18-10-2021, 06:53 PM
Hi Pythagoras and Koen G,
thank you both for the comments and for reading my paper. I appreciate it a lot!
Koen G, you are spot on! Your question is very good:
«So the question is, as always with this kind of solution, whether or not you accidentally ended up developing a system that gave you enough freedom to always match a Voynichese word to a possible name for the plant.”
It might be a problem that my proposal for the decoding of the cipher gives many choices when translating. I have wondered about this myself. Does it give too many choices? Since this problem does not in itself lead to the conclusion that the decoding is wrong, I find that there is no point in stopping. It gives results. It is only needed to be done more work to study, limit the choices and find out why it is at it is. It occurs to me: Maybe this problem, which might not be a problem, has made people stop before? Resulting in the puzzle not to be solved.
And I believe you will find, if you have time to study the paper, that the choices are not that many. With the proposed decoding, it is not possible to find other plant names in the herbal texts. If at all, it will not be within the same language, or a name of a plant that fits with the illustration, or within the first words of each herbal text.
And, yes, it is possible to get meaningful translations of pages without illustrations. It will come. I believe that the choices for translation will be reduced with further studies, and the seemingly looseness of the cipher might be tightened. There are several things do. For example, a study of the plant names is needed to further specify spellings and phonology. A systematic work on how the words are used throughout the manuscript is also needed before one can claim to have good translations. I hope you saw that I did not claim to have correct translations. This will take time.
It is needed to keep a lot of things open. For example, the aim of this manuscript might not be to transfer information in the same way as Chauser did.
We also need to keep it open whether the language is Middle English or not. The Middle English dictionary gives results, and the plant names found are closely related to vernacular plant names used in medieval England, but it is still needed to be kept open what kind of language from medieval England (or the area around England) it might be.
Your second test of my decoding uses my yellow table, but it does not use the decoding specified (the following tables). These specifications are needed to be taken into account. The result will be very different. It will be something like the PDF I attach.
Best regards,
Siv
thank you both for the comments and for reading my paper. I appreciate it a lot!
Koen G, you are spot on! Your question is very good:
«So the question is, as always with this kind of solution, whether or not you accidentally ended up developing a system that gave you enough freedom to always match a Voynichese word to a possible name for the plant.”
It might be a problem that my proposal for the decoding of the cipher gives many choices when translating. I have wondered about this myself. Does it give too many choices? Since this problem does not in itself lead to the conclusion that the decoding is wrong, I find that there is no point in stopping. It gives results. It is only needed to be done more work to study, limit the choices and find out why it is at it is. It occurs to me: Maybe this problem, which might not be a problem, has made people stop before? Resulting in the puzzle not to be solved.
And I believe you will find, if you have time to study the paper, that the choices are not that many. With the proposed decoding, it is not possible to find other plant names in the herbal texts. If at all, it will not be within the same language, or a name of a plant that fits with the illustration, or within the first words of each herbal text.
And, yes, it is possible to get meaningful translations of pages without illustrations. It will come. I believe that the choices for translation will be reduced with further studies, and the seemingly looseness of the cipher might be tightened. There are several things do. For example, a study of the plant names is needed to further specify spellings and phonology. A systematic work on how the words are used throughout the manuscript is also needed before one can claim to have good translations. I hope you saw that I did not claim to have correct translations. This will take time.
It is needed to keep a lot of things open. For example, the aim of this manuscript might not be to transfer information in the same way as Chauser did.
We also need to keep it open whether the language is Middle English or not. The Middle English dictionary gives results, and the plant names found are closely related to vernacular plant names used in medieval England, but it is still needed to be kept open what kind of language from medieval England (or the area around England) it might be.
Your second test of my decoding uses my yellow table, but it does not use the decoding specified (the following tables). These specifications are needed to be taken into account. The result will be very different. It will be something like the PDF I attach.
Best regards,
Siv