Elephant in the Room Solution Considerations

[MHTamdgidi_(Behrooz)]

Thank you for your summary. 
Personally, I don't think that transliteration could have prevented the examination of the text.

@ Ruby Novacna. Could you please explain or clarify, if you wish to do so, why you think such transliterations could not have prevented the examination of the text”?

There are 10674 times (according to the browser) the double c’s have been rendered separately as ch in the browser (which I think is based on EVA). With a gallow in-between, we have 74 of one gallow (cfh), 907 of another gallow (ckh), 217 of another gallow (cph), and 945 of another gallow (cth) in the “benched” renderings. Yes, the transcription has allowed us to have a browser giving us that information, but this says nothing about the accuracy or validity of even such a representation.

               

This means that, say, 10674 times statistical analyses have missed seeing double c’s which itself can stand for another word or even set of words or phrases (or data). The similarity of the two c’s has been ignored, seeing one as a c and another as an h (as transcriptions, of course, but suggesting they are different letters). Benched gallows have not been treated, possibly, as a diacritic for a double-c.

I cannot agree with those who think these are just benign ways of rendering the Voynich letters in transliteration. Their very visual significance has been gutted out of them, rendering the transcriptions as NOT representing the actual writings of the Voynich manuscript.

I don’t understand why such transcriptions are not taken out of circulation with a warning, or at least acknowledged as being responsible for a lot of slop analyses (AI assisted or not) that use them. These transliterations are at least partly responsible for the failures of the slops that have been sent to the bucket.

Frankly, the transliterations that have not taken account the visual characteristics of the Voynich manuscript should also be sent to the bucket, since they have wasted many people’s times.

Currier is better because it did take into account the visual unity of double c’s (with or without diacritic), and I think is much better than the EVA. EVA is NOT a reliable transcription. V101 is the best of them all, so far. They can be used to perhaps come up with a more visually representing transcription. I would rather use c-c or c-^-c for example, or c->-c, or c-°-c, depending on the kind of diacritics used or not, for instance.

But even these must always be treated with caution, since we are not interested in studying this or that scholar’s transcription system. We are interested in studying the Voynich manuscript’s own writing and the visual features of them are essential for any hope we may have in understanding the text.

So, a 2 in v101 standing for a double c with diacritic cannot be assumed to be just a single sign, but likely an abbreviated contraction for a phrase, itself comprised possibly of one, two, or more words.

How can anyone statistically or linguistically judge a highly short-handed and abbreviated language (if that is the case) and confidently assert that the language is or not a natural language, is or not a hoax, is or not gibberish, is or not this or that language? “2” means nothing since it is just a transcription symbol for something else, an actual piece of the VM “writing.”

I of course appreciate all the efforts that have gone in building such transcription systems. But at some point we need to ask whether the “transcription” method itself a reliable way of going about studying, let alone making judgments, about the nature of the Voynich manuscript.