Frequency analysis of letters in medieval European languages compared to VMS
After processing Koen's corpus, I have processed a total of 21,996,439 individual characters extracted from 112 medieval texts spanning various topics.
The dataset for Slavic languages is the least reliable due to its relatively small size (405,778 characters), limited topical diversity, and the inclusion of mixed East Slavic languages. The majority of these texts are written in Old Church Slavonic and Old East Slavic, primarily from the 1200s. In contrast, the largest datasets pertain to Latin, English, and Italian, each exceeding 5,000,000 characters.
For context, the Voynich Manuscript, transcribed in the EVA contains 194,627 characters.
Some of my results are presented graphically below, some are in attachments. The Y-axis represents the percentage of each letter's contribution to the total character count. The X-axis displays the most frequently occurring letters, arranged from the most common on the left to the least common on the right.
Voynich compared to Germanic languages.
Voynich compared to Romance languages.
Based on the similarity to Romance languages, mainly Latin, I've decided to determine the most common initial letters of all words in German and Latin, comparing these results both with the VMS and between German and Latin.
Since I'm not a linguist, but based on this striking similarity, is it safe to assume that if VMS is a kind of a substitution cipher(somehow), it is based on a Romance language?
There are few more graphs in the attachments.
Any ideas, questions or opinions?
After processing Koen's corpus, I have processed a total of 21,996,439 individual characters extracted from 112 medieval texts spanning various topics.
The dataset for Slavic languages is the least reliable due to its relatively small size (405,778 characters), limited topical diversity, and the inclusion of mixed East Slavic languages. The majority of these texts are written in Old Church Slavonic and Old East Slavic, primarily from the 1200s. In contrast, the largest datasets pertain to Latin, English, and Italian, each exceeding 5,000,000 characters.
For context, the Voynich Manuscript, transcribed in the EVA contains 194,627 characters.
Some of my results are presented graphically below, some are in attachments. The Y-axis represents the percentage of each letter's contribution to the total character count. The X-axis displays the most frequently occurring letters, arranged from the most common on the left to the least common on the right.
Voynich compared to Germanic languages.
Voynich compared to Romance languages.
Based on the similarity to Romance languages, mainly Latin, I've decided to determine the most common initial letters of all words in German and Latin, comparing these results both with the VMS and between German and Latin.
Since I'm not a linguist, but based on this striking similarity, is it safe to assume that if VMS is a kind of a substitution cipher(somehow), it is based on a Romance language?
There are few more graphs in the attachments.
Any ideas, questions or opinions?