previous Basque theories of the Voynich ms?

[geoffreycaveney]

Wow Geoffrey — your post feels like someone reached into my head and wrote out a whole series of thoughts and perceptions I had about a year ago. It's uncanny to encounter someone who's been down the exact same little rabbit hole I have. Gavin Güldenpfennig here at the Ninja was the one who first inspired me to look into the Basque language as a possibility for the VMs. From there, it was You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. that made me wonder if there might be a match between Voynichese's rigid glyph positioning, and proto-Basque's rigid phoneme positioning. At one point I even made a chart based on Stolfi's core-mantle-crust paradigm, where I tried to assign a Voynichese glyph (in each word position) to each possible proto-Basque consonant (in each word position). I remember entertaining the possibility that EVA=[daiin] was the Basque word jaun (meaning "sir").

I then looked at the earliest Basque language texts by Bernard Etxepare (XVI century), and tried to match the high-frequency words with my chart's supposed Voynichese equivalent. Alas, common medieval Basque words did not seem to transform easily into common valid Voynichese words in the VMs. And that's where I abandoned the project.

I'll fully admit I went at this project wholly unscientifically, which is why I never shared it with the VMs community. I started with the result I hoped for, and then tried to make the data fit the result, which I'm well aware is circular logic / begging the question. For better or for worse, I've never been successfully socialized to be disgusted by this sort of "taking a stab at it". I think there's nothing wrong with inquiring based on nothing but a hunch, as long as: A) I never forget it's merely a hunch, B) I know when to quit when my hunch isn't panning out, and C) I don't try to draw any factual conclusions from this preliminary inquiry. It was recreation for me, and it was a pilot program, to see if a more scientific study of Basque-Vonichese correspondences was warranted. (I failed to support the idea that it was.) Some may say that I wasted time and effort that could have been better spent. I see it a little differently: I had an adventure and learned some new things, even if I never found the buried treasure. I certainly have no regrets learning more about the Basque language, even if it didn't necessarily get us any closer to solving the VMs.

I'll upload the chart I made, if it would be helpful to you, Geoffrey.

Thank you so much for sharing some details of your own investigation into this hypothesis. We can all save some collective time and energy, if we share and learn from each other's past efforts and the obstacles they encountered. (Hannig could have saved himself a lot of trouble if I had shared with him my own unsuccessful work on Voynich as Hebrew and its obstacles!) I very much appreciate your description of your investigation. I knew I couldn't be the first person to think along these lines! Whether it's right or wrong is another matter.

Yes, I would love to see the chart you made, if you don't mind uploading it. Thank you.