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Why and how the text could be Bavarian
- Why and how the text could be Bavarian
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RE: Why and how the text could be Bavarian
Jorge_Stolfi > 08-05-2026, 07:52 PM
(04-05-2026, 08:34 AM)dashstofsk Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.The manuscript has the look of being something that was not written in one go. Differences in the writing, trimming, content and style, together with the suspicion that it might have been the effort of more than one person, suggest each section was a separate piece of work written at different times, and was written to an individual standard.
That question is actually two separate questions, about the composition of the text and its writing onto vellum.
The writing on vellum may have taken a relatively short time span, like a couple of years at most. Short enough for the same Scribe to have been recruited for all the drawings, and maybe two of them for all the text. That is consistent with the continuity of handwriting and artwork style across section boundaries -- if they are examined in the proper order. (Zodiac and Cosmo probably were written down before Bio and Herbal, and Pharma before Herbal. The order of the Recipes aka Starred Parags section is uncertain; the stars are too little material to go on.) Anyway, it is this phase that can be dated to "after 1420" by the C14 results and by the details of the illustrations.
The composition of the whole text probably had been completed before the clean-copying onto vellum began. Considering the breadth of topics, this phase must have taken many years -- even if most or all of the contents was taken from other books. Thus some of the contents may have been composed even before 1400; and of course any "imported" material may have been written centuries before that. This part of the creation may have included the significant details of the illustrations, but not the merely decorative ones. Of course we still cannot tell with certainty which details are which...
All the best, --stolfi -
RE: Why and how the text could be Bavarian
JoJo_Jost > 09-05-2026, 02:21 PM
I know that the spaces in the VMS have been studied for quite some time and that some people believe they are not actually spaces. I was interested in determining which trigrams or tokens span the boundaries, and which of these occur frequently enough to warrant inclusion in the analysis.
I’m starting to find "y qo" = "yqo" a very, very amusing theory. The "y" in VMS—the "9"—is considered an abbreviation typical of Latin texts; it often appears at the end of a word, or at the beginning, but rarely in the middle.
I think there’s a rule that says: always separate the y with a space. Why would the cipherer do that?
The result is that the y appears extremely frequently at the end or beginning of a word. Anyone, especially in the Middle Ages, who sees this will immediately think: That’s Latin.
What’s even cooler is that he perfectly conceals important bigrams and trigrams this way.
The same effect applies to “qo,” which, according to the rule, must always appear at the beginning of a word... Everyone immediately thinks of “quod,” “quorum,” and the other abbreviations that exist here, so again: This must be Latin!
And that’s exactly how it went for most people nowadays who are just starting to look into this.
If the cipherer thought: I’ll use a trigram as a letter/unit—for example, yqo—then I’ll always separate it into y and qo with a space.
This kills two birds with one stone:
1. It conceals the actual language (here clearly Bavarian
, okay... or another 
)
2. he obscures the crucial bi/trigram or word.
Let’s take a look at the possible combinations:
yqo
yqok
dyqo
dyqok
edyqo
edyqok
eyqo
yqoke
That’s interesting....
And in my opinion, it solves the problem i had with the Cores ....
The same could apply, for example, to aiin:
aiino
aiinch
aiinsh
aiinqo
aiind
aiiny
AIN
aino
ainch
ainsh
ainqo
We know that aiin frequently appears at the end of words. This could indicate that this is also a possible misinterpretation.
So instead of being an ending, the aiin family could be a left-hand part of larger units that are split by a space.
What else there is:
yo / ych / yd / ysh
dyqo / dyo / dych
edyqo / edyo / edych
ro / rch / ra / rsh
lo / lch / lsh / lqo
But if that’s true, that the spaces ar no spaces a lot of statistical findings would collapse like houses of cards or become highly distorted.
Here is the table: How can these abrupt transitions be explained? A normal language likely doesn’t have this, because then the plaintext language would have to have a very long list of “phonetically impossible” bigrams—from this perspective, the simpler explanation is: a consistent cipher system that uses spaces as camouflage, rather than random phonotactic restrictions in many bigrams.
(Overlaps included; counts are not additive.)
The numbers are so strikingly clear that you really have to stop and think about what’s going on here. I’ve already mentioned the simplest explanation for this. And I have at least one theory about it... -
RE: Why and how the text could be Bavarian
JoJo_Jost > 11-05-2026, 08:03 AM
I'm still working on it, and I think I have a viable idea - not a solution yet, but one that could explain many of the peculiar features of the VMS.
One interesting consequence: it gives an explanation for the differences between sections and Currier A/B.
Suppose the underlying text is MHD in a Bavarian dialect. Writing in this period was still strongly phonetic. If two / five scribes spoke even slightly different dialects, the cipher output would diverge noticeably — same system, different surface profile.
Different languages would be going too far; that has already been tested and dismissed. But slightly to more strongly differing dialects would fit a lot of what we see. Currier A and B might then correspond to two scribes with very similar dialects, and Balneo to a more distinctly different one.
That would sit comfortably within the Middle High German era — Bavaria at the time was a patchwork of subtly and not-so-subtly different dialects.
Just an idea...
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RE: Why and how the text could be Bavarian
tavie > 11-05-2026, 11:17 AM
How does that work with different variations in A and B, and signs that it may be closer to a continuum than a hard split? -
RE: Why and how the text could be Bavarian
Aga Tentakulus > 11-05-2026, 11:55 AM
Small clues can reveal a lot.
Example: “889”
Two 8s in a row isn't normal.
As already explained: “daqua,” ‘dWohnig’
But it is normal in “dDachs.”
When is it a word, and when is it an article?
The spelling is up to the individual.
But it must always be in harmony.
In my view.
“89 889” = “tum de dum,” and roughly during -
RE: Why and how the text could be Bavarian
JoJo_Jost > 11-05-2026, 12:30 PM
@ Tavie
Okay, let’s imagine this: two writers with roughly the same dialect, but with slight differences. I’m going to discuss the phonetic language in the original Voynich manuscript, but I want to emphasize that this is only an example; under no circumstances is it exactly as I write it, nor do I assume that the EVA transcription should be used verbatim. Furthermore, I’m certain there’s a cipher over it. But the example explains it quite well. So the following is just an example!
One person pronounces ch and sch at the end of a word as: cho sho, while the other pronounces it as follows: she che. Note that a short sho and she sound very similar to the ear, because the o is pronounced more like an e and the e more like an o. Since writing was phonetic back then, small variations occur. Also, one person may use different words in their writing than the other. One writes “a” more often, the other tends to use the article “the,” etc. Something like this can then, when combined with a cipher, lead to a different “coloring,” which would explain the Currier A/B differences.
The Balneo part is quite different. Until now, it was assumed that this might have to do with the underlying text form. That may well be the case. But if a completely different Bavarian dialect is added to the mix, the changes would be even more pronounced. However, since it would still be based on Bavarian dialects, the basic structure of the VMS would remain the same.
That is the the theorie... -
RE: Why and how the text could be Bavarian
tavie > 11-05-2026, 12:33 PM
I didn't mean the difference between A and B; I meant the differences within A, and the differences within B.
While Herbal A and Pharma are grouped under Lisa's Scribe 1 and Currier's A classification, there are still significant differences between them. -
RE: Why and how the text could be Bavarian
JoJo_Jost > 11-05-2026, 12:47 PM
Oh, sorry, I misunderstood you there.
Yes, that’s also (as a possible theory) easy to explain:
Even a single hand could write the same word in very different ways. You see this time and again in manuscripts.
Typical examples of such variations:
und / vnd / vnnd / unnd (and)
ich / ichs / ih / i (I)
sein / seyn / seinn (to be)
zu / ze / zů / zue (to/close)
nicht / nit / nycht / nitt (not)
wasser / wazzer / wasser / waßer (water)
This is quite normal for Early New High German. There was no modern, fixed orthography. -
RE: Why and how the text could be Bavarian
dashstofsk > 11-05-2026, 01:41 PM
(11-05-2026, 12:47 PM)JoJo_Jost Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.There was no modern, fixed orthography.
Much the same can also be said of many other languages at that time. It wasn't until the late 15th century with the arrival of Caxton's printing that the conditions for a standard written English language began to emerge. The language in both spelling and pronunciation was very regional. Also the presence today of many Italian regional dialects tells us that the same was also true for that language. This is probably how most languages developed. Many regional dialects until such time as the demands of government, trade and commerce necessitated a common standard.
I really cannot see much hope from the evidence you provided for the manuscript being Bavarian, or any other Germanic language or dialect.