@Magnesium and oeesordy
I’ve already done that; there were some striking similarities to Voynichese, but also some areas where there was absolutely no match. I took a recipe text from the Breslauer manuscript and ran it against most of the statistical data available so far—a colleague here on the board had given me a tool that calculates these statistics.
But the problem is a different one: The cipher isn’t that far along yet. Parts of the language haven’t been deciphered at all. I’m still not at all
sure about some parts of the cipher. Although “sure” is probably the wrong word anyway.
I’m still searching for many details of the cipher; it’s a tedious process. Precisely because the language underlying the text isn’t clear yet—that is, what kind of dialect it is.
If you take the word falzen from 116, for example, there are many variants, some of which are very different, especially when written phonetically, as was customary at the time:
valten
vulten
volten
valtzen
faltzen
pfaltzen
falsen
pfalsen
faltz
pfaltz
vult
that are all variants of one word!!! different dialects...
If you have an absorption cipher that is also variable—in other words, a really poor cipher—it becomes, as I’ve written here several times, virtually impossible to decode.
And if it were also a strong dialect that nobody knows anymore today....
It’s a puzzle with nearly 30,000 pieces, but one where the image has faded over the centuries.
And that would be a very clear explanation for why no one has managed to do it yet.
Also because, strangely enough, most cryptologists assume that ciphers are logical and structured... which is, of course, nonsense, especially in the 15th century.
That would take years—that’s exactly what frustrates me so much.
But—and this is the crazy part—on the other hand, there’s actually a lot of evidence suggesting it could be MHD/Bairish. Even statistically speaking. And even Stolfi, who’s usually so skeptical, agrees, saying: “If it’s a European language, then it’s Bairish...
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PS. On top of that, even I, as a German, naturally have trouble understanding texts written in a 15th-century dialect. There are countless words I don’t know, which I have to figure out on my own or even look up. How is one supposed to recognize these in a cipher?
I’ve already done that; there were some striking similarities to Voynichese, but also some areas where there was absolutely no match. I took a recipe text from the Breslauer manuscript and ran it against most of the statistical data available so far—a colleague here on the board had given me a tool that calculates these statistics.
But the problem is a different one: The cipher isn’t that far along yet. Parts of the language haven’t been deciphered at all. I’m still not at all
sure about some parts of the cipher. Although “sure” is probably the wrong word anyway.
I’m still searching for many details of the cipher; it’s a tedious process. Precisely because the language underlying the text isn’t clear yet—that is, what kind of dialect it is.
If you take the word falzen from 116, for example, there are many variants, some of which are very different, especially when written phonetically, as was customary at the time:
valten
vulten
volten
valtzen
faltzen
pfaltzen
falsen
pfalsen
faltz
pfaltz
vult
that are all variants of one word!!! different dialects...
If you have an absorption cipher that is also variable—in other words, a really poor cipher—it becomes, as I’ve written here several times, virtually impossible to decode.
And if it were also a strong dialect that nobody knows anymore today....
It’s a puzzle with nearly 30,000 pieces, but one where the image has faded over the centuries.
And that would be a very clear explanation for why no one has managed to do it yet.
Also because, strangely enough, most cryptologists assume that ciphers are logical and structured... which is, of course, nonsense, especially in the 15th century.
That would take years—that’s exactly what frustrates me so much.
But—and this is the crazy part—on the other hand, there’s actually a lot of evidence suggesting it could be MHD/Bairish. Even statistically speaking. And even Stolfi, who’s usually so skeptical, agrees, saying: “If it’s a European language, then it’s Bairish...
------
PS. On top of that, even I, as a German, naturally have trouble understanding texts written in a 15th-century dialect. There are countless words I don’t know, which I have to figure out on my own or even look up. How is one supposed to recognize these in a cipher?