Ruby's Greek Thread

[Oscroft]

I've thought of an experimental example that might help illustrate this. But I have a habit of getting rather wordy (which you will surely have noticed!) So I'll present that in a different post - though it might take me a while, as I have only limited free time.

OK, here it is (and I realise there might be faults in it, and would welcome critique)...

I found a word in a language that I can't enter on my keyboard, so I used a single substitution cipher (exactly what EVA is) to render it into the Roman alphabet.

The result is "psyoermos".

Can you see any direct phonetic matches with any other language? Can you see any matches with any Greek word? Can you offer any suggestions what it might be using your usual Greek matching approaches? If you can, can you explain the reasoning you use?

(There are decryption techniques using online technology that can decrypt this - I tried, and while it wasn't immediate, I did it in a reasonable amount of time. So I'd please ask folks not to post the results of using such techniques. I really want to give Ruby the chance to use their own approach, it they're up to it, and I do actually think it might be possible.)