24-04-2026, 01:47 PM
For me, the problem with your scenario is precisely those 200 pages. Just look at this final connection between pch and P lines and other recognizable patterns- for example, how certain initial markers avoid specific glyphs, and so on. It’s hard to attribute that to random human writing. Nor can the differences in the various sections with varying vocabularies. The same morphological endings (ey, edy, aiin, ol) that run through the entire context, fixed bi- and trigrams. All the positional rules, the same positional behavior, the same token-internal patterns. Across hundreds of pages?
As far as I know, Gaskell and Bowern’s test series were limited to 2 / 3 pages - on that scale, similar structures are still conceivable - but not such a clear, consistent structure spanning 200 pages and over weeks, months, or years of writing. And they themselves recognized this as a “problem.” Too bad they didn’t test it
, but well, poor research subjects…
In my opinion, no one - no matter how intelligent or organized they are - can sustain this kind of complex structural consistency across 200 pages by inventing it on the fly.
And Bowern’s own remarks point in that direction as well:
At the word level, for instance, Bowern and Lindemann’s analyses indicate that Voynichese is distinct from familiar languages, in that the occurrence and order of letters is much more predictable than it is in familiar languages. (This predictability, Bowern and a colleague add in a subsequent article from 2022, is typical of intuitively generated gibberish, designed to mimic “what written language ought to look like.”) But beyond the word level—at the level of large sections of text—Voynichese is, in fact, similar to familiar languages.
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The sole VMS metric which our gibberish samples are unable to replicate is the VMS’s unusually
large bias in character placement within words (charbias_words_mean). This is likely related to a well-
documented feature of the VMS in which certain glyphs appear almost exclusively at the start or end
of words.
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Have you run your tests on Bavarian yet? That’s really exciting
As far as I know, Gaskell and Bowern’s test series were limited to 2 / 3 pages - on that scale, similar structures are still conceivable - but not such a clear, consistent structure spanning 200 pages and over weeks, months, or years of writing. And they themselves recognized this as a “problem.” Too bad they didn’t test it
, but well, poor research subjects…In my opinion, no one - no matter how intelligent or organized they are - can sustain this kind of complex structural consistency across 200 pages by inventing it on the fly.
And Bowern’s own remarks point in that direction as well:
At the word level, for instance, Bowern and Lindemann’s analyses indicate that Voynichese is distinct from familiar languages, in that the occurrence and order of letters is much more predictable than it is in familiar languages. (This predictability, Bowern and a colleague add in a subsequent article from 2022, is typical of intuitively generated gibberish, designed to mimic “what written language ought to look like.”) But beyond the word level—at the level of large sections of text—Voynichese is, in fact, similar to familiar languages.
You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
The sole VMS metric which our gibberish samples are unable to replicate is the VMS’s unusually
large bias in character placement within words (charbias_words_mean). This is likely related to a well-
documented feature of the VMS in which certain glyphs appear almost exclusively at the start or end
of words.
You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
Have you run your tests on Bavarian yet? That’s really exciting
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