27-09-2020, 03:38 PM
Of course "managed to understand" is an exaggeration of my claim. I would rather say that I have managed to develop a logical, consistent interpretation of the script that produces a rather significant number of largely consistent matches or near-matches between the most frequent Voynich vords and many very frequent Sorbian and/or Czech words.
Even if you handed me a manuscript written in the plain in the Latin alphabet, written in a Sorbian dialect in the early 15th century, it would not be easy for me to read it correctly, and it would probably not be easy for very many other people to read it correctly either. I am proficient in reading and translating academic articles in modern Russian, and I completed a university course in Old Church Slavonic, so I am not going into this completely clueless, but neither does it make me an expert in medieval West Slavic documents either. For some perspective on the difficulties involved, recently a scholar who is an expert in this field wrote a book chapter, titled You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. (text not available at the link), with the following abstract:
"The West Slavic glosses in mediaeval Hebrew texts are an important source for the study of the early development of the West Slavic languages. Although the majority of glosses are often regarded as Old Czech, it is argued in this paper that some of these glosses are more likely to reflect a Slavic vernacular that was ancestral to modern Upper Sorbian. They form an important addition to the known corpus of mediaeval Sorbian. Some of the earliest phonological developments of Czech and Sorbian can be dated on the basis of the Judeo-Slavic glosses."
The point is, even experts in the field are not in agreement about what is Czech and what is Sorbian in medieval West Slavic texts and documents. So even with a completely correct interpretation of the script, it is to be expected that it would still require a lot of work to read and understand such a text correctly.
With all of that said, I am not opposed to making an effort to read some lines and attempt to interpret them. But both myself and others should be aware that it's quite possible my interpretation of the script could be correct, the language could be correct, and I could still read and interpret the meaning of the text itself incorrectly.
Geoffrey
Even if you handed me a manuscript written in the plain in the Latin alphabet, written in a Sorbian dialect in the early 15th century, it would not be easy for me to read it correctly, and it would probably not be easy for very many other people to read it correctly either. I am proficient in reading and translating academic articles in modern Russian, and I completed a university course in Old Church Slavonic, so I am not going into this completely clueless, but neither does it make me an expert in medieval West Slavic documents either. For some perspective on the difficulties involved, recently a scholar who is an expert in this field wrote a book chapter, titled You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. (text not available at the link), with the following abstract:
"The West Slavic glosses in mediaeval Hebrew texts are an important source for the study of the early development of the West Slavic languages. Although the majority of glosses are often regarded as Old Czech, it is argued in this paper that some of these glosses are more likely to reflect a Slavic vernacular that was ancestral to modern Upper Sorbian. They form an important addition to the known corpus of mediaeval Sorbian. Some of the earliest phonological developments of Czech and Sorbian can be dated on the basis of the Judeo-Slavic glosses."
The point is, even experts in the field are not in agreement about what is Czech and what is Sorbian in medieval West Slavic texts and documents. So even with a completely correct interpretation of the script, it is to be expected that it would still require a lot of work to read and understand such a text correctly.
With all of that said, I am not opposed to making an effort to read some lines and attempt to interpret them. But both myself and others should be aware that it's quite possible my interpretation of the script could be correct, the language could be correct, and I could still read and interpret the meaning of the text itself incorrectly.
Geoffrey