re: EVA Transcription

[Jacques Guy <jguy@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

16/01/02 06:43:30, "GC" <glenclaston@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:


>The linguists will see no point in this, enjoying the fact that they have
>pronounceable words like Qoteedy to keep them amused.  

I am, I believe, just about the only linguist here, and what I designed
was quite unpronounceable, e.g. 4oqpcc89. And the VMS does not amuse
me, it saddens me. If linguistics were a true science, it could tell
us whether the VMS is a hoax, glossolalia, a cipher, a language. It
cannot.

A transcription system, however inept, viz Thompson's for the 
Mayan hieroglyphs, Barthel's for the Easter Island rongorongo, is
absolutely necessary. You only have to keep in mind that it is
a purely arbitrary mapping of the genuine, original, writing.
As Korzybski wrote in his "General Semantics": "the map is not the
terrain", and then wasted 500 pages elaborating on that. The Chinese philosopher
Zhuangzi (or Chuang-Tzu), 25 centuries earlier, put it much more
clearly: "When you point at the moon with your finger you do not 
confuse your finger with the moon. Why, then, do you confuse word
and thing when you point at a thing with a word?" When you point
at a Voynich letter with three fingers (iin, or Frogguy iiv), just
think of what Zhuangzi wrote.

>viewed the evidence and understand fully that this is a late 15th or early
>16th century WESTERN language manuscript

Dennis thinks it's in French. I think it cannot be. But no matter

> should see the need to go beyond
>EVA and work to establish a consensus transcription that will not baffle and
>befuddle newer students.

The transcription system matters little, as long as you remember that
the transcription (the map, the finger) is not the VMS (the terrain, 
the moon). It is only a convenient picture of it. There are many Voynich
"letters" (e.g. Frogguy iqpt) which cannot be represented in Currier. 
They can be in EVA. The worth of a transcription system lies in how
convenient, how easy it is to use.