VMs: Re: Voynichese = Arabic?

["john stojko" <oko@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Jorge,

You made very good observation with respect to Biblical Hebrew, Arabic and
VMs. VMs alphabet also consists of consonants only.

Long ago the Rabies gives the following advice.  If you are lost in reading
Biblical Hebrew begin with 'aleph'.

Well, let face the fact, members of VMs org. are lost.

Let me suggest new approach. Why not try to solve the problem by trying to
decipher  VMs with respect to Hebrew and Arabic languages.

In VMs instead beginning with 'aleph', begin with space and find your way in
reading in Hebrew or Arabic.

If one wish, he can use my VMs alphabet and than transliterate to Hebrew or
Arabic alphabets. In Hebrew, spaces between the words or phrases should be
replaced with Alephs and than read from left to right instead from right to
left or try both ways.



My Home Page



John


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Jorge Stolfi" <stolfi@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: <vms-list@xxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Saturday, July 17, 2004 7:59 PM
Subject: VMs: Voynichese = Arabic?


>
> Recall the recent discovery that vowel-less Arabic ("Qur", the Quran) and
> vowel-less Hebrew ("HbB-D", the Torah) have almost binomial word-length
> distributions (WLDs), similar to that of Voynichese:
>
>
http://www.dcc.unicamp.br/~stolfi/voynich/misc/wlds/langs-w-lengths-1-smit.png
>
> You have to imagine the horizontal scale of the Hebrew WLD reduced so
> that it becomes taller and shifted to the left. The curves are not
> quite as symmetric as that of Voynichese: they fall off more slowly on
> the long-word side than on the short-word side. Still, the match is
> so close that perhaps we ought to give Arabic a second look.
>
> Arabic and Hebrew had been dismissed many years ago, because
> Voynichese "did not show any sign of the three-consonant root scheme"
> which was supposed to be characteristic of those languages. According
> to cereal-box linguistics, every lexical root of Arabic and Hebrew
> consists of three consonants, and words are derived from it by
> inserting various vowels before or after these consonants. So, from
> the Arabic root "K*T*B" meaning "write" in general, one derives
> "kitâb" = book, "kataba" = he wrote, "yaktubu" = he writes, "katîb" =
> writer, "kutubî"= book dealer, "kutayyib" booklet, and many more. (See,
> e.g., http://wahiduddin.net/words/arabic_glossary.htm ) It was this
> simple structure that was looked for in Voynichese, and found lacking.
>
> Reality is a bit more complicated, it seems. To begin with, Arabic
> distinguishes "strong" vowels (usually transliterated as "a","y","w"),
> which are counted as consonants and written in the script, from "weak"
> ones which are usually omitted. Thus, in a fully vowelled edition of
> the Quran, the opening sentence (transliterated) would be something
> like
>
>   bîs°mî all»âhî alr»âH°mânî alr»âHîymî
>
> where "H" stands for an Arabic sound ("hah"), "»" means doubling of
> the previous consonant, the circumflexes indicate weak vowels, and "°"
> means "there is no weak vowel here". (The "»", "°", and weak vowels
> would be written as small superscripts or subscripts on the preceding
> Arabic letter.) In a plain, vowel-less edition (and in the file "Qur" used
> for the plot above), that sentence is written as
>
>   bsm allh alrHmn alrHym
>
> Now, the derivatives from a word may be formed by inserting strong
> vowels, which of course will appear in the script. Moreover, the
> derivatives from a root can be formed by adding consonants as well as
> vowels, e.g. "maktûb" letter, "istiktâb" dictation, etc. Then there
> are prefixes like "al-" (strong "a", means "the") and "wa-" (strong "w"
> and "a", means "and") -- which are usually attached to the word, but
> may be written separately. Then there are the quirks of pronunciation
> (whereby you write "alrHym" but say "arraHym"...) -- and much more
> that I can't tell you because I am blissfully unaware of.
>
> So we could speculate that
>
>   EVA "ol" may be the article "al-"
>
>   EVA "qo" may be the prefix "wa-"
>
> Anyone dares to carry on? 8-)
>
> AFAIK, most of this also holds for other Afroasiatic (Hamitic/Semitic)
> languages like Hebrew, Ancient Egyptian, Geez, etc.
>
> All the best,
>
> --stolfi
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