Re: Re: VMs: Split -ol- pairs...?

["Jan" <hurychj@xxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Dennis, you wrote: 

>	Word beginnings and endings do follow a pattern, this
>has to mean something.

 I quite agree. That is a serious objection to random spaces - is there any literature about this
 pattern? Maybe we can learn more from it. Still,   if 
there is more variations ( see comment by René:
"spaces have more variation of letters around
 them than the other characters." ) then 
one would expect less pattern-like behavior (than for the other characters). Interesting.
>
 
>	What does anyone think about my old hypothesis - that
>the "words" are in fact syllables?  (If this were true,
>French would be a good candidate for the underlying
>language.)  I don't know of a language written this
>way, at least in a phonemic system.  Japanese might
>qualify for a syllabic/logographic system. 

Japanese katakana has one sign for the whole syllable (there is only 46 of them, representing all
 sounds in Japanese, aren't they lucky?).   If I understand it correctly, what you suggest is more
 like expression of syllables by series of signs, not written as a composite picture (say Chinese
 symbols) ,  but rather "in the serial sequence".   Still, how many syllables are in natural
 language? The VM would apparently have quite a lot of them, judging by the list I once seen.  On
 the other hand, we do have similar arrangement for writing the letters: it is called Morse code.

  Another thing: I wonder what was the purpose of 
characters separation in the VM? I do suspect it was written in the time when disconnected letters
 were "passée", being too tiring for the writers.  For that purpose, the "printed" version was
 replaced by smooth and simple "written" version, similar to one used in the VM. So the VM
 characters are very easy to write, but they are still separated, which necessitates lifting the
 pen up for every character, while the characters could have been very easily connected. One
 reason comes  in mind: it would make the reading of the VM more confusing and prone to
 errors (they still are some, where those spaces are too small).  
>	Arabic inserts spaces within words.  I don't know what
>its rules are for doing this.  Perhaps calligraphic?  I
>recall that Arabic letters vary in form depending on
>where they are in words.  

This is really interesting and may lead to discovery of additional function for the spaces in the
 VM. Spaces used as zeroes was just first thing that popped in my mind, as an example only.  
>
>	Manchu might be another example, since the reading of
>letters seems highly context-sensitive.  

You are quite right and   the deciphering is rather prone to "context-imposing" :-).   The first 
"translation" looks to me more like a set of rather unconnected words.
>
>	It's pretty obvious that the spaces mean something and
>aren't inserted at random, so I don't think they are
>nulls, even such nulls as might be inserted by a
>careless cipher clerk. 

Exactly. But if they are not random, there must be inserted by some  - still unknown - rule. The
 linguists may claim it is the rule used by natural language - and they may be partly right.
  Some  nulls (but not spaces) may be still inserted in the text - but if they are not spaces, they would make the   words longer, not shorter  :-). So I suspect more sophisticated algorithm then "spaces being just  spaces". After all, only ordinary spaces used are also a sort of giveaway  and their strong defenders - the
 linguists - should be shortly able to find the language to fit the shoe (or eat it, if they 
don't :-).  

jan.



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