Alisa Gladyseva: Voynich manuscript is decoded

[Anton]

Yeah, I really appreciate JKP's traditional confirmative digests of nonsense papers 

What's just fantastic is that by the moment I pull myself up to read some article there's already the JKP's review there, so I drop the intention, saving enormous amounts of time!

[Anton]

As a side note, the correct transliteration of the author's surname is most probably "Gladysheva", not "Gladyseva". If you look at the article on RG, "s" is with the diacritic there, suggesting the sound "sh".

"Gladysheva" is a common Russian surname, one of my classmates bore it.

[-JKP-]

Thank you for the information, Anton.

On my trip to Hungary, years ago, I was told the pronunciation for Šopron was "sho-pron", so that must be similar to what you are describing for Gladyseva.

[doranchak]

I just spotted her full paper:

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Did it already get posted on here?

[Koen G]

That's the Argentinian publication where she misreads the marginalia and does not reveal much about her method, I think.

[geoffreycaveney]

On my trip to Hungary, years ago, I was told the pronunciation for Šopron was "sho-pron", so that must be similar to what you are describing for Gladyseva.

Be careful with Hungarian, JKP! Unlike almost all other languages of the region, in Hungarian orthographic "s" is pronounced like English "sh", while it is Hungarian orthographic "sz" that is pronounced like a plain English "s". Very confusing, and the exact opposite of Polish, for example! Of course Hungarian is a Uralic language rather than a Slavic or other Indo-European language.

[aStobbart]

where she misreads the marginalia

Do we know what the marginalia says and in what language?

[-JKP-]

where she misreads the marginalia

Do we know what the marginalia says and in what language?

The month names (which is what the article is primarily about) are not ciphered and are in normal 15th-century script with common 15th-century abbreviations. Yes, we know what it says and I have done extensive research to figure out the language (the language is not hard to discern, it's the specific dialect that was not quite certain).

Gladyšheva misread them and added in letters that were NOT indicated by the abbreviation symbols (based on her theory about which language she thinks it is). She is not accustomed to reading medieval text. It is evident from her misinterpretations.

There is not much controversy about the month names among people who are familiar with medieval script and abbreviations. There are only one or two letters that are sometimes disputed and I have found examples that solidify the interpretation of one of those.

[aStobbart]

where she misreads the marginalia

Do we know what the marginalia says and in what language?

The month names (which is what the article is primarily about) are not ciphered and are in normal 15th-century script with common 15th-century abbreviations. Yes, we know what it says and I have done extensive research to figure out the language (the language is not hard to discern, it's the specific dialect that was not quite certain).

Gladyšheva misread them and added in letters that were NOT indicated by the abbreviation symbols (based on her theory about which language she thinks it is). She is not accustomed to reading medieval text. It is evident from her misinterpretations.

There is not much controversy about the month names among people who are familiar with medieval script and abbreviations. There are only one or two letters that are sometimes disputed and I have found examples that solidify the interpretation of one of those.

Yes, I know about the month names.. but she also writes about other marginalia, ("der muz del", and f17r). Her "medieval galician" translation of You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. is interesting:

better  foreigner  to  use  plant    vrittanicum

The idea that someone in the past managed to decipher the VMs and left margin notes about its content is interesting

[-JKP-]

She misread that also.

She doesn't appear to be familiar with the common form of final-ess. It is almost certainly "mus/muß" not muz. I don't know why she read it as "muz". The z was never written like that and the final-ess very frequently was.

Perhaps it's a different letter from final-ess, but it's not "z".

She read "ven" as "der". This is not the common reading either, by people who are familiar with medieval script.


Until she learns to read medieval script, her translations cannot be taken seriously.