Calgary engineer believes he's cracked the mysterious Voynich Manuscript

[Ahmet Ardıç]

[The purpose of my question was not to disqualify reading, but to understand it. Even if the two 8s are different, why think directly about the numbers? In relation to the number of nymphs?]

Dear Novacna,

These texts were not written to be read as if they were reading a newspaper. Or, it was not written so that it could be read by everyone, like the usual ordinary texts written until that day. It may have been written for a single particular reader or several individuals. Those particular readers should probably have known how to read this alphabet and texts with a previously agreed upon and known phonetic value.


I think, about 600 years ago, this particular reader was reading these texts and deciding where to read the number 8 (Sekiz "Eight") as an 8 as a number or where to read it as an alphabet character with S/Ş phonetic value, by reading the texts in both ways... etc.  In other words, we do not think that that special reader has read these texts fluently like an ordinary known text at that time.

For this reason, Turcologists, who cannot see the usual old writing style in these texts, are also surprised and try to understand the content instead of making a  rash explanation because they do not fully understand what is happening and where this VM come from or what is VM etc.

So, I think I understand your question. This is a legitimate/logical question. But our expectations should not be to read as in the usual (already familiar) old texts. Nor should we expect these texts to be read fluently, or expect it to quickly become clear why they are so complex. We are looking at texts that are very unusual and unusual even for Turkish (not found in any other 1/1-like Turkish manuscripts).

One Turkic language professor at the Azerbaijan Academy of Sciences thinks that the author also used words that were behind his/her time (i.e. much older/archaic words). For this reason, he translates in different way by giving some words different meanings. That is, although I do not share the exact same ideas with him and do not do the same translation, I do not have the full knowledge to clearly say whether archaic forms of some words are used in the texts.

It is likely that kind of different readings of different views on these texts may continue to write for at least 100 years after today. But after a while today, everyone will understand that the texts are written with Turkic/Turkish content. Over time, many questions will be answered more clearly and our this ATA family project only have presented the key to new start this process for linguists. 

This professor I'm talking about is writing a short article on this subject, and in one part of the article he asked me to write transcriptions of some sentences (with their 600 years old phonetic pronunciation based on the ATA alphabet transcription). The purpose of my contribution to his article with my readings by using my transcription is to show the other reader linguists that sound changes he and I proposes to the alphabet transcription to compare as an alternative reading idea.

That is, we do not read the same signs in the same phonetic form. I think we currently read 3 or 4 alphabet characters differently, but most/rest of them are pronounced in the same phonetic way.

So, we hope that we will show for future readers that difference between this two readings by reading particular page in VM. The main purpose of writing this article is to make other linguist Turcologists aware of the subject.

In other words, there may be those who attribute different meanings to the texts from now on. Because, as I said, the author's unusual writing style is beyond our initial prediction, making it difficult to read.

More Turkologists need to cooperate on this issue. In other words, if you find any Turkologist and if you show the texts with our transcription, than she/he will tell you that it is an unusual Turkish with its spelling and phonetic value. We have not yet been able to reach a consensus on the reasons for this.

Thanks,