VMs: [VMS] Arabic again

[Jorge Stolfi <stolfi@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

  > [Don Latham:] I note that the statistics seem to indicate
  > non-vowel Arabic as a possible underlying language of the VMS (and
  > to my shame cannot recall who pointed this out). If that were the
  > case, then the prefix represented as Al- identified somehow with
  > ol- holds up; many of the "star names" on the MS zodiac pages
  > begin with this "prefix" also.
  
You may be referring to a message of mine, from a couple of months ago.
(Wed, 14 Jul 2004 03:09:19 -0300)

Indeed the word-length distribution (WLD) of the Quran, in vowelless 
Arabic and a "native" encoding, is surprisingly similar to that of 
Voynichese. But so are those of the Towneley Plays (a Middle English
text), and the Vietnamese Bible.

The possibility that Voynichese "ol-" and "qo-" may be the very common
Arabic prefixes "al-" ("the") and "wa-" ("and") is tantalizing, but I
don't recall any reports of progress on that front. On the contrary,
it seems that some people have looked hard at Arabic, and rejected it.
Comments, anyone?

All the best, 

--stolfi

  
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