M. Yokubinas translation

[MarcoP]

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This stems from my last post on Reddit when someone compared me to Cheshire. I do not use multiple languages. I utilize Biblical Hebrew and now have over 100 pages complete. 
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I don't think the comparison to Cheshire is fair. His "method" is mostly subjective, and there's no such thing as "proto-Romance" in the 15th century.

Your method is consistent and can be replicated. My main concern about it (as I've mentioned in one of the early posts) is that there is still the problem of explaining the unorthodox letter frequency and position. These two aspects of the VMS text are not consistent with natural language texts in any language (including Semitic languages).

Hi JKP,
I have already wasted several hours on this: it certainly wasn't smart of me, but now that I am accused of being unfair I feel I must somehow reply.

You make a few statements that I want to address:


1. Cheshirese ("proto-Romance") does not exist; you imply that Yokubinese exists

Some quotes from Yokubinas

it is written in a partial mirrored Hebrew script of ancient origins in an unknown Semitic language, similar to Aramaic

The vowels are already in the VM, I have to take most out when utilizing for Hebrew root words. Please remember, this is not the Hebrew language. I use Hebrew root words to get a small understanding of an unknown Semitic language.

This is also not the Hebrew language, but an agglutinative unknown one utilizing the Hebrew letters for magical purposes. My Theory is that is the lost language of the Khazars.

There are Turkic words in there as well as the Ardic family has shown.

My theory is it is the lost written language of the Khazars who were Turkic Jews, and they used an agglutinative language, so you have to take and phonetically find corresponding root words in Hebrew or Turkish to get an understanding of what was trying to be conveyed.

I believe it is a form of Turkic Hebrew, utilized by the Khazars. whose written language disappeared around the 14th century. You can utilize Hebrew phonetic root words to give meaning to an agglutinative language.

It is my theory that this is the 'Only" known writing of the Khazars or Turkic Jews. Their written language has been lost for centuries.

I do not know the language or structure, I can only pull out Hebrew root words. I can easily make up flowery speech

The process works for pulling out ROOT words, and their meaning, Not sentence structure of a language we have no idea what it is.

She clearly states that this is an extinct language that only survives in the Voynich manuscript. This is exactly what Cheshire says. We are dealing with fantasy languages loosely based on the lexicon of existing languages.

protoRomance:Yokubinese=Latin:Hebrew

2. The "method is consistent and can be replicated"

All steps in Monica's method require guessing, hence it cannot be replicated:

A. plant identification - as we know, it is largely impossible being certain of the identification of a Voynich plant, but Monica's guessing of word meaning depends on the analysis of the drawings (see B below). 
For instance, she identifies You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. as "Centaurea Akamantis". Th.Petersen thought it was "Pfeilkraut - sagittaria". Edith Sherwood says "Black Salsify or Viper’s grass (Scorzonera)". Different people identify plants differently.
You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. pointed out this problem when discussing Cheshire's approach: "As with most would-be Voynich interpreters, the logic of this proposal is circular and aspirational: he starts with a theory about what a particular series of glyphs might mean, usually because of the word's proximity to an image that he believes he can interpret."

B. mapping to root words - the mapping is not one-to-one, any Voynichese word can map into an unbounded number of Yokubinese words. For instance, the most frequent Voynichese word daiin can mean:
"Chief, chief place, chief things, head, beginnings, sum, tops, leader, Captain, height, behead, poison, Hemlock, venom..." [please note the ellipsis: the list is unbounded]

How do you choose? "I use "Chief", which is the most popular, when it is hard to 'guess' which other word was meant. 14r was easier as the plant causes severe contact dermatitis, but "poison, poison" could have also meant "chief poison" or "poison tops" take your pick. I try to keep it simple."
Different people will choose different alternatives.

C. splitting words. She writes: "All large words need to be broken down, if no word exists to gain an understanding of what might have been conveyed." There is no systematic rule to split words: you do that whenever you cannot find anything you like using the whole word. Different people will split words differently.

D. "make up flowery speech" - this is how she describes the process of turning the initial salad of English words into  something more or less meaningful. While Hebrew is inflected, nothing is known of he structure of Yokubinese: it does not seem to be inflected. As in most (all?) languages, much of the  meaning of Hebrew is conveyed by function words.
For instance, according to You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view., the ten most frequent words in the Hebrew bible are 9 function words + God:
   

Please, compare these words with Monica's interpretation of the most frequent Voynichese word (point B). Is it unfair to reject this as arbitrary?
A word-salad from You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. (see large image): 

You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

   

"interpretation beauty so despair poison poison violent-walk-of confident proper because-of to-say so itch"
The corresponding "flowery speech":
"Commentary: Beautiful but despair this poison, poison. Walking to fast and confident will give proper, that is to say terrible itching."

Is the final result coherent? Is it unfair to say that this is as good as what Cheshire gets? e.g. "to begin to forget the deceased, this is induction to a method of constraint. Overwhelmed women bathe to acquire god’s holy light"

She also writes:
"When deciphering, the language comes out garbled… so first we will use our English language skills to guess and create a more readable understanding of the words"
"Guessing" from "garbled language" cannot be done consistently, in particular when the language has no grammar. And this last step only adds to the arbitrariness of points A,B,C.


3. "My main concern about it is that there is still the problem of explaining the unorthodox letter frequency and position"

The fact that you are perfectly happy with the total absence of a grammar is puzzling. Is it unfair to think that grammar should play a role in a consistent translation? Lisa Fagin Davis observed that Gibb's work must be rejected because it is not grammatically correct. Monica's work is no better.

Anyway, the problem you mention can be easily solved by assuming a nomenclator (something like Rene's mod_2). You may conclude that Monica has discovered that this nomenclator is somehow mnemonic and a clever researcher may "consistently" guess the right word and retrieve the original "meaning" (which happens to be largely incoherent).