Re: Voynich Questions

[Dennis <ixohoxi@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Richard Shand wrote:
> 
> Dennis,
> 
> Greetings!
> 
> I hope you are doing well.  Here is an observation from one of
> another member of the Mystae that you might want to respond to.
> ________________________________________________
> 
> >I've had some interesting "cross-connections" about the Voynich manuscript.
> >This 'private alphabet' reminds me of the private language games of J.R.R.
> >Tolkien. He invented languages _first_ you know, and then made up a world
> >to suit his languages. :) Anyway, he spent alot of time crafting both
> >languages and alphabets and he actually kept a diary in one of his private
> >scripts. Or tried to. His biography explains how it actually went:
> >
> >The only difficulty was that he could not decide on the final form of it;
> >he kept on altering the letters and changing their use, so that a sign that
> >was used for 'r' one week might be used for 'l' the next. Nor did he always
> >remember to keep a record of these changes, and after a time he found it
> >difficult to read the earlier entries in the diary.
> >
> >Humphrey Carpenter, "J.R.R. Tolkien: The Authorized Biography", p. 100
> >(first page of the chapter  "Oxford Interlude")
> >
> >It seems quite likely to me that whoever made the Voynich manuscript might
> >also have changed the symbols IN THE PROCESS of writing it. A 'private
> >language' -- or alphabet -- always has that hazard. If you are the entire
> >user community you can change it at a whim. Has anyone analyzed different
> >segments of the manuscript to see if there is more consistency in parts
> >than in the whole? Or contra-wise, if there are large differences in the
> >usage of various symbols between different partsof the manuscript? The
> >information available about Tolkien's creative process could be invaluable
> >in thinking of other ways to approach the Voynich manuscript.

	For a long time we believed that there was an "A"
Voynichese and a "B" Voynichese.  There are sizable
statistical differences between "A" and "B" texts; I
believe that Captain Prescott Currier discovered this. 
The penmanship of "A" and "B" are also different.

	It has occurred to us that the differences between "A"
and "B" might have been due to the same person's
writing at different times in his/her life.  

	However, we've found that there are comparable
differences between different texts in a given
language.  Caesar's *Gallic Wars* and the Latin Vulgate
Bible show comparable differences.  

	In the early years of VOYNICH-L, some people discussed
Tolkien's Elvish.  

	Here are some papers that address this issue.

"Currier A and B: two different languages?" by René
Zandbergen
http://web.bham.ac.uk/G.Landini/evmt/lang.htm

"Zipf's laws in the Voynich Manuscript", by Gabriel
Landini
http://web.bham.ac.uk/G.Landini/evmt/zipf.htm

	In Gabriel's paper, he notes:

   "Note that the distance between A and B languages at
r300 is smaller
than that between of Genesis and Isaiah in Latin, which
are written in
the same language. Also note the small number of common
words between
the two texts in Latin. The size of the complete Emma
is 5.47 times
larger than the first 10 chapters."

	I'm cc'ing this to the list to see what other ideas
anyone has.

It's good to hear from you!
Dennis Stallings