Re: VMs: Arabic and Voynich

[Jacques Guy <jguy@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

4/6/03 6:36:19 PM, "Larry Roux" <lroux@xxxxxxx> wrote:

>Watching the war, every time I see something from the Al 
Jazeera network the Arabic writing screams at me.  I found a 
doc in Arabic and flipped it horizontally.  I am sorry, but 
isn't that looking very Voy-Like?  Gallows at the beginning, 
the ribbon character ("l") etc?


I know just enough Arabic to say that if it is, 
then 

1. either it is dotless Arabic
2. or the dots are written next to the consonant's
   body

In the first case, it is just about undecipherable,
as I have asked the question on sci.lang and been
answered by an Arabophone (as we call them in 
Froggish--not to be confused with Frogguish, which
is what you are reading now).

In the second case, most Arabic words being triliteral,
Voynich words would have between 3 and 6 letters, and
5 letters of the alphabet would probably have 
distinctive distributional properties, because 
they  would correspond to:

1a. one dot above
2a. two dots above
3a. three dots above
1u. one dot under
2u. two dots under

The consonant-body for the letters n,b,t,y,th
would be found with all "dot-letters".

The consonant-body for the letters s,sh only
with no dot-letter (s) and 3a (sh).

The consonant-body for z,r only with no dot-letter
(r) and 1a (z) ... and so on.

It should be not too difficult to find Arabic
texts on the Net (in Arabic writing), 
to turn that writing into such a scheme,
and see its statistical properties.


 


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