Re: VMs: Medieval Cryptography Info

[Eric <mynumberis2000@xxxxxxxxx>]

--- "Dennis S." <tsalagi@xxxxxxxx> wrote:

> From: Eric 
> 
> >(Oh, and for Hildegard, just been considering that
> if
> >the VMS author used their own character set and a
> >limited new language/vocabulary mixed in with an
> >existing language (such as Hildegard), how would we
> go
> >about determining this was the case and then
> >deciphering it?)
> 
>    I don't know.  
> 
>    A long time ago, someone had a Master's thesis on
> the Web on Hildegard's Lingua Ignota.  They had a
> long list of vocabulary.  Her Lingua Ignota
> contained nothing but nouns, all transparently
> derived from Latin and German,  so it didn't amount
> to much.  

I believe I found the author and had him send me his
thesis. I found it very interesting. While her motives
for its creation and its actual use will probably be
up for debate ad infinitum, what I find intriguing is
the idea of a crude, precursor to an artificial
language being used for the VMS....

If I had little exposure to more than one language -
or even if so, not much understanding of the
intricacies of semantics and grammer - I'd start my
artifical language using a language I was familiar
with and borrow most, if not all, of its semantic and
grammatical structure. I wouldn't think of anything
else to do.

Then, I'd start replacing words - probably nouns since
those represent physical objects and seem the most
"real" to me. I'd probably attempt some sort of
categorization for the words - words for similar
concepts being similar. I'd probably create them using
bits from the languages I know (even if not
conciously, then subconciously).

I might or might not get around to verbs and
adjectives and adverbs. Probably not even think about
prepositions, conjunctions and the like.

Then maybe "devolve" my language - think Newspeak.
Why? Well, one, to remove more of the original
language from my new artificial language and,
essentially, make my new language more complete by it.
Two, sheer laziness - it would get very laborious
attempting to create a new word for every existing
word I had in my base language. I'd take any shortcut
I could. Maybe even resort to a simple word-game to
convert words from my base language to my new
language. Important words would get a new novel word
as noted above - unimportant words would just be
converted.

Finally, apply my new alphabet, which is just a simple
substitution.

Why do this? Maybe for secrecy - essentially more
cryptography than artifical language. Maybe for
magical/philisophical reasons - believing this new
langauge was a better, more "true" language for
describing the magical. Maybe for both.

How to determine if a crude language like this was
used or not for the VMS I think would rely on first
looking for vestiges of the underlying language -
either morphemes or basic grammatical structures (and
hope it is Latin or some other common language of the
VMS approximate place and time). Then, look for
patterns to the words of the new lexicon - the
categorizational structure of the "important" words or
the word-game structure of the unimportant ones. If
you're really lucky, there might even be a key or
glossary hidden in the document.

The biggest challenge is all of the hand waving
involved :) 

Just thinking out loud the thoughts that most people
at some time have probably thought before.


> 
>    Ramon Llull also had an artificial language, but
> I don't know anything about it.  Robert Firth gave
> me a reference on the microfilm of Llull's
> manuscript on it, but I can't find it right now.  

I don't recall seeing anything re: Llull and an
artificial language - just his cryptic art with three
wheels of rotating letters, each representing a
concept, which could be combined methodically to
create "true" statements. Plus his ladder. So any info
you have would be great.

I've kicked around the idea now and then of what would
happen if a person tried to write a manuscript using
the letter combinations in place of writing out the
underlying concepts from the Llull wheels. My biggest
problem in getting any further is simply in
understanding how to use the art as an authoring tool
(maybe it is nonsensical to do so which is why I'm
having the problem).

Thanks,
:Eric



		
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