VMs: The Key -- [case against "qo"]

[knoxmix@xxxxxxxxxxxxx]

Hello Nick, 

    On Sat, 14 Feb 2004 17:35:37 +0000
    Nick wrote:

    My opinions are (a) that he got the basic cipher alphabet wrong [any
    attempt to understand "qo", "dy", "or" or "ol" as anything but
    intrinsically composite pairs of letters will fail], (b) . . .
    . . .
    Of course, not everyone here believes (a)-(e) with the same 
    conviction as me (especially (a)) . . .

I know nothing about Strong's work. 

Here is the case against "qo" as a composite, as I see it.

Ref: Takeshi Takahashi Transcription of 1998)
Voynich Transcription Scanner 
Takeshi Takahashi's 1998 transcription 
http://codesandciphers.info/voynich/
(Can someone say who provides this service?)


Possible supporting evidence:
"qo" appears as word terminals in 34 lines
It appears as a word in 30 lines
So there are only 4 instances of "qo" as word terminals other than by 
virtue of its being a word.

Possible supporting evidence:
It appears as word initials in 2709 lines
It occurs one or more times in 2709 lines
I assume there is a net 4-line asynchronism to account for the 
coincidence. 

This is what sways me:
"q" before likely composites "or" and "ol"
 22  "qor"
134  "qol" 

This, too. But it will appear to be circular thinking at this point.
"qo" before gallows. 
  8  "qot"
  9  "qok"
  1  "qof"
  5  "qop"

The above counts should not be accepted without verification. 

"qo" appears in context like this:
chor.qo.kaiin
ch-or-q-o-k-ai-in
Whether "qo" & "ok" were merged into "qok" can be addressed down the 
line but to use both "qo" and "ok", in my opinion, leads to output 
that is off the mark. I think it shows a redundancy that is greater 
in the text than in the message -- if that makes sense. I really 
would have preferred to have run the statistics before bringing this 
up. The problem is that I am neither statistician nor programmer. I 
am not attempting to lay off a pet theory in order to use someone's 
talent and time to vindicate it. While I am at it, neither did I 
intend to grandstand with a catchy name. 

I might later challenge "dy" as a composite. One approach might be to 
find which method leaves the least number of singletons and which has 
fewer exceptions to its rule. 

I have not thought it through but for now, this is my approach:

chor.qo.kaiin, as above
ch-or-q-o-k-ai-in (inclined to stay with ai-in)

qo.kshodaiin
q-o-k-sh-o-d-ai-in

shdy.qo.ol.keey
sh-d-y-q-o-ol-k-ee-y

qo.ol.
q-o-ol

qo.darchor
q-o-d-ar-ch-or

qo.dchol.
q-o-d-ch-ol

qopchor.qo.dor
q-o-p-ch-or-q-o-d-or

ol.cheol.qo.qokeey.qokeey.qokeedy
ol-ch-e-ol-q-o-q-o-k-ee-y-q-o-k-ee-y-q-o-k-ee-d-y
1  2  3 1  4 5 4 5 6 7  8 4 5 6 7  8 4 5 6 7  8 9
 qoqo:      1 2 1 2
1212 is definitely NOT the Isis or any other plain text else the 
matter would have been solved long ago. 

I have done only a few lines of this.
And a few lines of English for comparison to a known language. 
It has not turned up anything remarkable (to me, anyway) that cannot 
be seen in the manuscript. Maybe it will after a few thousand hours.

Shoot it down and save me some effort. 

Ciao .......... Knox



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