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It cannot be a language - in reference to Koen's latest video

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  • It cannot be a language - in reference to Koen's latest video
• It cannot be a language - in reference to Koen's latest video

• It cannot be a language - in reference to Koen's latest video

  addekallstrom > 15-11-2024, 11:23 PM

  Koen did a fantastic video about a month ago where he showed that Voynich really only has 8 functional letters. I've racked my brains trying to come up with any language even close to that and the closest I can think of is if Japanese dropped the diacritics and the syllabary structure of the written language. They would still end up with 14 characters! 
  
  Vowels:
  a 
  i
  u 
  e
  o
  Consonants:
  k
  s
  t
  n
  h
  m
  y
  r
  w
  
  This is setting aside the fact that there are still five more consonants in the Japanese language, g z d b p, which are currently marked by diactritics. I'm not sure if a Japanese speaker would be able to comfortable read a text without diacritics. You could also, perhaps, merge n and m into one one sound as the ん (n) can make both [n] and [m] sounds depending on what sounds follow it. 
  
  So, bending and breaking every concievable rule, Japanese can, at best, get down to 13 characters, and in doing so making the reading process quite arduous. And thats 60% more characters than the Voynich manuscript has! 
  
  It just can't be a language. It cannot...

• RE: It cannot be a language - in reference to Koen's latest video

  ReneZ > 15-11-2024, 11:36 PM

  (15-11-2024, 11:23 PM)addekallstrom Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.It just can't be a language. It cannot...

  
  I would propose two changes to this, and then see if that makes sense...
  
  1. Change "just can't be" into: "there is a strong case that this isn't".
     This gives us: "There is a strong case that this isn't a language"
  
  The far more important change would be:
  2. Add "under the assumptions that were made".
     This gives us: "There is a strong case that this isn't a language, under the assumptions that were made".
  
  The main assumption is of course that one symbol represents one character or one sound.
  
  To keep it simple, one can also only adopt the second change:
  
  "It just can't be a language, under the assumptions that were made".

• RE: It cannot be a language - in reference to Koen's latest video

  Koen G > 16-11-2024, 12:20 AM

  (15-11-2024, 11:36 PM)ReneZ Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view."It just can't be a language, under the assumptions that were made".

  
  This is a very important point. My video was in the first place a reaction to the way most Voynich theories are formed: pick a language you like, find some words that match, immediately get into trouble so start inventing rules that eventually give you a ton of freedom to produce what you like. My point was very much that we can't just wildly start slapping Latin or Greek on it - first, the system must be discovered.
  
  My conviction that the text must contain meaning has decreased over the years, but I still give it over 50% chance. Just not a simple substitution cipher.
  
  On the other hand, I'm glad to see that you understood my point very well: even forced vowelless systems won't work, for a variety of reasons. I think most people overestimate how legible an unknown text in vowelless English would be, for example. And it still wouldn't match Voynichese in any way.
  
  Most importantly, I believe the glyph set and the system are chosen with a certain elegance. This was premeditated and cannot have come about as a coincidental effect of doing something like omitting vowels from a language.

• RE: It cannot be a language - in reference to Koen's latest video

  Dana Scott > 16-11-2024, 02:02 AM

  (15-11-2024, 11:23 PM)addekallstrom Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Koen did a fantastic video about a month ago where he showed that Voynich really only has 8 functional letters. I've racked my brains trying to come up with any language even close to that and the closest I can think of is if Japanese dropped the diacritics and the syllabary structure of the written language. They would still end up with 14 characters! 
  
  Vowels:
  a 
  i
  u 
  e
  o
  Consonants:
  k
  s
  t
  n
  h
  m
  y
  r
  w
  
  This is setting aside the fact that there are still five more consonants in the Japanese language, g z d b p, which are currently marked by diactritics. I'm not sure if a Japanese speaker would be able to comfortable read a text without diacritics. You could also, perhaps, merge n and m into one one sound as the ん (n) can make both [n] and [m] sounds depending on what sounds follow it. 
  
  So, bending and breaking every concievable rule, Japanese can, at best, get down to 13 characters, and in doing so making the reading process quite arduous. And thats 60% more characters than the Voynich manuscript has! 
  
  It just can't be a language. It cannot...

  
  The Hawaiian alphabet uses 12 letters:
  
  Vowels:
  a
  e
  i
  o
  u
  
  Consonants:
  h 
  k
  l
  m
  n
  p
  w

• RE: It cannot be a language - in reference to Koen's latest video

  Barbrey > 16-11-2024, 09:07 AM

  Is it only 8 @Koen?  I didn’t get that from the video and didn’t count them. Maybe I missed it, will go back to see. Because if there are 9 or 10, wouldn’t that suggest an Arabic number coding perhaps?And throw the rest out as null? Apologies in advance if this is a stupid question!

• RE: It cannot be a language - in reference to Koen's latest video

  Koen G > 16-11-2024, 10:19 AM

  I don't want to get too hung up on the number since I didn't intend this as a rule or a solution. It was just to demonstrate how "weak" some Voynichese glyphs are, and if you assume positional variation to solve this issue, the number of letters collapses. 
  
  Hawaiian is treated in the video. My opinion is that for the purpose of the Voynich, the Hawaiian alphabet doesn't exist. If Hawaiians had invented their own writing system in the 15th century, it would have been one with a large glyph set, like syllabic or logographic.
  
  Languages like Hawaiian aren't found in Europe or the surrounding areas. And alphabets were introduced to the region as part of missionary activities much later.
  
  Commenters on the video did repeatedly mention the Younger Futhark. I don't know enough about this yet to see if linguistically it would be interesting to compare it to Voynichese.

• RE: It cannot be a language - in reference to Koen's latest video

  Rafal > 16-11-2024, 02:20 PM

  Well, I would  agree it is not a language if we assume that "language" means that each symbol is a code for a single letter.
  
  But it doesn't mean that the text is nonsense.
  
  It may be a cipher and under that cipher there may be a legitimable language. It is not just a simple substitution cipher.

• RE: It cannot be a language - in reference to Koen's latest video

  zamolxe > 16-11-2024, 03:10 PM

  (16-11-2024, 12:20 AM)Koen G Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

  (15-11-2024, 11:36 PM)ReneZ Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view."It just can't be a language, under the assumptions that were made".

  
  This is a very important point. My video was in the first place a reaction to the way most Voynich theories are formed: pick a language you like, find some words that match, immediately get into trouble so start inventing rules that eventually give you a ton of freedom to produce what you like. My point was very much that we can't just wildly start slapping Latin or Greek on it - first, the system must be discovered.
  
  My conviction that the text must contain meaning has decreased over the years, but I still give it over 50% chance. Just not a simple substitution cipher.
  
  On the other hand, I'm glad to see that you understood my point very well: even forced vowelless systems won't work, for a variety of reasons. I think most people overestimate how legible an unknown text in vowelless English would be, for example. And it still wouldn't match Voynichese in any way.
  
  Most importantly, I believe the glyph set and the system are chosen with a certain elegance. This was premeditated and cannot have come about as a coincidental effect of doing something like omitting vowels from a language.

  
  Just a comment from a non professional: if the VM is not a plain text or a simple substitution cipher (1:1), the analysis of Voynich letters statistics have a limited use and applicability. Even if some VM letters are in fact abbreviation signs will affect the statistical analysis.
  
  About the alphabet. An 24 letter alphabet can be written using 13 signs, 12 letters and one "joker"/shifter. If the joker is attached to a letter, it will change/shift it to another letter (second meaning). So the alphabet will be represented both by single signs and bigrams. By the way, I suppose this will decrease the first order entropy, isn't it? 
  Similar other systems cam be constructed increasing the number of "jokers" (shifters): 8+2, 6+3 etc. 
  In extremis, just 3 signs can be used (I,V,X) to represent all the alphabet by writing each letter as a roman numeral. This will be easy to detect. To make the system more difficult to be detected and the text harder for deciphering attempts, multiple notations for each basic numeral can be used: for example "I" can be represented as "i", "c", "a" etc. Even the rules for constructing the numbers (subtraction, addition) can be changed.
  
  In VM context, can for example "r", "or", and "ar" be 3 different letters? How to differentiate the letters represented by 2 signs from real language bigrams?
  
  Without any proof apart of it's length, I tend to think that the VM was written to be easy readable for someone who knows the system/cipher without performing complicated operations to get the plain text.

• RE: It cannot be a language - in reference to Koen's latest video

  MarcoP > 16-11-2024, 03:46 PM

  zamolxe Wrote:About the alphabet. An 24 letter alphabet can be written using 13 signs, 12 letters and one "joker"/shifter. If the joker is attached to a letter, it will change/shift it to another letter (second meaning). So the alphabet will be represented both by single signs and bigrams.

  
  That's a special case of a verbose cipher, a scenario that is often considered. An implication is that Voynichese spaces cannot be trusted, because Voynich words are not longer than plain-text words.

• RE: It cannot be a language - in reference to Koen's latest video

  entropyOrInformation > 06-03-2025, 04:43 AM

  (16-11-2024, 10:19 AM)Koen G Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I don't want to get too hung up on the number since I didn't intend this as a rule or a solution. It was just to demonstrate how "weak" some Voynichese glyphs are, and if you assume positional variation to solve this issue, the number of letters collapses. 
  
  Hawaiian is treated in the video. My opinion is that for the purpose of the Voynich, the Hawaiian alphabet doesn't exist. If Hawaiians had invented their own writing system in the 15th century, it would have been one with a large glyph set, like syllabic or logographic.
  
  Languages like Hawaiian aren't found in Europe or the surrounding areas. And alphabets were introduced to the region as part of missionary activities much later.
  
  Commenters on the video did repeatedly mention the Younger Futhark. I don't know enough about this yet to see if linguistically it would be interesting to compare it to Voynichese.

  
  I thought the video focused more on 13 "effective symbols", could it be 8? If so, I made a post recently about a cipher method that could (maybe) explain some of the strange statistical properties of the text, and 8 effective symbols could actually match well with my (admittedly loose) theory. I'd be curious to know what you think.
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