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Voynich manuscript: the solution?

the-tls.co.uk

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Re: Voynich manuscript: the solution?

#61

Post by jdright »

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

Very good indeed. The third video is also amazing. Volder (and Prof Stephen Bax?) has very convincing arguments. Also he demonstrated incredible linguistic knowledge. It is inspiring.

Thank you for the links!

Edit: Btw, looking at some suggested videos I've found this https://youtu.be/PoNm65v1thU a bit intriguing.

Re: Voynich manuscript: the solution?

#62

Post by markbnj »

mntmn wrote: post #37

What if it is just Lorem Ipsum by someone who could draw but not actually write?

Not sure if serious, but on the off chance... seems unlikely. We create "Lorem Ipsum" gibberish to fill space because modern technology has made it trivially easy to do so. The same exercise would have taken a medieval writer many laborious hours.

Re: Voynich manuscript: the solution?

#63

Post by andrewjw »

ollin wrote: post #60
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

Very interesting videos! Do you know of any discussion by linguists of this analysis? I checked /r/linguistics and couldn't find anything, but I'm a bit worried about posting it there since I'm not enough of a linguist to judge the merits of the analysis myself. I found some discussion of Bax's work here: https://www.reddit.com/r/linguistics/comments/64p2hw/secret_... but nothing about Volder.

Bax does reply in support to Volder's videos, which seems positive.

Re: Voynich manuscript: the solution?

#64

Post by abakker »

emeraldd wrote: post #16

So the whole thing is written in a form of shorthand and the core index/naming that define what the individual pieces are is missing. I wonder if this wasn't meant as a "production" manuscript but as a reference document for the replication of a larger work?

was thinking the same thing. Kind of like a compression algorithm. Keep this low-paper version with an index if a scribe needed to write out another copy. Of course, if that were the cases, then it would probably be for a higher volume book and some copies of the real thing might be lying around somewhere.

Re: Voynich manuscript: the solution?

#65

Post by crumbles »

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…

Nate Kurz? Who is this guy anyway? While he might appear to have 40018 or higher karma on Hacker News, how does that give him the authority to drag Nicholas Gibbs' name through the mud, and for what? A temporary spot at the top of the HN comments for what could be one of the sanest things I've ever read by Nicholas Gibbs? Nate didn't even have to convince anyone to allow him to publish this drivel. All he had to do was post his comment to HN, and then, based on his karma, he was not only allowed to disparage Nicholas Gibbs, who was chosen to be published by TLS, but he was able to disparage TLS in the process!

(to avoid being entirely negative, here's a link to what should be discussed here: https://www.the-tls.co.uk/articles/public/voynich-manuscript...)

Re: Voynich manuscript: the solution?

#68

Post by kitanata »

Like, is everyone ignoring the picture at the top of the article? That looks like a pretty believable direct translation of the ligatures to me. I know its not the whole thing, but it is plausibly consistent.

That image is titled p16_Gibbs1.jpg. To me that hints that the author is serious and is planning to release a detailed paper.

His final statement at the end of the article is really bold. "Not only is the manuscript incomplete, but its folios are in the wrong order – and all for the want of an index."

Perhaps the author is going to provide the index, and the correct order for the folios while providing what he believes to be the missing pieces from other texts from that time period?

This article looks like a teaser to me for something significant. Let's hope anyway.

Re: Voynich manuscript: the solution?

#69

Post by rebuilder »

computator wrote: post #32

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…

seems like it says "Folia de oz 3 et in de aqua et de radacis de aromaticus ana 3 de seminis ana 3 et de radacis seminis ana 1 1/2 [fraction unclear] etiam aromaticus confundo."

At the end of the article the author provides the following: aq = aqua (water), dq = decoque / decoctio (decoction), con = confundo (mix), ris = radacis / radix (root), s aiij = seminis ana iij (3 grains each), etc.

"Folia" = "leaves".

"Oz"= unknown, but can this be simply ounces? I'm not sure when the abbreviation was first used or if it was used in latin at all.

"etiam"="also", "furthermore", "still"

So... "3 leaves of "oz"/ 3 oz of leaves and in water and of the roots three each of 'aromaticus' three each of seeds,and of the seeds of the root 1 1/2 each also 'aromaticus' mixed."

Still kind of a nonsense. It seems there's no mention of what plant or plants should be used, unless aromaticus is that plant.

Re: Voynich manuscript: the solution?

#70

Post by agravier »

sago wrote: post #50
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

As I understand it, Voynich has a too low information content to be an alphabetic (or -- a fortiori -- logographic or syllabic) representation of a human language. If true then it is almost certainly not 'real writing'. The videos are an impressive phonological reconstruction, but I predict (based on the assumption that the math isn't lying), that it would be effectively impossible to get much beyond ad-hoc phonetic…

> regular human language.

Holy Montague! You've found it! ;)

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