26-06-2025, 01:23 PM
Slavic languages inherently share a lot of similarity and grammar, and other European languages share a lot of common roots or common words that sometime are used for the same or different meaning, like the words charm (čar), dol-dale-thall (valley), the names of the months etc. It is not enough to find out correct transcription alphabet. While some EVA letters, such as a, e, i, o, l, r, s actually correspond to Latin letters, not all do. Besides, some transliterations, particularly minims, are ambiguous.
After finding transcription alphabet, the writing convention must be determined: Which letter or letter combination was used for particular sound. That is where the same words become different: Slavic 'ki' was written by Italian as 'ki', Slovenian 'huditi' was written in Croatian 'kuditi' or in Italian 'cudit'. Slovenian word 'zhudit' (wonder, marvel) was written in Italian 'cudit'. It would be expected that the author of the VM used the spelling convention consistently.
After finding the alphabet and spelling convention, it might be possible to define the language family - Romance, Slavic, German. While medieval Latin writing used a lot of mixed vocabulary and spelling, resulting in different Romance languages, and different Germanic languages incorporated many words from non-Germanic people, Slavic speaking people peasant population retained quite pure language in their everyday life and in Slavic liturgy. Most of Germanic words were introduced into Slavic languages at the time of Protestantism in the 16th century.
The proper translation of the VM is not just converting Voynich glyphs into Latin letters and assign the meaning of words based on spelling or phonetic similarity. A lot of research into medieval languages, grammar, phonetics and spelling is necessary. Also, to compare Voynich text with the text in contemporary Wikipedia articles, knowing the evolution of the languages is also necessary.
As far as I can tell, there is no computer application that can do all these steps. A lot of manual work is necessary.
After finding transcription alphabet, the writing convention must be determined: Which letter or letter combination was used for particular sound. That is where the same words become different: Slavic 'ki' was written by Italian as 'ki', Slovenian 'huditi' was written in Croatian 'kuditi' or in Italian 'cudit'. Slovenian word 'zhudit' (wonder, marvel) was written in Italian 'cudit'. It would be expected that the author of the VM used the spelling convention consistently.
After finding the alphabet and spelling convention, it might be possible to define the language family - Romance, Slavic, German. While medieval Latin writing used a lot of mixed vocabulary and spelling, resulting in different Romance languages, and different Germanic languages incorporated many words from non-Germanic people, Slavic speaking people peasant population retained quite pure language in their everyday life and in Slavic liturgy. Most of Germanic words were introduced into Slavic languages at the time of Protestantism in the 16th century.
The proper translation of the VM is not just converting Voynich glyphs into Latin letters and assign the meaning of words based on spelling or phonetic similarity. A lot of research into medieval languages, grammar, phonetics and spelling is necessary. Also, to compare Voynich text with the text in contemporary Wikipedia articles, knowing the evolution of the languages is also necessary.
As far as I can tell, there is no computer application that can do all these steps. A lot of manual work is necessary.