Calgary engineer believes he's cracked the mysterious Voynich Manuscript

[Ahmet Ardıç]

Hi Pepper,

When I do not translate directly (1/1), what I wrote to you seems to be my personal comments. The reason I translate directly is because you can see that the sentence is linked to the drawing on the page and the words have meanings. The direct translation is: "The roots are cute." and/or "The roots are fat."

But none of these words in Turkish alone mean root. But when both of these two words (AYAK SAPI) combine, it becomes an adjective that refers to the roots of the plant. Therefore, translation of a Turkish text into other languages is also a matter of expertise.

I don't need to comment on your other comment because I already shared my opinion on these issues.

Thanks for your comment,

Ah, I haven't been clear. I don't object to you converting your direct translations into a form that makes sense in English ("the foot stalk is plump, robust, cute" > "the roots are cute"). I'm grateful for those Turkish > modern English translations because it helps me understand.

What I'm asking is if somebody writing in 15th century Turkish would write "the foot stalk is plump, robust, cute" in that way? JKP explained this better than me - "keep you tomorrow best health" could be a direct translation from VMS to English but it would be dubious because nobody would construct a sentence that way.

Also, what does cute mean in this context? It makes me smile because it seems so anachronistic for a medieval mansucript, but that could be my ignorance talking!

Hi Pepper,

AYAK SAK (foot stalk) words are used in form an adjective. It is quite easy to create new adjectives in the Turkish language, and it is probably the same in many languages. 

When we look at these words (AYAK SAK APAK) one by one in etymology dictionaries to see written examples in history, we can see that two of them was written before year 735 and one from before 1073. 

AYAK: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
SAK (SAP): You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
APAK: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

If you were ask that; "Is there any other written example of that "AYAK SAK" adjective in Old Turkish?".

My answer is "I don't know yet". Because it is the issue with related to check more academic paper to know about old Turkish more if it was used in other text in the past or not. This adjective is used for 'the root of a plant'? So far, I haven't found a similar written (ayak sak) words sample. We know that all adjectives in any language did not have written examples at the beginning of the 15th century or before that time. Maybe the author herself/himself created this adjective. Or may be using of this adjective in Turkish was older, but there are no written examples yet.

Whether this is one way or another does not indicate whether the VMS is Turkish or not. But written instances of both AYAK and SAK are older than VMS for sure. This is the first example I seen that with these two words being used side by side as an adjective. 

So if we found the first example of something, this is good for linguistic record.

Thanks,