Re: VMs: Welsh/Cornish

[Nick Pelling <nickpelling@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi everyone,

As normal, I come to this party via a slightly different door. :-)

Structurally (which I use to mean both linguistically, cryptographically, 
and palaeographically), the #1 problem with Voynichese is the letter "o". 
Linguistically, it looks like a vowel - it's used like a vowel - heck, it 
even smells like a vowel (a little in-joke for all the synaesthetes on the 
list). And it has all the cryptographic fingerprints of a high frequency 
token (i.e. one containing little information). And palaeographically, it 
looks like (what John E Koontz would call) a letter, even though it also 
sits there proudly in our EVA transcriptions.

And yet... when you try to apply any of these methodologies to the text as 
we see it, Voynichese "o" doesn't really play out comfortably in any of the 
typical roles. I'd suggest you look at how it appears in words - what do 
you really think is going on when you look at words like "otolal" etc?

As for me, I really don't object to people suggesting 
Cornish/Welsh/Hebrew/Old Ukrainian/etc for Voynichese - I think they're all 
equally plausible... and all equally wrong, & for the same reason (that 
though letters like "o" and "a" look like vowels, they don't actually play 
out like real vowels).

My own counter-assertion is simply that EVA "o" and "a" are not letters 
(let alone vowels): they're pretend letters within the fake alphabet of a 
verbose cipher, where (for example) ot-ol-al = 3 tokens (probably in a 
consonant-heavy shorthand). But that's just my opinion, do what you will 
with it. :-o

Cheers, .....Nick Pelling.....


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