I'm popping in briefly... can't stay, but I wanted to make a quick comment.
Searcher, I always read your posts, you have contributed some good ideas to the board.
What I wanted to put out there was a couple of thoughts...
1. If you expand an abbreviation into Latin, and add intervening letters, especially alternate letters, you will get valid words for many combinations because expanding the abbreviation already gives you a big chunk of a word in that language. You could do the same for other languages like Spanish, for example. If you found out which common suffixes and prefixes were used in that language, and expanded out the abbreviations into those suffixes/prefixes (the same as one would for Latin), and propose alternates for the intervening letters, you will get many valid words.
2. Almost every literate person in the western world in the 15th century knew Latin. Even A. Kircher, who came along almost two centuries later, wrote many books in Latin and was interested in linguistics, decoding languages, creating a universal language, etc. That's partly why the manuscript was put into his hands. If the VMS is in Latin (or mostly Latin), why couldn't polymath minds like his, that were already very skilled at Latin and totally familiar with Latin abbreviations... why couldn't they decode it?
Ok, gotta run again. Sorry. Wish I could spend longer on this.
Searcher, I always read your posts, you have contributed some good ideas to the board.
What I wanted to put out there was a couple of thoughts...
1. If you expand an abbreviation into Latin, and add intervening letters, especially alternate letters, you will get valid words for many combinations because expanding the abbreviation already gives you a big chunk of a word in that language. You could do the same for other languages like Spanish, for example. If you found out which common suffixes and prefixes were used in that language, and expanded out the abbreviations into those suffixes/prefixes (the same as one would for Latin), and propose alternates for the intervening letters, you will get many valid words.
2. Almost every literate person in the western world in the 15th century knew Latin. Even A. Kircher, who came along almost two centuries later, wrote many books in Latin and was interested in linguistics, decoding languages, creating a universal language, etc. That's partly why the manuscript was put into his hands. If the VMS is in Latin (or mostly Latin), why couldn't polymath minds like his, that were already very skilled at Latin and totally familiar with Latin abbreviations... why couldn't they decode it?
Ok, gotta run again. Sorry. Wish I could spend longer on this.
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