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Voynich Manuscript partially decoded, text is not a hoax, scholar finds

medievalists.net

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Re: Voynich Manuscript partially decoded, text is not a hoax, scholar finds

#71

Post by shibbowhat »

lotsofmangos wrote: post #26
caseydurfee wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This describes many, many translation attempts of the Voynich Manuscript, though. At this point it's hard for me to consider another one of these attempts worth reading, because they all seem to follow the same pattern. Try and identify plants/stars/places in the text by their real names, work backwards from those names, find some other semi-intelligible parts of the manuscript based on that, then handwave away the 8…

At this point it's hard for me to consider another one of these attempts worth reading Then your commentary on the subject is utterly worthless.

Ouch.

Re: Voynich Manuscript partially decoded, text is not a hoax, scholar finds

#72

Post by russellsprouts »

Geee wrote: post #45
adamnemecek wrote: post #3

Here's a PDF for anyone who wants to take a stab :-) http://brbl-dl.library.yale.edu/pdfgen/exportPDF.php?bibid=2...

Hah, on the page 85 that 'P' character got a bit out of hand. :) It's weird that every paragraph starts with either the 'K' or 'P' characters. Not sure if that could be possible with real languages.

It could be a poem. Psalm 119 has 22 stanzas, with the first letter of each sentence of the stanza being with the same letter of the Hebrew alphabet. In the first stanza, each verse starts with aleph, in the second beth, and so on.

Re: Voynich Manuscript partially decoded, text is not a hoax, scholar finds

#73

Post by PeterisP »

Geee wrote: post #45
adamnemecek wrote: post #3

Here's a PDF for anyone who wants to take a stab :-) http://brbl-dl.library.yale.edu/pdfgen/exportPDF.php?bibid=2...

Hah, on the page 85 that 'P' character got a bit out of hand. :) It's weird that every paragraph starts with either the 'K' or 'P' characters. Not sure if that could be possible with real languages.

It could be quite feasible if the symbol has a similar meaning to an article in English.

Re: Voynich Manuscript partially decoded, text is not a hoax, scholar finds

#74

Post by PeterisP »

mitchty wrote: post #29
Typhon wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am puzzled by your comment. Do you mean to imply that the Voynich manuscript is "obviously" a joke ? Do you mean to imply that, in your view, the invention of a new alphabet to write an hitherto unwritten language, which would then have failed to gain widespread acceptance, is a less realistic explanation than your own theory ? Would you please care to explain it in greater details, then ?

I think the implication is that a likely explanation of the situation is that if the alphabet is a mish mash of other languages it is also possibly just a made up conglomeration that was used to make up the manuscript. Basically the xkcd comic would apply, just that the people (or person) that wrote it had a fairly broad linguistic ability. But I'm just assuming.

For pretty much all real smaller languages the alphabet and writing concepts was a mishmash of other, more developed languages that their educated people happened to know. And usually the early versions were horrible, horrible mismatches trying to fit a square peg into a round hole; multiple sounds mapping to a single 'proper' letter, making up new symbols, making up new writing concepts to represent peculiarities of grammar (and then finding out that these concepts don't really work).

There are languages that have tried multiple very different scripts - depending on time period, latin, cyrillic and arabic-style; with different writing styles of the exact same spoken language having almost nothing in common if they were developed in isolation because of differences in location&country.

Re: Voynich Manuscript partially decoded, text is not a hoax, scholar finds

#75

Post by carbon43 »

indrax wrote: post #65
Renaud wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, it certainly point toward a rich patron in any case, someone who could afford all this manual labour. But what is more likely? That this is a forgotten language of which only a single mystifying example exists (ignoring the completely unlikely plants being described in the manuscript), or that it is a work of fantasy that has merits of its own?

Now you are making a false dichotomy.

I just created a user account for the first time to tell you that he is not actually making a false dichotomy. Had he initially presented those two as the only possible options, you would be correct. But in his response what he was in fact doing was asking which of two choices seemed more realistic, in the context of his initial statement being questioned.

Sorry.

Re: Voynich Manuscript partially decoded, text is not a hoax, scholar finds

#76

Post by wavefunction »

Renaud wrote: post #59
pavanky wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unlike late 20th century, Writing in the 15th century was rare and a costly endeavor. It is possible that it is an expression of whimsical fantasy. But it would be highly unlikely for this reason.

Well, it certainly point toward a rich patron in any case, someone who could afford all this manual labour. But what is more likely? That this is a forgotten language of which only a single mystifying example exists (ignoring the completely unlikely plants being described in the manuscript), or that it is a work of fantasy that has merits of its own?

A botanist disagrees with your assessment of the plants described in the Manuscript:

http://phys.org/news/2014-02-botanists-voynich-similar-mexic...

Re: Voynich Manuscript partially decoded, text is not a hoax, scholar finds

#77

Post by coldtea »

Renaud wrote: post #59
pavanky wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unlike late 20th century, Writing in the 15th century was rare and a costly endeavor. It is possible that it is an expression of whimsical fantasy. But it would be highly unlikely for this reason.

Well, it certainly point toward a rich patron in any case, someone who could afford all this manual labour. But what is more likely? That this is a forgotten language of which only a single mystifying example exists (ignoring the completely unlikely plants being described in the manuscript), or that it is a work of fantasy that has merits of its own?

>ignoring the completely unlikely plants being described in the manuscript

There's nothing "completely unlikely" about them. Most have even been indentified.

Re: Voynich Manuscript partially decoded, text is not a hoax, scholar finds

#78

Post by coldtea »

bencollier49 wrote: post #5

The combination of the Voynich Manuscript's history of translation claims, taken together with the origin of this work ( http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/educationnews/3326436/I... ), leads me to view this with at least something of an air of caution.

Or, you know, you can see what he says and judge for yourself.

The Swiss patent office didn't have much scientific output either, until it had.

Re: Voynich Manuscript partially decoded, text is not a hoax, scholar finds

#79

Post by catshirt »

TrainedMonkey wrote: post #52
Renaud wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You mean like a large number of people with no qualification and experience went looking for the Boston bombing suspect? I'll leave it here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-22214511

I would argue that this is more of a mob lynching, rather than constructive combined effort. To look for models that work, look no further than open source. Projects with high amount of interest quite often do better.

i assure you it was intended to be a constructive combined effort. i only skimmed the article linked but it doesn't seem to reference the fact that the kid who was falsely identified was found dead, presumably by his own hand. "hell is full of good meanings, but heaven is full of good works", as they say.

on a lighter note, if you consider an open source project "crowdsourced" then i posit the current collaborative academic efforts to decode the manuscript are "crowdsourced" as well.

Re: Voynich Manuscript partially decoded, text is not a hoax, scholar finds

#80

Post by coldtea »

bronson wrote: post #40
lotsofmangos wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At this point it's hard for me to consider another one of these attempts worth reading Then your commentary on the subject is utterly worthless.

How many papers on perpetual motion machines have you wanted to read in the last year? Does that make any commentary that you might make on the subject utterly worthless?

Because interpreting an unknown language equals describing how you made something physically impossible, right?
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