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What if it's a "Lossy Encoder" for 15th-Century Latin?
- What if it's a "Lossy Encoder" for 15th-Century Latin?
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RE: What if it's a "Lossy Encoder" for 15th-Century Latin?
JoJo_Jost > 24-08-2026, 09:17 PM
That, too, would in a sense – at least if it were a simple substitution – require a kind of natural language that would be relatively easy to crack and would not fit the statistical anomalies of the VMS.
In fact, this cipher, if indeed it is one, is based on a highly organised structure. Look at the families (the ‘E’ family, ‘aiin’, ‘air’, ‘Familien’, ‘ol’ / ‘or’, bigrams ‘ar’, ‘al’); this means that the VMS is either a more complex cipher that wouldn’t need such an abbreviation, or it is a hoax – though statistically, there is much to suggest it is not a hoax.
So the conclusion remains: it is a simple yet more complex cipher, or – though I can now more or less rule this out, though not entirely – Chinese...
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RE: What if it's a "Lossy Encoder" for 15th-Century Latin?
oshfdk > 24-08-2026, 09:50 PM
(24-08-2026, 07:19 PM)Pointless.. Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.But I am trying to find a possible explanation for several Voynich anomalies, such as low character entropy, bimodal frequencies, repetition, and immediate reduplication. I am also interested in glyph dependencies, weak word-to-word relationships, positional patterns, and the differences between Currier A and B.
I don't understand how it's possible to explain these without actual tests. The anomalies you list are quantitative. It's not just "low character entropy", but a specific range of character entropy, specific binomial type/token length distributions, etc. I think arguing that method X can lower entropy or unskew the length distribution is of little value unless it's possible to model the results and show whether the resulting entropies and distribution are similar to Voynichese. -
RE: What if it's a "Lossy Encoder" for 15th-Century Latin?
Pointless.. > 25-08-2026, 07:34 AM
(24-08-2026, 07:29 PM)Rafal Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Some observations:
You don't say anything about encoding (the used cipher which hypothetically turns let's say "radix" into "chedy"), just about the structure of the source text.
Do you have any ideas about the cipher?
Do you think that if the text lacked basic words like "and", "so", "with" etc. but was encrypted in some simple way, then it would be harder to crack?
Personally I don't think so.
The structure of Voynichese isn't also compatible with what you suggest. It has a high percentage of hapax legomena (unique) words which is similar to Latin with declension and much higher than let's say English.
It has very common words like "daiin" which would be good candidates for words like "and" (but it doesn't work). If there is no "and" then what "daiin" could be?
Thank you for these comments, appreciated.
You are right, the Voynich manuscript appears to have an unusually hapax-rich vocabulary. Depending on the transcription and tokenization method, I understand that around 70% of its distinct space-delimited forms occur only once. This is quite high compared with ordinary prose of similar length, although the result depends heavily on whether Voynich spaces actually mark word boundaries and whether its glyph strings correspond to linguistic words at all, as my current working hypothesis on this idea is that that the glyph strings are not linguistic.
Under a lossy positional model, this anomalous hapax rate would sense. If Voynich spaces do not separate normal spoken words, but instead separate clusters of positional data or semantic parameters, the number of unique combinations will naturally explode.
Think of it like combining our earlier stripped Latin roots with specific disambiguation cues or positional padding. If a scribe combines a core root with a highly specific modifier to create a single space-delimited string, that exact string might only ever be needed once in the entire book. The 70% hapax rate isn't a sign of an impossibly large vocabulary; it is the statistical footprint of a modular, combinatorial system where tiny tweaks to a string create thousands of single-use variants.
And regarding the mysterious "daiin daiin", I think will test case for this whole writing system idea - it's the single token-pair where the padding hypothesis, the classifier typology, and the autocopy-null all make competing, checkable predictions.
How does this yet a bit vague fidea sound? -
RE: What if it's a "Lossy Encoder" for 15th-Century Latin?
Pointless.. > 25-08-2026, 07:37 AM
(24-08-2026, 09:50 PM)oshfdk Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
(24-08-2026, 07:19 PM)Pointless.. Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.But I am trying to find a possible explanation for several Voynich anomalies, such as low character entropy, bimodal frequencies, repetition, and immediate reduplication. I am also interested in glyph dependencies, weak word-to-word relationships, positional patterns, and the differences between Currier A and B.
I don't understand how it's possible to explain these without actual tests. The anomalies you list are quantitative. It's not just "low character entropy", but a specific range of character entropy, specific binomial type/token length distributions, etc. I think arguing that method X can lower entropy or unskew the length distribution is of little value unless it's possible to model the results and show whether the resulting entropies and distribution are similar to Voynichese.
I am still at the thought-experiment stage, exploring different ideas and possibilities. If the discussion leads to concrete and testable hypotheses, they can and should be tested.
I hope that collaboration and the exchange of different perspectives will help move the idea forward. -
RE: What if it's a "Lossy Encoder" for 15th-Century Latin?
Rafal > 25-08-2026, 10:11 AM
Quote:my current working hypothesis on this idea is that that the glyph strings are not linguistic
Not linguistic or not phonetic?
If Voynichese "words" mean things like leaf, flower, star or water then it's still a language.
You may not read them loud as folium, flos, stella and aqua. You may not read them loud at all. But they remain words from some language.
Even if they mean things like "with water" or "from leaves" then they are still language. Such composite words are typical for agglutinative languages.
Of course it could be not existing language but constructed language. If I understand correctly that's what you are suggesting.
That's theoretically possible but I see several problems with it. If you develop your ideas further we could discuss it more. -
RE: What if it's a "Lossy Encoder" for 15th-Century Latin?
Pointless.. > 27-08-2026, 07:46 AM
(25-08-2026, 10:11 AM)Rafal Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
Quote:my current working hypothesis on this idea is that that the glyph strings are not linguistic
Not linguistic or not phonetic?
If Voynichese "words" mean things like leaf, flower, star or water then it's still a language.
You may not read them loud as folium, flos, stella and aqua. You may not read them loud at all. But they remain words from some language.
Even if they mean things like "with water" or "from leaves" then they are still language. Such composite words are typical for agglutinative languages.
Of course it could be not existing language but constructed language. If I understand correctly that's what you are suggesting.
That's theoretically possible but I see several problems with it. If you develop your ideas further we could discuss it more.
Yes, of course, you are right that there is content in some linguistic form. That is, after all, the raison d'être of a book or manuscript.
What I am conjecturing is that the script may be mixed with some kind of markers or classifiers, distinct from ordinary diacritics, together with other additions that help guide the interpretation of the underlying linguistic content. So I wouldn't say it i a constructed language, I still think the actual content is in some European language.
Unfortunately, teaching commitments leave me with too little time at the moment to explore these ideas as deeply as I would like. I hope that will improve soon.
Below is a rough list of topics and possibilities that I have been thinking about. Please do not take them too literally or as fixed claims. Rather, consider them as meaningful tags pointing toward areas or concepts that may be worth exploring.
- The VMS is a lossy positional encoder for a bounded astro-medical domain — a structured record/schema, not a natural language or a cipher in the classic sense.
- Meaning is distributed across nested scopes: glyph → word → span → folio → section. Not completely decodable word-by-word.
- Glyphs are functionally typed (classifier / discriminator / structural marker / value), each class tied to a fixed positional slot.
- Capacity is multiplicative across these typed fields — so raw character entropy looks low but actual information density is higher than it appears.
- Immediate word repetition = fixed-width padding for underspecified schema entries, not meaningful redundancy.
- Currier A/B collapses to a per-folio boolean parameter modulating a shared template (leaning on Parisel).
- Autocopy is a null model / benchmark, not a competing theory — i.e. comparing autocopy's P(wi|wi₋₁) against the encoder's P(wi|s,c,d,t)
If anyone is aware of research, discussions, or even speculative work that touches on any of these topics, I would be very grateful for pointers.
As always, constructive comments, alternative perspectives, and critical observations are most welcome. - The VMS is a lossy positional encoder for a bounded astro-medical domain — a structured record/schema, not a natural language or a cipher in the classic sense.