
The following graph compares where in the word a specific letter occurs. The first bar is word-initial, the last one word-final. In Latin, "d" occurs more in the beginning of the word, but in over half of the cases it occurs elsewhere. In the Voynich manuscript, the sign you transcribe as "d" occurs almost exclusively in word-initial position.
(Marco's graph)
This is absolutely impossible in a Romance language. Indeed, the comparative method teaches us that "d" occurs anywhere in the word in Proto-Italic. But Voynich glyphs behave differently. These statistical anomalies are one of the reasons why the manuscript remains undeciphered to this day, and indeed why some researchers think that it cannot encode real language.
I hope this helps.
Koen
Quote:Hi Koen,
Many thanks for your reply - I feel bad that you have invested so much time and effort, as I am entirely certain the solution is correct. I have conducted hundreds of experiments and every one has generated a positive outcome. The marker words demonstrate objective proof, so we know that the other words are correct even if they have yet to be located and defined. It's simple scientific logic.
I might add also, that various linguistics experts have begun to verify the work. I am not at all interested in the 'Voynich code' element, as that is entirely trivial, yet overblown in the minds of enthusiasts. That is why I have not used that word in the paper.
What is important is the linguistic and semiotic discovery, as that is what it gives to science. Perhaps you would like to participate by contributing to the lexicon. The science is all that matters.
Kindest regards,
Gerard.