07-03-2016, 12:04 AM
Even if one puts apart the cipher theory, I am afraid that no syllabification is possible without our understanding of the alphabet. There is no confirmation that any of the transcription alphabets, EVA included, accurately represent the real alphabet adopted by the author.
I would also like to make some comments on the considerations expressed above in the thread,.
This fact suggests nothing. A person wishing to conceal his message could well use these letters to represent consonants, for an additional layer of obscurity. Besides, EVA e is not like Roman "e". It is like Roman "c".
If the text is abbreviated, then single characters would represent character blocks, like 9 (EVA y) represented "us" in the end of the word and "con" in the beginning of the word in medieval Latin documents.
The "pronouncibility" of the EVA transliteration is mere phantom, partly because the transcription is not fully matched to the Latin alphabet (e.g. substitute "c" for EVA e, as indicated above, and you will lose this pronouncibility at once), and partly because EVA is Latin-alphabet centric - while there is no confirmation that the Latin alphabet was the basis for the Voynichese script. For example, characters like a, c, i, o are found in the Cyrillic alphabet, characters l, d , r, y, q are like Arabic digits, and the rest of the characters are not found in the Latin alphabet at all.
I'd say that being Latin-centric and excess focus on EVA is the worst approach for those who wish to explore the plain text language path. EVA has quite little to do with the real Voynichese alphabet, and absolutely nothing with the Voynichese language (if any).
As I noted in another thread, it is technically not reliable to speak of (character) entropy in respect to a written language when we don't know what is that language's alphabet.
I would also like to make some comments on the considerations expressed above in the thread,.
Quote:So when we see that the VMS letters <a>, <e>, and <o> are nearly identical to the "a", "e", and "o" of the Roman alphabet respectively, then I think this fact alone already suggests that these letters are intended to correspond to vowels, and probably even to similar vowels as these letters represent in European languages.
This fact suggests nothing. A person wishing to conceal his message could well use these letters to represent consonants, for an additional layer of obscurity. Besides, EVA e is not like Roman "e". It is like Roman "c".
If the text is abbreviated, then single characters would represent character blocks, like 9 (EVA y) represented "us" in the end of the word and "con" in the beginning of the word in medieval Latin documents.
Quote:Really, the fact that EVA transliteration makes the text basically "pronouncible", as would likely any other transliteration scheme that mapped <a>, <e>, <o>, and <y> to vowels and the other letters to consonants (and considered <i> as a modifier), is by itself strong evidence that its implicit assignment of consonant and vowel status is basically correct.
The "pronouncibility" of the EVA transliteration is mere phantom, partly because the transcription is not fully matched to the Latin alphabet (e.g. substitute "c" for EVA e, as indicated above, and you will lose this pronouncibility at once), and partly because EVA is Latin-alphabet centric - while there is no confirmation that the Latin alphabet was the basis for the Voynichese script. For example, characters like a, c, i, o are found in the Cyrillic alphabet, characters l, d , r, y, q are like Arabic digits, and the rest of the characters are not found in the Latin alphabet at all.
I'd say that being Latin-centric and excess focus on EVA is the worst approach for those who wish to explore the plain text language path. EVA has quite little to do with the real Voynichese alphabet, and absolutely nothing with the Voynichese language (if any).
Quote:Second, the entropy is too low.
As I noted in another thread, it is technically not reliable to speak of (character) entropy in respect to a written language when we don't know what is that language's alphabet.