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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

#91

Post by trycatch »

hcarvalhoalves wrote: post #28

Well, he's trying to recognize the plants and work out backwards from their known names, but there's a lot of assumptions and glossing over involved in this approach. 1) A figure hints at a sunflower, but the idea is refuted based on the supposed location and date of this manuscript (sunflower is native from the American continent). 2) Another figure was recognized as "coriander", that looks nothing like it, but they…

Agree, it's hard to look at this [1] and say with a straight face that "coriander" was "convincingly identified". Short googling leads to half a dozen of alternative identifications.

[1] http://www.edithsherwood.com/voynich_botanical_plants/plant....

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

#92

Post by lotsofmangos »

shibbowhat wrote: post #71
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.

Ouch.

I probably shouldn't post when I'm feeling ill and grumpy.

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

#93

Post by mitchty »

PeterisP wrote: post #74
mitchty wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Would Korean fall under this category along with Vietnamese?

I ask because while I can't read Korean, I know enough to sound things out based on its character set. Which is really really cool.

I also dated a vietnamese girl and the latin script they use now instead of the hanji/chinese derived script in use prior is so pervasive almost nobody can read older vietnamese outside of scholars.

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

#94

Post by pyre »

catshirt wrote: post #85
pyre wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which kid is that? The one that was already missing before the bombing? http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-04-26/falsely-accused-bombin...

yes. he was missing, then falsely accused, then found dead.

Your original post could be construed as suggesting that he killed himself due to the false accusations.

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

#95

Post by cLeEOGPw »

Luyt wrote: post #87

There is a skeptoid episode about the Voynich manuscript: http://skeptoid.com/episodes/4252 "A famous analysis done in the 1970's by US Navy cryptographer Prescott Currier found that the Voynich manuscript is written in two distinct languages. He used the term languages, but also cautioned that they're also consistent with different subject matter, different encryption schemes, or possibly just different dialects. He…

Existance of Voynich-A and Voynich-B dialects supports the theory that the script was invented by a small group of people. Different languages also is consistent with the theory that the script is written in some language that didn't previously have a writing.

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

#96

Post by cLeEOGPw »

marlin wrote: post #86

This news led me to finally have a look at the manuscript, there are some very curious details in the text. First you should get the PDF copy from http://brbl-dl.library.yale.edu/pdfgen/exportPDF.php?bibid=2... The page numbering used below is taken from the Yale PDF. * On page 49v in the left margin, you can clearly read "1 2 3 4 5", suggesting again to me that the writer had previous knowledge of other languages. T…

If I remember correctly from earlier discussions about this script, these numbers were written much later by some other owners to keep track of the ordering.

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

#97

Post by marlin »

cLeEOGPw wrote: post #96
marlin wrote: post #86

This news led me to finally have a look at the manuscript, there are some very curious details in the text. First you should get the PDF copy from http://brbl-dl.library.yale.edu/pdfgen/exportPDF.php?bibid=2... The page numbering used below is taken from the Yale PDF. * On page 49v in the left margin, you can clearly read "1 2 3 4 5", suggesting again to me that the writer had previous knowledge of other languages. T…

If I remember correctly from earlier discussions about this script, these numbers were written much later by some other owners to keep track of the ordering.

There are page numbering on every 2 pages in the top right/left corner.

But I am not referring to these numbers.

Here is the "12345" sequence on 49v: http://www.jasondavies.com/voynich/#f49v/0.5/0.5/2.50 (top left corner, read top-to-bottom)

Here is the "alphabet sequence", on 57v: http://www.jasondavies.com/voynich/#f57v/0.5/0.5/2.50

at least the second & third from outside circles have repeating patterns of symbols. It looks a bit like a substitiution code key to me.

For reference, the page numbering you mentioned can be seen here, "57" in top right corner: http://www.jasondavies.com/voynich/#f57r/0.5/0.344/2.50

However I have not managed to look through much at all of previous research on this document. Just sharing my thougts.

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

#98

Post by catshirt »

pyre wrote: post #94
catshirt wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

yes. he was missing, then falsely accused, then found dead.

Your original post could be construed as suggesting that he killed himself due to the false accusations.

he was a depressive runaway and a racist internet lynch mob was threatening to kill his family for something he didn't do.

i suggested a correlation, i didn't propose it as fact. i'm curious as to what scenario you consider more probable?

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

#99

Post by slurry »

Noxchi wrote: post #20
aaron695 wrote: post #18

Why can't people just realise humour is not unique to one's own time period and culture. Jumped the shark here - "He also speculates that the reason this work is written in a language never seen before was that it was made by a small group of people who belonged to a culture that didn’t have a written form."

I belong to a culture (North Caucasian) that doesn't / didn't have it's own writing script in that time frame. That also faced havoc due to mongol conquest (so this might have created refugees). This discovery excites me because the person also mentions that it has Caucasian characters in the manuscript. So maybe it was written by my ancestors.

> This discovery excites me because the person also mentions that it has Caucasian characters in the manuscript.

That actually, to my mind, increases the probability that it is nothing serious. When Westerners 'discovered' the Caucasian alphabets there was a brief mania for them among the small number of people who got excited by that kind of thing. One result was the 'Theban alphabet':

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theban_alphabet

Which looks semi-profound and a little like Georgian, but is only just a bog-simple glyph cipher on top of the Latin alphabet, based partly on the recent publication of Georgian grammar in Latin.

Voynich's Caucasian characters may have just been following the latest trend in cryptography/occultism.

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

#100

Post by driverdan »

Renaud wrote: post #51

I'm not sure why we only consider that this manuscript is either a hoax or a forgotten language. Why can't it be an expression of whimsical fantasy? When I was 12, as an introvert kid with too much imagination, I started inventing my own language. I would make up words, sometimes based off various other languages, sometime simply based on how they sounded. It had a couple of different writing systems, one was a sligh…

> I'm not sure why we only consider that this manuscript is either a hoax or a forgotten language.

Because researchers have spent years studying it and have come to the conclusion that those are the two most likely scenarios. I'm sure they considered and eliminated others.

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