The incredible unravelling of the Voynich Manuscript

[-JKP-]

...Maybe I am too optimistic, but of all the solutions I have seen so far, the results of my approach are, despite all ambiguity, highly plausible, consistent and logical. I do not know of any other work that actually results in botanical explanations, where botanical explanations would be expected due to the world of images. The conclusions from the translation of folio 71r also seem more than plausible to me.

Paul, your idea is not new. Probably every one of us who knows some Latin has tried to expand it using your basic method. I'm sure Kircher and his colleagues tried it, as well, but since they were strong in Latin, they could undoubtedly see very quickly that the VMS was something different.

Patrick Lockerby tried to decipher the VMS using Latin scribal expansion, but he clearly doesn't have enough background in Latin to judge whether or not the words are Latin (about 85% of the words in his translation were not Latin).

Antoine Casanova proposed a system of abbreviated Latin, but the degrees of freedom (and possible expansions) is even broader than yours.

Michael Hoffman posted a very long thread with translations based on the premise that the VMS is Latin.

Searcher (on this forum) has published a paper (available here) that uses Latin scribal abbreviations to try to decipher the VMS. Of the many efforts of VMS-to-Latin, I think this is the best attempt because Searcher has some knowledge of Latin and because the translation does not attempt to inject the large number of subjective options included by other solvers. It is worth taking a look at it because it reveals the very repetitious nature of VMS text and makes it easier to see some of the ways in which the VMS diverges from abbreviated Latin.


I commend the fact that you sat down and learned the basic concept of medieval scribal abbreviations and that you are taking the time to document your journey, but it's difficult to assess whether your method works if you don't know Latin well enough to evaluate your own translations. If you would prefer to leave this step to others, then you must be willing to accept criticisms of the translations such as have been posted here.


As for your botanical explanations, they are pretty questionable. You took a plant with thistle-like flowers (aster family) and overlapping elliptical leaves, and identified it as a plant with umbellate flowers and compound odd-pinnate leaves. None of the morphological structures match.