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The vowel exchange "a" to "o"
- The vowel exchange "a" to "o"
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RE: The vowel exchange "a" to "o"
Kaybo > 02-11-2025, 01:13 PM
(02-11-2025, 09:10 AM)dashstofsk Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.If you are looking for a more consistent exchange between two characters in the VMS then the answer is with t and k . Unlike the Italian examples that exchange at the end of a word for grammatical reasons, t and k in the VMS exchange mid-word, rarely at the end of a word. See the attached for frequencies of the exchanges. There is a general parity in the frequencies. Almost every exchange gives a valid VMS word.
Change of one letter in a word or extending a word by inserting a letter is an interesting phenomenon and I think it cant be explained by letter exchanges in Latin words, they exist but not in this frequency. I have not done any statistics, but most exchanges and additions are in the middle of a word. And the insert/addition is very rarely at the omega position. Its like g to 8g. One interesting insertion is the T(kt) between the cz (ch).
This insertions and additions could fit into number system. -
RE: The vowel exchange "a" to "o"
Mauro > 02-11-2025, 02:30 PM
(02-11-2025, 09:10 AM)dashstofsk Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Unlike the Italian examples that exchange at the end of a word for grammatical reasons
Not to be picky but, in addition to changing at the end for grammatical reason, notice many Italian words also do change midword. In the Italian case (but I guess it holds for very many languages) it's just because a consonant followed by a wovel is a basic syllable, so if syllable 'po' exists, also 'pa', 'pi', 'pe', and 'pu' will probably exist, and if a word contains 'po' there is some probability the same word with 'po' replaced by 'pa', 'pi', 'pe, or 'pu' will exist too. And indeed: pozza [puddle], pazza [madwoman], pizza [pizza], pezza [piece of cloth], puzza [stench], where the vowels are exchanged midword.
There's nothing strange in this and, importantly and unfortunately, there is little to glean from noticing that (above the general morphology of Italian syllables), because puddle, madwoman, pizza, piece of cloth and stench have little in common, except differing by just one vowel midword in Italian. The Voynich could behave similarly, so having 'choin' and 'chain' will not be much of help in understanding what 'choin' and 'chain' are. At the opposite, it might manage plurals by changing a character midword instead than at the end as we're accustomed to, so 'one choin' but 'two chain', and this would be very much interesting instead, who knows (and who knows what else). Not that I endorse any of these two ideas, at all, it's just to point out there are always a lot of possibilities to explain why things are made in a certain way, and discriminating between them in the VMS case is difficult. Cautioning against this was the overall sense of my post about Italian, beyond giving an example as requested. -
RE: The vowel exchange "a" to "o"
Jorge_Stolfi > 02-11-2025, 09:10 PM
(02-11-2025, 09:10 AM)dashstofsk Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.If you are looking for a more consistent exchange between two characters in the VMS then the answer is with t and k . Unlike the Italian examples that exchange at the end of a word for grammatical reasons, t and k in the VMS exchange mid-word, rarely at the end of a word.
In the Semitic or Afro-Asiatic languages (which include Arabic, Hebrew, and Ge'ez), words are inflected by changing their vowels while keeping the consonants fixed.
Even in Indo-European languages inflections sometimes change phonemes way back inside the stem. For example in Italian you have "cAnto" ("I sing", with stress on "a" and closed "o") and "cantÒ" ("he sang", with stress on the open "ò"); or "bEllo" ("nice", with stress on open "e") and "bellIssimo" ("very nice", with closed "e" and stress on the "i").
But just because two words differ in only one letter or phoneme it does not mean that they are related. Consider "is", "if", "it", "in", or "thug", "thud", "thus", "this", "thin", "then", "them", "they", ...
All the best, --stolfi -
RE: The vowel exchange "a" to "o"
Petrasti > 02-11-2025, 11:19 PM
Yes, of course there is a vowel exchange in the Romance languages, and this is also the case in German. But as we can see from the Italian examples, the exchange creates words with different meanings in different subject areas, which is also the case in German. In the manuscript, however, we are certainly more limited in terms of subject matter and word usage, especially in the area of plants.
Given the accumulation in a limited environment, I think it is more likely that the words are the same.
And yes, I also think that the a and y are identical for the letter "a", just pronounced as a short and long a. That would increase the interchangeability of a and o many times over. (maybe that's why I noticed it so much) But since this is also a system without ‘proof’, I limited my question to the interchangeability of a in o. -
RE: The vowel exchange "a" to "o"
Petrasti > 02-11-2025, 11:38 PM
I have looked at some short examples in Arabic and Hebrew (without reference to these languages). However, it is noticeable that the inflected words change the word stems at the end of the word as well as the swapped vowel. Or have I misunderstood this? I can't see any connection with what happened in the manuscript at the moment. Perhaps you could send me a short example of what you mean exactly? I would really like to understand this. -
RE: The vowel exchange "a" to "o"
Battler > 02-11-2025, 11:42 PM
Sound changes in the middle of the word are fairly common. In Slovenian, there's the e deletion: mesec -> mesca, koper -> kopra, etc. It also has worth doublets that exists with both e and a - mehek and mehak, močen and močan, etc. Also words which have two different plural genitics, eg. ovca -> ovc and ovac. Also, verbs like odeti (to cover) vs. oditi (to leave). Also biti which, with different conjugations, can mean both to be and to beat. In Freising Monuments era this was likely byti vs. biti. And pre-standardization, there was probably even more such variation.
Japanese has inter-word consonant voicing (rendaku) - koi + hito = koibito, ko + shishi = kojishi, etc. It also has godan (yodan in medieval Japanese) verbs, where the vowel at the end changes, eg. yomu (to read) -> yomanai (not to read, yomanu in medieval Japanese). Medieval Japanese even had verb form pairs that only differe in a vowel, eg. yomanu (not to read) vs. yominu (to have read) (some expert in classical Japanese please correct me if I'm wrong). It even has left-overs of ancient vowel harmony: kaze + hana = kazahana (strangely not kazabana - perhaps z being voiced inhibited the rendaku?).
Dialectal forms also come to mind, eg. an Italian-speaking writer may alternate between mb and nb depending on if a standard or Venetian form came first to his mind. The same goes for mp vs. np, eg. forever would be sempre in standard Italian (and in Tuscan) but senpre in Venetian. Also ar vs. er confusion - eg. libertà in standard/Tuscan, but libartà or even łibartà in Venetian. Then there would be the thing of eg. writing facto in Latin set phrases but fatto in Italian sentences, etc.
In German, there's umlaut, eg. Baum -> Bäume. English has something similar with foot -> feet. Italian has something similar with verb - vedi (though seest) vs. vidi (I saw). -
RE: The vowel exchange "a" to "o"
Petrasti > 03-11-2025, 06:47 AM
I have again inserted the first four lines of slide You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. with the change from a to o. Here, as already mentioned, I assume that a/y are synonymous.
We have about 30 words in the first 4 lines, 24 of which have a ‘partner’ with the swapped vowel in the manuscript. This cannot be explained by Japanese, Slovenian, German or Italian. The frequency of swapping is repeated in each slide, sometimes more or less, depending on how often a word occurs in the manuscript
kooiin koaiin, cheo chey, pchor pchar, o y, dain doin, chor char, kcho kchy, kchy kcho, c+ho c+hy, c+hol c+hal, qotcho qotchy, qoty qoto, chor char, daiin doiin, otchy otcho, chor char, lc+hy lc+ho, chol char, chody chodo,
chcthy chctho, daiin doiin, c+ho c+hy, cholo choly, cheor chear, -
RE: The vowel exchange "a" to "o"
dashstofsk > 03-11-2025, 09:07 AM
You seem to be swapping the final character o <-> y. The proper way to judge how significant these exchanges are is to list frequencies. VMS just doesn't seem to like having d, t or k followed by o at the end of a word.
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RE: The vowel exchange "a" to "o"
dashstofsk > 03-11-2025, 09:20 AM
(03-11-2025, 06:47 AM)Petrasti Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.This cannot be explained by Japanese, Slovenian, German or Italian.
Neither it seems by any other language. Many people have tried to find some comparison with almost every modern or mediaeval language, and have all failed to provide sufficient evidence to convince any majority ( not even a minority ) to change their opinion about this manuscript. -
RE: The vowel exchange "a" to "o"
Petrasti > 03-11-2025, 01:07 PM
The lists are fantastic. Have you already posted them online? We have the same exchange with ch and sh. If we assume that this is a natural language, these systems must be /become explainable. Initially, I thought we had a grammatical system for vowel exchange. At the moment, I think that these are the same words in which a and o are flexibly interchangeable. So far, I have only found one entry for this.
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