(11-07-2018, 11:14 PM)Koen Gh. Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Are there any searchable corpora of medieval German texts?

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should open the Manuscripts / German section. If not, language selection is in the word cloud on the right. Also select the time period on the right.

This is not terribly close to "pbren" unless one accepts that "e" and "i" were often interchangeable in medieval spelling AND that maybe some letters have been compressed out (and that the first letter is a "p" with a line through the descender to create "per"), but there is a word in Latin that I have seen in medieval manuscripts peribimus (pbren pbrim?) which means "we will perish".

Then, if read as Latin, valden p[eri]bren[us] might be interpreted as "we will greatly perish" or "we will perish to a great extent" or "many of us will perish". It's a bit of a stretch, but since the word "peribimus" does show up abbreviated as pibim9 or pbim9, I thought I would add it to the thread.

To me, the "bre" looks certain. And then, the 1st letter is either p or v/u, and the last is either n or y. Not too many choices.

In the case of v, this might have been "ubren" as a shortcut for "uberen", but if we agree that the first one is p with its descender lost (based on the shape not characteristic for v, as you say), then the sequence such as "pbre" does not really leave us any alternatives but for being an abbreviation.

And if the first letter of "*alden" is v, then I don't see why the first letter of "*bre*" would be p at the same time.

Also, one either perishes or perishes not, it's hardly possible to perish only to a certain extent, albeit great.

Once I thought that decipherment of the last line would give us a clue to "aror sheey", but it rather turns out that without understanding "aror sheey" we'll not be able to decipher the line at all. That's really funny.

(14-07-2018, 11:58 PM)Anton Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.And if the first letter of "*alden" is v, then I don't see why the first letter of "*bre*" would be p at the same time.

Yes, I agree. Based on the shape, if one turns out to be "p" the other one ought to be, as well.

One might then interpret it as palden... in mixed German/Latin, that might be, "will soon perish".

Then, if read as Latin, valden p[eri]bren[us] might be interpreted as "we will greatly perish" or "we will perish to a great extent" or "many of us will perish". It's a bit of a stretch, but since the word "peribimus" does show up abbreviated as pibim9 or pbim9, I thought I would add it to the thread.


 This makes me publish my version of the text, located one line above. Early this did not fit into the context of the translations that other researchers proposed.

If in the first four words, delete "x" (or count it as a figure / the number of repetitions), then in Latin we can get the text "if (S  - the first letter in this word) / be born (occur) (F) + sea + death + life / force.
"Is this a conspiracy for sea travelers?

Fact of the day: if you mindlessly plonk "αν χι τον ολα δαβασ" into google translate it produces "if not all of you". Worthless by itself, but I often think that some mastery of Greek might open up possibilities for the interpretation of this line.

ανχι τον ολαδαβασ gives "rather than the whole world" 

In the past, I checked through several Greek dictionaries, and could not make any sense of δαβασ. I think this can be found above in the thread.

ολα means "all" in Greek.

I've been keeping semi-quiet about it (although I constantly mention it in the context of glyph-shape origins), because I can't definitely prove it, but there are signs here and there that whoever created the VMS may have known Greek (either through a classical education or travel or origin). There aren't enough hints to say precisely if it's the result of education or more direct experience.

This is not a new idea, every language has been suggested, including Greek, and everyone tries substitution codes (including Greek), BUT the real challenge is to DEMONSTRATE that there is Greek influence in the text. Saying it's Latin or Greek or whatever, is easy, anyone can list off languages... but getting intelligible text out of Voynichese is much more than just playing a hunch and naming languages, and I'm tired of people who do it (and claim solutions) and then post a bunch of unsupported gobbeldy-gook text, so I didn't want to say too much about it based on small clues and hunches because it isn't enough.


I can get intelligible text out of the VMS. I've had pages of it for quite a few years—a lot more than some of the people claiming solutions, actually, BUT the complication is that I've been able to do it in about five different languages, which MEANS it's probably NOT a solution, it's probably something to do with the basic structure of Voynichese that is generic to languages (which means a synthetic language is also possible), AND... the grammar is hit and miss (sometimes phrases do work grammatically, but not enough of them) and that isn't good enough.

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Now, all of the above may have nothing to do with the marginalia. The text on 116v is almost readable and is conventional Latin characters, so it may not be related to Voynichese in any way, but something few people mention is the "caret" on the underside of the "o" and it might be important. It might be intended as a pronunciation symbol. If the person writing this learned Latin as a second language (as was the purview of scholars by the 15th century), it might account for the oddities in the text and possibly also for the mark attached to the "o".