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new working hypothesis for reading the Voynich manuscript.

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  • new working hypothesis for reading the Voynich manuscript.
• new working hypothesis for reading the Voynich manuscript.

• new working hypothesis for reading the Voynich manuscript.

  sam french > 22-01-2026, 03:56 PM

  Hello everyone,
  
  I would like to share a
    A Procedural Reading of the Voynich Manuscript Based on Abbreviated Medieval Latin.pdf (Size: 205.3 KB / Downloads: 24)
  
  My approach, called SAM (Système d’Analyse Morphologique / Morphological Analysis System), treats the text as a technical, procedural notation written in heavily abbreviated medieval Latin (14th–15th century style), rather than a ciphered natural language or an invented script.
  Key points of the method:
  

  • I deliberately exclude EVA (Extensible Voynich Alphabet) and all phonetically-oriented transcriptions, i use my own transcription based on ancien alphabet.
    
  • I have created my own functional, glyph-based transcription system that groups shapes directly into operational units (e.g. roaux → radix, ora → hora/time marker, chod/chot → coquere/ripening process, re- → reprise/repetition, bauba/baux → bulbus/base, etc.).
    
  • These units are not phonetic values but functional markers inspired by abbreviated Latin in medieval botanical, medical and alchemical recipe books.
    
  • I've only used AI assistance specifically to help expand and rephrase the abbreviated forms into plausible, non-classical medieval Latin sentences, while keeping the interpretation probabilistic and revisable.
    
  • Every reading is systematically cross-checked against the illustrations (root emphasis, plant structure, cyclical diagrams, bathing scenes) to ensure procedural coherence.
    

  The current draft focuses first on botanical pages (especially You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. and You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. with their prominent reddish roots), then extends the same markers to cosmological and balneological sections. The results suggest a unified technical corpus built around time – process – matter/body cycles.
  This is not a full translation claim. It is a testable, revisable reading framework that avoids linguistic encoding assumptions.
  
  I welcome constructive feedback, especially on:

  • consistency of marker assignments across sections,
    
  • parallels (or contradictions) with known abbreviated Latin manuscripts,
    
  • iconographic fit.
    

  The working paper (with methodology, examples, limits, and my custom transcription rationale) is attached / linked below. I've kept to myself m'y sam transcription for now cause i need to work on it.
  Thank you for your time and thoughts!
  Best regards,

• RE: new working hypothesis for reading the Voynich manuscript.

  Koen G > 22-01-2026, 04:54 PM

  Hi Sam,
  
  The degree to which you used an LLM was unfortunately enough to result in typical AI slop. This is not allowed on the forum.
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