Voynich Reconsidered

[DFS346]

Thoughts on what I call the "Voynich alphabet": how the Voynich producer instructed the scribes on the writing order of the glyphs.

https://www.goodreads.com/author_blog_p ... h-alphabet

[DFS346]

I feel that the Voynich producer would have needed to give the scribes a simple set of instructions, whereby they could write the manuscript with minimal supervision. Massimiliano Zattera’s "slot alphabet" would be a relatively simple rule: first transcribe letters to glyphs, then re-order the glyphs in each word according to the "slot alphabet". However, the scribes would need to know where to place the "nomadic glyphs". For example, should an {8} be in slot 0, 7 or10? (All three are permitted.)

I could imagine that there might be two or more "slot alphabets": for example one for Currier's Language A, another for Language B. Then, as a conjecture, a scribe writing in Language A always puts an {8} in slot 0; a scribe writing in Language B always puts an {8} in slot 7. (And maybe there is a third language.)

To test this hypothesis, we would need to invite Mr Zattera to re-run his program on the Language A and B text separately. Is anyone in contact with him? His published email is mzattera@gmail.com.

[DFS346]

As a low-tech alternative to running Mr Zattera’s program: we could, for example, list the ten or twenty most frequent "words" in Languages A and B, and see to which version of Zattera’s "slot alphabet" the "words" best conform. Thereby we might identify a possible "alphabet" for Language A and another for Language B.

As an example: {8am} is a frequent word in both Languages A and B; it only conforms to the "slot alphabet" if {8} is in slot 0 or 7. Maybe we could find a "word" in which {8} has to be in slot 10; and maybe such a "word" is only found in A or B, but not both.

[DFS346]

We can find other "words" in which {8} has to be in slot 7 or 10; for example, "words" such as {1c89} and {2c89}.

Maybe we can find "words" in which {8} can only be in one slot; and maybe such "words" are only found in A or B, but not both.

[DFS346]

Thoughts on how, if the Voynich manuscript was derived from source documents in Latin or any European language, the scribes might have handled the bigram "qu".

https://www.goodreads.com/author_blog_p ... e-latin-qu

[DFS346]

Further thoughts on how the scribes of the Voynich manuscript might have handled Latin prefixes.

https://www.goodreads.com/author_blog_p ... n-prefixes

[DFS346]

Thoughts on how, if the Voynich manuscript was derived from medieval Latin documents, the scribes might have handled case endings and abbreviated suffixes.

https://www.goodreads.com/author_blog_p ... n-suffixes

[DFS346]

Further thoughts on medieval Italian as an underlying language of the Voynich manuscript; and specifically, a possible mapping between Italian suffixes and Voynich final glyphs.

https://www.goodreads.com/author_blog_p ... n-suffixes

[rudhar]

"There are four case endings [...]"
"If it represents Italian case endings [...]"

Italian doesn't have cases (except in personal pronouns).
And it didn't have them in Dante’s time either.
OK, but suffixes like -a, -o, and -e do exist, but with different meaning.

Moreover, it has already been proved statistically that the VMS cannot be a simple mapping of any well-known European language.

Any proposed solution that does not attempt to explain Stolfi's "Word Grammar" (https://www.ic.unicamp.br/~stolfi/voyni ... txt.n.html) just cannot be right.

[rudhar]

Yet, you may be on the right track. Perhaps Stolfi’s grammar is the result of a combination of phonotactics, and a grammatical encoding like case, number and gender for adjectives, and person, number, tense, mode and declination for verbs. Assuming the underlying language in Latin or Greek etc.