Hypervector Analysis of the Voynich Manuscript

[-JKP-]

Very interesting, again, Darrin.



Okay... is there a chance you could do Scenario 3, which expands some of the most common Latin scribal abbreviations into their most common expansions? I know it is more work than the others to convert it, but here are some reasons it might be worth the time:

• Latin was the lingua franca of literate people.
  
• Some of the glyph-shapes in the VMS are morphologically similar to Latin scribal abbreviations.
  
• It was not uncommon for 15th-century ciphertext to include some of the most common abbreviation symbols, especially y and the "-rum" symbol (in fact, there are examples on the diplomatic ciphers thread that include these).
  
• Some of the glyphs, like y and m are positioned as one might expect them in a medieval manuscript written in one of the languages that used Latin scribal conventions.
  
• Latin is one of the most common languages selected by "solvers", but not only by solvers, also by some of the more cautious researchers (those who are not saying they have solved it but who feel there are reasons to believe it might be Latin).
  

I'm agnostic about whether the VMS is meaningful and also about which language it might be if it is, but it seems prudent to see if the scribal patterns that were prevalent at the time will shift the position to any significant degree.


Another thought... should you include a sample of random text (one with spaces) to see where it falls on the graph?