Transliteration and interpretation issues

[-JKP-]

EVA converts the c-shapes to e-shapes for mnemonic purposes. Mnemonic text systems almost always depend on converting the VMS glyphs to something that is closer to natural language so it can be more easily remembered. To put it simply: EVA CHANGES Voynichese shapes to be closer to natural language. Many computational attacks assume the vowel-like shapes are vowels.

While one has to be careful doing numerical analysis using Eva transliterations, this argument is not valid, I am afraid.

Transliteration is not about shapes. It is about rendering the handwriting in a computer-readable form.

Transliteration is about shapes. Why were most of the transliteration shapes chosen to be similar to Voynichese glyphs? If it was not about shapes, there are many better systems that are good for computers and not good for people. I'm a software developer, I know what kinds of characters are conducive to computational attacks. The selection of plaintext characters for EVA obviously took alphabetic shapes into consideration. There's no point in pretending it didn't.

But it's inconsistent in that regard.

The Voynichese c-shape was changed to "e" instead of "c"? Plaintext e has the same "value" as a transliteration character as plaintext c, so I assume the change was for mnemonic reasons? For ease of typing? Because the shape was easier for humans to remember?

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Unfortunately this hinders research.

People make assumptions about Voynichese based on the transliteration. If a c-shape is changed to an e-shape (both shapes have equal value as plaintext), it clearly DOES affect human perception. It shouldn't, but it does. The fault lies with the researchers, but that doesn't mean we can't try to do things that reduce this kind of misperception.

My criticism was not of EVA, my criticism was of the researchers' assumptions about Voynichese based on their use of EVA transcription systems.


Whenever I point this out, you react as though I am criticizing the EVA system. Primarily I am criticizing the researchers. The thread was not about EVA, it was about a flawed computational attacks on Voynichese (of which there are many).


I don't think we should be ignoring the fact that the transliteration system affects human perception of Voynichese. I usually only bring up subjects like this because I think it can be done better, not because I like to complain.