Over in the Slavic VCI and West Slavic thread I have been posting some Sorbian text, "encryption" of it into Voynich EVA transcription, and "decryption" back into my Slavic VCI interpretation of the script. Interested readers can check out my latest posts in that thread for more information. 

As part of my investigation into this theory, I have researched some Sorbian folk song lyrics, since it occurs to me that folk songs may preserve the style of language that may be represented in the Voynich manuscript more so than other types of literary prose or poetry texts. Prose and even poetry have changed drastically in style between the late medieval period and recent centuries; folk song lyrics have probably changed much less over the centuries. Folk song lyrics also tend to be more repetitive, which fits the observed patterns and structures of the Voynich ms text. 

I strongly suspect that most folk song lyrics have rather lower entropy and conditional entropy statistics than most literary prose and poetry texts. This lower conditional entropy is in line with the statistical analysis of the Voynich ms text. (Of course, additional reduction/compression of the entropy statistics by means of a verbose cipher analysis of the Voynich script and text, possibly with a null character as well, as recently analyzed by Koen and Marco, will be necessary to align Voynich ms statistics with any actual natural language text statistics.) 

As one example, "Palenc palenc" is a Sorbian folk song. Palenc is a Sorbian hard liquor or spirit. You may watch and listen to a video of Sorbs singing this folk song You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.. You may read the text of the lyrics of this folk song You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.. 

Here is the first verse of "Palenc palenc":

"Palenc, palenc, tón dyrbi pity być!
Hdyž ja nimam palenca,
to mi boli wutroba.
Palenc, palenc, tón dyrbi pity być!"

Employing my Slavic VCI interpretation of the Voynich script, I can render the lyrics of this verse into the standard Voynich EVA transcription as follows:

[par qokedy tar qokedy kaiin qoky okchy s otchy tchy kchy otchy dy]
[ody okchody chy qokchy qoty qoty tar qokedy]
[kaiin qotchy otaiin or chy or or ky saiin oty]
[tar qokedy tar qokedy kaiin qoky okchy s otchy tchy kchy otchy dy]

I can then decipher this text back into my Slavic VCI reading of the script as follows:

<Pal nec# pal nec# to n# di# r bi# pi# ti# bi# c#>
<h# diž# j# ni# m# m# pal nec#>
<to mi# bo w i# w u t# ro b#>
<pal nec# pal nec# to n# di# r bi# pi# ti# bi# c#>

I observe that it would not be difficult for a Sorbian speaker to recognize the folk song lyrics in the latter Slavic VCI reading, despite its somewhat different form.

I also observe that the Voynich EVA version of these lyrics above seems quite in the repetitive style and spirit of the Voynich ms text as we know it. 

Geoffrey

It must be said that many theorists don't attempt to "encode" a fragment of their target language into Voynichese. So this is a step up

How did you determine the amount of words in the EVA version?

(05-10-2020, 08:09 AM)Koen G Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.It must be said that many theorists don't attempt to "encode" a fragment of their target language into Voynichese. So this is a step up
How did you determine the amount of words in the EVA version?

My aim is to render the fragment as text that is as similar to actual Voynichese as possible. I have no pre-set formula for this, but I aim for vords and glyph patterns that appear relatively frequently in the actual Voynich ms text.

I agree with you guys. I think using a proposed crib or key to turn a specimen of the proposed plaintext language into the ciphertext is a good early step for seeing if you’re at all on the right track. It’s a crude test with decent negative predictive value: if no specimens of the target language (written by a fluent speaker contemporaneous to the ciphertext, naturally) look anything like the uncracked ciphertext, that’s a pretty reliable sign you’ve got at least the wrong key, if not the wrong plaintext language, but probably both.

Of course this is a small sample of text compared to the VMs, so it’s hard to extrapolate meaningfully. But in my estimation your model passes this first of many hurdles, Geoffrey, and is therefore worth exploring further. I don’t have JKP’s eye for valid vs. invalid Voynichese, though, so Icould be wrong about this. Might you be willing to display the output of your reverse translation into one of the available Voynichese fonts? I think that might make it easier to see how Voynichy it feels to read it.

For what it’s worth, arguments still rage over just how passably Voynichy Torsten Timm’s bot’s output is; it’s not a set of arrangement rules whose higher level properties are easy to fake.

Keep in mind that at this point it combines verbose cipher + null + irregular spaces, which is quite a lot. It does give an idea of the challenges for bringing Voynichese in line with European languages.

(05-10-2020, 08:20 PM)Koen G Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Keep in mind that at this point it combines verbose cipher + null + irregular spaces, which is quite a lot. It does give an idea of the challenges for bringing Voynichese in line with European languages.

Agreed about the challenges, no argument there. In terms of the spaces, I would describe the system as interpreting the vords mainly as syllabic, although there are exceptions. The fragment I presented is somewhat similar in this respect to the Linear B representation of Mycenaean Greek, which was also basically syllabic, but which used a separate "syllabic" character for many word-final consonants and for the first consonant of many clusters. Both of those situations also occur in my rendering of the Sorbian fragment into Voynichese here. 

As for verbose cipher + null, as I commented in my latest post in the nulls thread, modern English spelling has many elements of a verbose cipher and nulls as well! So such things can occur naturally in the imperfect writing systems that people have historically invented to express their spoken languages.