Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Voynich manuscript: the solution?

the-tls.co.uk

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 97 posts

Re: Voynich manuscript: the solution?

#31

Post by gecko »

dmbaggett wrote: post #14

There are many crank analyses of the Voynich manuscript floating around out there. The only thing I've seen that has any believability (I'm a former linguist) is this: https://youtube.com/watch?v=4cRlqE3D3RQ https://youtube.com/watch?v=8nHbImkFKE4 tl;dr: it's probably real writing, likely related to Roma/Syriac

I rarely comment here anymore, but I wanted to break that tradition to say thank-you. I have been routinely frustrated—or more honestly, just annoyed—at Voynich attempts for exactly the reasons you highlight. I have no idea if this is correct, but it's the only serious modern attempt I've seen, and I genuinely really appreciated this.

Re: Voynich manuscript: the solution?

#32

Post by computator »

A sample translation is the key thing I wanted to read in this article, and all they gave was an illegible low-resolution snippet without an English translation -- very annoying.

As best as I can read, the purported Latin translation in the image at the top of the article says:

Folia de oz et en de aqua et de radicts de aromaticus ana 3 de seminis ana 2 et de radicis semenis ana 1 etium abonenticus confundo. Folia et cum folia et confundo etiam de eius decocole adigo aromaticus decocque de decoctio adigo aromaticus et confundo et de radicis seminis ana 3.

Feeding the above to Google Translate gives:

The leaves of Oz and added to the water and the aromatic radicts semen Ana ana 3 2 seed and the roots ana 1 etium abonenticus the mix. The leaves, when the leaves are decocole adigo and the mix of the aromatic decocque of the cooking adigo an aromatic mix of roots and seeds Ana 3.

Yes, I realize that the author's translation might be completely mistaken, but I'm curious to read what he thinks it says. If someone can make out the words better, please do so.

Re: Voynich manuscript: the solution?

#34

Post by lisper »

The idea that the Voynich manuscript is a medical text seems plausible, but the theory that it uses a logographic representation (one symbol per word) rather than an alphabetic or even a syllabaric (one symbol per syllable) one seems less likely to me. A cursory examination of the manuscript (http://www.voynich.nu/folios.html) reveals that the lexicography looks much more like an alphabetic encoding than a logographic one like Chinese. The symbols are collected into word-like groups separated by white space. Also, it appears that there are too many repeated symbols and insufficiently many distinct symbols for a logographic language.

Re: Voynich manuscript: the solution?

#35

Post by fusiongyro »

quinndupont wrote: post #30
saalweachter wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The image at the top is a decoding of a couple of lines of text. The decoding yields extremely boring Latin, so I'm not terribly surprised if the investigator decided not to decode the entire document.

That's the curious thing: to an academic there's no such thing as "extremely boring Latin", especially when it comes to the Voynich. Why we're only given a tantalizing line is odd. Perhaps there is no single "universal" solution? Perhaps this is just a guess that happens to roughly work for a single line, but nothing else?

I agree. To claim a solution without writing out the whole thing so it can be analyzed in depth seems absurd to me. I'm also not convinced that the statistical analyses that have been thrown at it would fail to detect patterns of meaning that are obscured merely by abbreviation.

Re: Voynich manuscript: the solution?

#36

Post by emmelaich »

nkurz wrote: post #20

Other than declaring that the solution is obvious to a self-declared expert such as himself, the author (Nicholas Gibbs) doesn't appear to give any proof of his theory. So far I can can find online, this piece is the only thing he has ever published about the Voynich manuscript: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=%22nicholas+gibbs%22+voynich Who is Nicholas Gibbs? Does anyone besides Nicholas Gibbs trust his opinion on these…

I found a Nicholas Gibbs article on a medieval figure here: http://theibizan.com/ramon-llull-philosopher-logician/

Same guy? Editor of a paper in Ibiza.

ps. http://www.voynich.nu/ has a lot of interesting discussion; it's much linked to from wikipedia.

Post reply on HN