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Expert Opinions on 'daiin'
- Expert Opinions on 'daiin'
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RE: Expert Opinions on 'daiin'
Jorge_Stolfi > 08-10-2025, 08:38 PM
(08-10-2025, 11:28 AM)ReneZ Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.In my opinion, "aiin" is a single unit.
I have the same opinion. And ditto for an, ain, aiiin. And ditto for aiir, aiis, etc. Besides statistics, there is the air on column 2 of f66r...
Quote:As a second opinion, the space following it may very well not be a word break.
I would not agree to that ... my my count, there are too many many lines/labels that end with such sequences:
46 an 281 ar 8 as
179 ain 16 air 1 ais
426 aiin 9 aiir 0 aiis
20 aiiin 0 aiiir 0 aiiis
In particular there are 163 lines/labels that end with daiin and 40 that end with dain.
I would guess that daiin and ar are just very common words. dain could be another common word or just a misspelling/mis-transcription of daiin. The others may well be all noise...
All the best, --jorge -
RE: Expert Opinions on 'daiin'
JoJo_Jost > 26-10-2025, 09:27 AM
aiin looks similar, at least, to Gothic:= "und". based on the frequency its maybe possible.
But: it's only ‘similar’... -
RE: Expert Opinions on 'daiin'
JoJo_Jost > 26-10-2025, 10:14 AM
Okay, and a ‘dubious’ explanation:
I noticed this when I traced the lettering to understand whether it was thought backwards and written forwards (copied):
Mirror writing and backwards reading have already been discussed at length.
If you mirror ‘aiin’ (knowing that the ‘n’ can also be a “d”, see above) and do not mirror the ‘d’, you get:
Duo
aiinb would then be the abbreviation for duobus.
If you like, you can develop a counting system from this:
ain = unus
aiin= duo
aiiin= tres
@ Rene – if you then add your list, you have a possibly complex number system.
Unfortunately, however, this fails because unus does not occur very often in Latin texts, which is a shame, as it would have been very elegant, as it contains Roman numerals.... -
RE: Expert Opinions on 'daiin'
ReneZ > 26-10-2025, 10:44 AM
(26-10-2025, 10:14 AM)JoJo_Jost Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.@ Rene – if you then add your list, you have a possibly complex number system.
I am not sure which list you mean?
However, your short list can be expanded if one allows (just as a thought experiment) that n and r are the same thing. Note that there are quite a few cases where the curl up is inaccurately placed and it is hard to decide which is meant.
an (rare) and ar (frequent): 1
ain (frequent) and air (relatively rare): 2
aiin (frequent) and aiir (rare): 3
aiiin (rare): 4
Essentially, 'r' is preferred without any 'i' and 'n' is preferred if there are one or more.
Since aiiin is so rare, perhaps 4 can also be written al.
After all, l is how a 4 would be written at that time. -
RE: Expert Opinions on 'daiin'
JoJo_Jost > 26-10-2025, 10:56 AM
Dieses hier:
46 an 281 ar 8 as
179 ain 16 air 1 ais
426 aiin 9 aiir 0 aiis
20 aiiin 0 aiiir 0 aiiis
I thought: Hey, that makes sense, but the distribution does not correspond to the normal distribution of numbers in Latin texts.
An=1
Ain=2
Aiin=3
Aiiin=4
Ar=5
air=6
Aiir=7
Aiiir= 8
9 = ais (10 - 1)
10 = as
But I spent many exciting and enjoyable, yet ultimately unsuccessful hours with theoretical number systems in the recipe section because I thought: A recipe section must contain quantities and measurements.... -
RE: Expert Opinions on 'daiin'
JoJo_Jost > 26-10-2025, 11:07 AM
Here an example:
(teey= 10 was just one of several tests)
Believe me, it's quite well thought out, but it uses too many words, and then the rest of the text doesn't make sense anymore, and the higher you go, the fewer of these words you find in the text...
I rejected it. -
RE: Expert Opinions on 'daiin'
Mark Knowles > 26-10-2025, 12:28 PM
(26-10-2025, 10:44 AM)ReneZ Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
(26-10-2025, 10:14 AM)JoJo_Jost Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.@ Rene – if you then add your list, you have a possibly complex number system.
I am not sure which list you mean?
However, your short list can be expanded if one allows (just as a thought experiment) that n and r are the same thing. Note that there are quite a few cases where the curl up is inaccurately placed and it is hard to decide which is meant.
an (rare) and ar (frequent): 1
ain (frequent) and air (relatively rare): 2
aiin (frequent) and aiir (rare): 3
aiiin (rare): 4
Essentially, 'r' is preferred without any 'i' and 'n' is preferred if there are one or more.
Since aiiin is so rare, perhaps 4 can also be written al.
After all, l is how a 4 would be written at that time.
But what about ail , aiil?
In the 1424 Milanese cipher that I have discussed we see specific roman numeral representations substituted for given substrings, I think is the kind of thing we see here. The rarity is a function of how rare that substitution is. I don't think n and r (or l) are the same thing. We could have a large substitution key with many different substitutions. What is also interesting is that one sometimes sees something like aii or oiiin or in. -
RE: Expert Opinions on 'daiin'
JoJo_Jost > 26-10-2025, 02:45 PM
(26-10-2025, 10:44 AM)ReneZ Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
(26-10-2025, 10:14 AM)JoJo_Jost Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.@ Rene – if you then add your list, you have a possibly complex number system.
I am not sure which list you mean?
Essentially, 'r' is preferred without any 'i' and 'n' is preferred if there are one or more.
Since aiiin is so rare, perhaps 4 can also be written al.
After all, l is how a 4 would be written at that time.
@ Rene: Oh, sorry, I understand now, the list was from Jorge_Stolfi, sorry... he quotes you, and than his list follows. Sorry, im quite new here in this forum. I still make many mistakes....
Considering the 4 as an l is an interesting thought. But on the one hand, it is also somewhat inconsistent to hide the first numbers in a .... n as i ii iii and then dont write "iv". On the other hand, if it is Latin and many abbreviations and ligatures are intended to further ‘obscure’ the meaning, then of course it makes perfect sense.
@ Mark it's a nice idea, but ail is quite rare, 6 times, an the other Versions don't exist. But this was the result of Chat GPT und we know that this is not a serious source, it may be not be correc. In my research – looking at the numbers – I ended up limiting myself to aiin = ‘duo’ and aiinb = “duobus” and allowing ‘in pairs’ (botanical) as a variation – but I'm increasingly moving away from that too.
Jost -
RE: Expert Opinions on 'daiin'
Mark Knowles > 26-10-2025, 03:07 PM
(26-10-2025, 02:45 PM)JoJo_Jost Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.@ Mark it's a nice idea, but ail is quite rare, 6 times, an the other Versions don't exist. But this was the result of Chat GPT und we know that this is not a serious source, it may be not be correc. In my research – looking at the numbers – I ended up limiting myself to aiin = ‘duo’ and aiinb = “duobus” and allowing ‘in pairs’ (botanical) as a variation – but I'm increasingly moving away from that too.
Jost
Rareness is not a reason for exclusion. It is quite rare to meet someone from Mauritius, but that don't mean they don't exist. The other versions that I mentioned do exist. I think Voynich researchers make a big mistake when they think that rare things can be ignored. Rare features need to be accounted for. -
RE: Expert Opinions on 'daiin'
JoJo_Jost > 26-10-2025, 04:33 PM
(26-10-2025, 03:07 PM)Mark Knowles Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Rareness is not a reason for exclusion. It is quite rare to meet someone from Mauritius, but that don't mean they don't exist. The other versions that I mentioned do exist. I think Voynich researchers make a big mistake when they think that rare things can be ignored. Rare features need to be accounted for.
But one can assume a certain distribution of numbers in a certain context. In this case, the botanical/medical context of the 15th century. The number 2 could indeed occur frequently in this context, the number 1 almost never, the number 3 less often, the number 4 even less often, the number 5 possibly (e.g. rose petals and also because of the natural Fibonacci sequence) a tad higher again, and then it should continue to decline. In my opinion, one would like to see such a distribution. But I have seen medical texts from that period, and there was not a single number in them so who knows