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Theory: perhaps the letters do not have phonemic content?
- Theory: perhaps the letters do not have phonemic content?
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RE: Theory: perhaps the letters do not have phonemic content?
oshfdk > 10-07-2026, 12:06 AM
(09-07-2026, 11:07 PM)ololololo Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.The problem with this version is that we won't be able to analyze VMS from its perspective. Even if we assume that it's some kind of super-logical philosophical language, we still won't be able to describe it.
I think this is wrong. Deciphering a nomenclator/philosophical language would be relatively easy. There are hundreds of images in the MS, a lot of them labelled. Identify some words using the labels, find them in the text, identify more words from the context, cross-check, etc etc. A good reference here could be the deciphering of Rohonc codex.
(09-07-2026, 11:07 PM)ololololo Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.There are no really significant facts indicating that Voynichese could be a philosophical language.
Invented script is a very good sign for an invented language. If you think about invented languages like Quenya or Klingon - they have their own invented alphabets.
(09-07-2026, 11:07 PM)ololololo Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Secondly, if it were a language, the statistics would tell us so. And according to them, Voynichese cannot be a pure language in itself. To be honest, I don't know how supporters of this theory explain the statistical features.
Which statistical features specifically are incompatible with an invented language? I'm not sure I know any. Note that an invented language can have arbitrary grammatical and syntactic features. I don't think this is a good argument.
(09-07-2026, 11:07 PM)ololololo Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Thirdly, the purpose of this language is unclear. In the Middle Ages, people did not have a need to create their own language from scratch, and if they did, it was usually a philosophical language used for a specific purpose (often mystical, such as Lingua Ignota and Enochian). What is the purpose of Voynichese as a philosophical language? To hide the contents of a book? But you can use a cipher, or at least write in your native language if it's not particularly popular where you are.
I'm not even sure if you are arguing for an invented language or against it? You say "people did not have a need to create their own language" and immediately after that give a very good example of Lingua Ignota, created a couple of centuries before Voynich. I'm not sure there are successful examples of actual invented languages that were used for communication at the time, but people did have a need to create languages for some purposes and since we have no idea what the purpose of the Voynich MS was, this argument doesn't really work, I think.
(09-07-2026, 11:07 PM)ololololo Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.As I see it, the first step is to argue why Voynichese can be a philosophical language. It's not just a matter of "I think so" or "Friedman said so," as that wouldn't suffice. At the same time, I agree that I didn't choose the best refutation, but in my opinion, the complexity and impracticality of the philosophical language theory are precisely what refute it due to their inappropriateness. It's still possible to accept a complex cipher, but a complex language for a single book is too much...
Philosophical languages usually start with a single book. Also, the OP in the thread didn't argue for a purely philosophical language, but for a nomenclator with elements of philosophical language, which is not at all anachronistic. Small nomenclators were actively used in diplomatic ciphers of the time, there is nothing extraordinary in imagining an experiment where a nomenclator is used for a whole book.
And what is "the complexity and impracticality of the philosophical language"? Writing/reading in a philosophical language using a nomenclator is trivial with a set of index cards or a bidirectional dictionary. -
RE: Theory: perhaps the letters do not have phonemic content?
Jorge_Stolfi > 10-07-2026, 03:39 AM
(09-07-2026, 11:07 PM)ololololo Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Secondly, if it were a language, the statistics would tell us so. And according to them, Voynichese cannot be a pure language in itself. To be honest, I don't know how supporters of this theory explain the statistical features.
In my view, the statistics are all compatible with plaintext in a natural language. Just not the "usual suspects".
In fact, the "hoax" and "cipher" theories must assume either really good luck or improbable linguistic knowledge by the Author in order to justify why the method used happened to generate a text with so many "natural" features.
All the best, --stolfi -
RE: Theory: perhaps the letters do not have phonemic content?
Radim Dobeš > 10-07-2026, 07:41 AM
In my thread, I explore the possibility that the glyphs of the Voynich manuscript were created using the method of *charactères*—symbols resembling keys or spectacles. This method takes a source text and determines the value of each word using gematria; it then identifies a substitute word from extensive, pre-established lists and replaces the original with these specific symbols. The resulting text retains neither the original information nor any grammatical traces, yet it preserves the rhythm inherent in this transformation process. Reversing the process is impossible. These symbols have no phonetic value. The rationale behind this method of text transformation can be found in my posts. -
RE: Theory: perhaps the letters do not have phonemic content?
ololololo > 10-07-2026, 10:10 AM
(10-07-2026, 12:06 AM)oshfdk Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.There are hundreds of images in the MS, a lot of them labelled.
Even taking into account the context, it defies analysis.(10-07-2026, 12:06 AM)oshfdk Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Invented script is a very good sign for an invented language.
You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. The invented alphabet is also suitable for some distant language that is difficult to translate into Latin.
(10-07-2026, 12:06 AM)oshfdk Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Which statistical features specifically are incompatible with an invented language?
I'm not saying that they're incompatible, because they're still compatible. What I'm saying is that they haven't been explained. That's the first thing.
Secondly, with all the assumptions, I can't find an explanation for why Voynichese is so minimalistic. Was the author too lazy to come up with other words, and he started using the old ones? Does each word have a different meaning?
Thirdly, philosophical language seems to have a syntax problem. A prime example is the qokeedy Death Loop (f75r). From the point of view of linguistics, how meaningful and coherent will such a text be, even if it's written in super-duper-logical-complicated-philosophical language?
(10-07-2026, 12:06 AM)oshfdk Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.people did not have a need to create their own language
They didn't invent a language FOR NOTHING, they didn't invent a language just to speak it. Lingua Ignota and Enochian were created for mystical purposes in order to use them in rituals, but certainly not to communicate with each other. It was only later that all kinds of languages like Esperanto began to appear, in the Middle Ages they were not particularly interested in this.
(10-07-2026, 12:06 AM)oshfdk Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I'm not even sure if you are arguing for an invented language or against it
I think it's unlikely, but it's possible. No one knows for sure...
(10-07-2026, 12:06 AM)oshfdk Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.the OP in the thread didn't argue for a purely philosophical language, but for a nomenclator with elements of philosophical language, which is not at all anachronistic
That's true, but I didn't seem to say that such a system was "ahead of time". It is simple and rather difficult to execute, and it seems impractical to use it to write a 270-page book.
(10-07-2026, 12:06 AM)oshfdk Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Small nomenclators were actively used in diplomatic ciphers of the time, there is nothing extraordinary in imagining an experiment where a nomenclator is used for a whole book.
And I'm ofYou are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
(10-07-2026, 12:06 AM)oshfdk Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Writing/reading in a philosophical language using a nomenclator is trivial with a set of index cards or a bidirectional dictionary.
Maybe it is. But in my opinion, you don't really understand what I want to convey. I'm not saying that this language is impossible, bad, etc. I'm saying that its creation and application is impractical. If you mention magical purposes, then you should keep in mind that very rarely have new languages been created for them. They could have limited themselves to You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. or You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view..
If you still don't understand what I'm talking about, then I can suggest that you try to create your own language (manually!) and write a big book on it. The language should not be gibberish, it should be meaningful and readable. When you start doing this, you'll probably understand what I mean by complexity
(10-07-2026, 07:41 AM)Radim Dobeš Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.In my thread, I explore the possibility that the glyphs of the Voynich manuscript were created using the method of *charactères*—symbols resembling keys or spectacles. This method takes a source text and determines the value of each word using gematria; it then identifies a substitute word from extensive, pre-established lists and replaces the original with these specific symbols. The resulting text retains neither the original information nor any grammatical traces, yet it preserves the rhythm inherent in this transformation process. Reversing the process is impossible. These symbols have no phonetic value. The rationale behind this method of text transformation can be found in my posts.
The second image is just betony. There is nothing unusual about decorating the first letters of a new section in a book. -
RE: Theory: perhaps the letters do not have phonemic content?
oshfdk > 10-07-2026, 11:19 AM
(10-07-2026, 10:10 AM)ololololo Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Maybe it is. But in my opinion, you don't really understand what I want to convey. I'm not saying that this language is impossible, bad, etc. I'm saying that its creation and application is impractical.
Why should it be practical? If its topic turns out to be about summoning demons, divine revelations or plant magic rituals, the impracticality could be an essential part of the process. The harder and more complicated this is, the better.
In any case, whatever you consider practical is not necessarily what people who created the VMS would consider practical. Here is a recent example: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. that contains 400 PAGES of enciphered dictionary articles (for verbs only) from a know dictionary. Would you call this practical?
(10-07-2026, 10:10 AM)ololololo Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.If you still don't understand what I'm talking about, then I can suggest that you try to create your own language (manually!) and write a big book on it. The language should not be gibberish, it should be meaningful and readable. When you start doing this, you'll probably understand what I mean by complexity
I still don't understand what you are talking about and I'm certainly not going to spend my time on this exercise As a counteroffer I suggest you try to create your own mysterious manuscript that would grab everybody's attention and then would resists all attempts of making sense of it for hundreds of years.
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RE: Theory: perhaps the letters do not have phonemic content?
ololololo > 10-07-2026, 11:40 AM
(10-07-2026, 11:19 AM)oshfdk Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Here is a recent example: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. that contains 400 PAGES of enciphered dictionary articles (for verbs only) from a know dictionary. Would you call this practical?
Very interesting example! But I don't consider this proof that Voynichese is a artificial language. It's impractical, but by the looks of it, it was worth it.
(10-07-2026, 11:19 AM)oshfdk Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.As a counteroffer I suggest you try to create your own mysterious manuscript that would grab everybody's attention and then would resists all attempts of making sense of it for hundreds of years
With modern technology, it's not that difficult. Create a random set of letters, add a system to it, add some similarities with other systems, and (most importantly) Tell me you don't know where you got this book from.
If we talk about meaningful text, then we can simply complicate numeric substitution in non-mathematical ways. Theoretically, it will be possible to decipher it, but without the alphabet and any information it is very difficult...(10-07-2026, 11:19 AM)oshfdk Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.If its topic turns out to be about summoning demons, divine revelations or plant magic rituals, the impracticality could be an essential part of the process
It is your responsibility to prove why I should believe that you are right and that the VMS contains some kind of mystical subtext I've seen many such theories, but they all don't seem convincing enough to me. For example: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
I think I've proved why the philosophical language version is unlikely. By the way, your counterarguments do not prove this theory in any way. If you say, "actually, other people did that at that time", it doesn't mean anything by itself, they did a lot of things in the Middle Ages. -
RE: Theory: perhaps the letters do not have phonemic content?
oshfdk > 10-07-2026, 03:00 PM
(10-07-2026, 11:40 AM)ololololo Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.It is your responsibility to prove why I should believe that you are right and that the VMS contains some kind of mystical subtext
No, it's not my responsibility at all. And I never claimed VMS contains some kind of mystical subtext. I never said it doesn't either, so I have nothing to prove.
(10-07-2026, 11:40 AM)ololololo Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
(10-07-2026, 11:19 AM)oshfdk Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.As a counteroffer I suggest you try to create your own mysterious manuscript that would grab everybody's attention and then would resists all attempts of making sense of it for hundreds of years
With modern technology, it's not that difficult. Create a random set of letters, add a system to it, add some similarities with other systems, and (most importantly) Tell me you don't know where you got this book from.
With modern technology it's impossible. Exactly because the existing technology makes the process very easy, so not a single person will be interested in the result. If Voynich Manuscript vellum was dated to 1850, most people would have said "well, someone had a very strange hobby" and moved on. -
RE: Theory: perhaps the letters do not have phonemic content?
ololololo > 10-07-2026, 03:33 PM
(10-07-2026, 03:00 PM)oshfdk Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I never said it doesn't either, so I have nothing to prove.
No problems.
(10-07-2026, 03:00 PM)oshfdk Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.If Voynich Manuscript vellum was dated to 1850, most people would have said "well, someone had a very strange hobby" and moved on.
It is unlikely that they would say that nowadays, provided that the VMS would look exactly the same.
In general, if you try and write a text that: 1). Unusual 2). Incomparable to anything 3). Interesting for analysis, then at least people will be interested in the text.
By the way, you can just try to distort some old language beyond recognition, and then it would become a sensation, they say, "look! The language of this manuscript is similar to Old French!". -
RE: Theory: perhaps the letters do not have phonemic content?
epidemic7 > 10-07-2026, 04:01 PM
Hello all,
I want to interject and say that I found out in actuality the MS has almost a quarter order of magnitude more "words" than I thought; the musing on a cut down language relied on the false idea the MS had only 6000 "words." Given that there is comparatively very little in terms of Medieval conlangs in comparison to the wealth thereof today, but also in consideration of the weirdness of the VMS as a whole, I think it is possible that it could have been written in a conlang, however given that the modern discipline of linguistics would not arise until centuries later and that to my knowledge many of the Medieval conlangs were simply You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. of a language they knew, unless a new grammar was invented entirely, which to me just teeters on implausibility for some early 15th-century scribes to do, the relationships between the words would not be all that unique to that of a natural language.
My thought process is just that people have been searching how to reconcile the writing system with some natural language since people have been studying the MS, and the concrete regularity of it refuses to budge to any possible mapping, be it a simple substitution or verbose one. At the same time, there seems to be enough structural coherency in the document itself (by that I mean the apparent "topics" of the paragraphs) to suggest it does have actual content to it, and the only reconciliation between the two is that the letters were chosen in accordance to some system that has nothing to do with the representation of phonemes. But if that were the case, if it were, say, German, we could still tell with the presence of the same relatively few articles present before every noun or so... -
RE: Theory: perhaps the letters do not have phonemic content?
ololololo > 10-07-2026, 04:17 PM
(10-07-2026, 04:01 PM)epidemic7 Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.My thought process is just that people have been searching how to reconcile the writing system with some natural language since people have been studying the MS
Jorge Stolfi compared the recipe section with Shannong Bengzao, and he got something. But I do not know if this comparison makes sense.
(10-07-2026, 04:01 PM)epidemic7 Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.But if that were the case, if it were, say, German, we could still tell with the presence of the same relatively few articles present before every word...
In general, the cipher can erase these obvious grammatical clues. It is not always possible to determine in advance the language of the encrypted text, for example, the You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.s. On the back of the encrypted poem was its "translation" into Greek, but the language of its cryptograms could be not only Greek.