nickpelling > 15-02-2016, 10:55 AM
(15-02-2016, 09:36 AM)Emma May Smith Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.(15-02-2016, 04:30 AM)-Job- Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.It can be difficult to separate a cipher from a constructed language.It's really not better to phrase it that way. I want positive reasons for the Voynich manuscript being a cipher. If folks' beliefs truly boil down to, "it's a cipher because I don't think it's a language", then I think the whole side of cipher research on the VM has a serious problem.
Maybe a better question would be, why is the Voynich Manuscript not a natural language?
-JKP- > 15-02-2016, 12:24 PM
nickpelling > 15-02-2016, 12:29 PM
(15-02-2016, 12:24 PM)-JKP- Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I'll agree that a complex cypher is improbable around the time the VMS was made. The ones I've seen from that time period are pretty straightforward.
-Job- > 15-02-2016, 01:50 PM
(15-02-2016, 09:36 AM)Emma May Smith Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.(15-02-2016, 04:30 AM)-Job- Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.It can be difficult to separate a cipher from a constructed language.It's really not better to phrase it that way. I want positive reasons for the Voynich manuscript being a cipher. If folks' beliefs truly boil down to, "it's a cipher because I don't think it's a language", then I think the whole side of cipher research on the VM has a serious problem.
Maybe a better question would be, why is the Voynich Manuscript not a natural language?
-JKP- > 15-02-2016, 04:43 PM
-Job- > 20-02-2016, 05:44 AM
david > 20-02-2016, 09:40 AM
(15-02-2016, 12:24 PM)-JKP- Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I'll agree that a complex cypher is improbable around the time the VMS was made. The ones I've seen from that time period are pretty straightforward.
But what Mozart did was improbable too—composing symphonies at the age of four. It's possible he was terrible at art, terrible at business, terrible at business, terrible at many things, but he had a gift for music. Maybe the VMS author had a gift for certain kinds of symbolic thinking.
-JKP- > 20-02-2016, 10:24 AM
(20-02-2016, 05:44 AM)-Job- Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I can think of some simple steps that can produce a really tough cipher.
For example, suppose the author encodes the following text:
The Rain in Spain Falls Mainly on the Plain
As follows:
De rhein een cepain faals mayneli oen the pelain.
Then writes it down using a different alphabet. The result would be essentially as practical as a simple monoalphabetic cipher but much tougher to break because it's less susceptible to frequency analysis (among others).
...
ReneZ > 20-02-2016, 10:52 AM
(20-02-2016, 05:44 AM)-Job- Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.De rhein een cepain faals mayneli oen the pelain.
-Job- > 20-02-2016, 05:38 PM
(20-02-2016, 10:24 AM)-JKP- Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Changing "The" to "De" isn't a hindrance, since the Anglo-Saxon and Norse "d" character with the bar or the Greek theta immediately come to mind for polyglots and its position in the word makes it a high candidate as a definite article, regardless of how it's spelled. The short "word" in front of the fairly short last word makes it unlikely that it's certain languages that put the verb at the end. Lots of clues.The substitution of "the" with "de" would not remain consistent throughout the text, that's a key point. In my example i used both "the" and "de" to illustrate this, and would have certainly used additional variants in a longer text, with other substitutions as well as null characters (e.g. 'h').