When it comes to common words (those that are generated by Hoffmann's transliteration from Voynichese to the fragments resulting from the substitution chart), I get the impression he is saying some of the stubs are general purpose words.
For example, he referred to "re" as meaning "the thing".
If I understand correctly, he is saying that "re" is a stand-in for whatever "thing" is relevant to that phrase, whatever object relates to the other words in that phrase.
If that's true, then if you have something like "rat" in a phrase, then "the thing" might be cheese. If there is a boat in the phrase, "the thing" might be water or oars or whatever else subjectively fits.
Now, in principle, I'm not 100% opposed to this, because medieval scribes did use a lot of abbreviations that looked the same, but meant different things but... the context around them was rational and discernible and that is not the case here.
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Since this is subjective, there isn't really any way to test whether this is a right or wrong interpretation unless there is a fairly high percentage of other words in the phrase that can be traced to Latin, and that is not happening. This is not even close to Latin. Even when there is the occasional Latin word like "walls" (plural), he has translated it into "rat" (singular).
At first, when he kept saying, "Don't use Google Translate," I assumed Hoffmann meant because it doesn't measure up to standards of a really GOOD Latin translation. Now I realize that wasn't he meant... What he means is, "Don't use Google Translate, because you have to use the ommm-mani-padme-ommmmmm part of your brain (or alternately a tin hat) to "tune in" on what it means," (in other words, it's not really Latin, it's Hoffmannese).
For example, he referred to "re" as meaning "the thing".
If I understand correctly, he is saying that "re" is a stand-in for whatever "thing" is relevant to that phrase, whatever object relates to the other words in that phrase.
If that's true, then if you have something like "rat" in a phrase, then "the thing" might be cheese. If there is a boat in the phrase, "the thing" might be water or oars or whatever else subjectively fits.
Now, in principle, I'm not 100% opposed to this, because medieval scribes did use a lot of abbreviations that looked the same, but meant different things but... the context around them was rational and discernible and that is not the case here.
.
Since this is subjective, there isn't really any way to test whether this is a right or wrong interpretation unless there is a fairly high percentage of other words in the phrase that can be traced to Latin, and that is not happening. This is not even close to Latin. Even when there is the occasional Latin word like "walls" (plural), he has translated it into "rat" (singular).
At first, when he kept saying, "Don't use Google Translate," I assumed Hoffmann meant because it doesn't measure up to standards of a really GOOD Latin translation. Now I realize that wasn't he meant... What he means is, "Don't use Google Translate, because you have to use the ommm-mani-padme-ommmmmm part of your brain (or alternately a tin hat) to "tune in" on what it means," (in other words, it's not really Latin, it's Hoffmannese).
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