7 ms·

Latin in the Voynich Manuscript

103 points by diodorus 6y ago

andreareina 6y ago
There's the xkcd interpretation: https://m.xkcd.com/593/ https://m.xkcd.com/593/
MFogleman 6y ago
Readers may also find the Copiale cipher[1] interesting. It has been around since the 1700s, unsolved, until 2011 when a team figured out (with the help of a computer or 2) it was a homophonic german cipher, and decoded the whole thing. [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copiale_cipher https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copiale_cipher [2]https://www.wired.com/2012/11/ff-the-manuscript/ https://www.wired.com/2012/11/ff-the-manuscript/
- Igelau 6y ago
  > an initiation ritual in which the candidate is asked to read a blank piece of paper and, on confessing inability to do so, is given eyeglasses and asked to try again, and then again after washing the eyes with a cloth, followed by an "operation" in which a single eyebrow hair is plucked. For the amount of time and effort it took to extract this secret, that's a hilarious letdown.
  - 082349872349872 6y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VIC_cipher https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VIC_cipher > "Although certainly not as complex or secure as modern computer operated stream ciphers or block ciphers, in practice messages protected by it resisted all attempts at cryptanalysis by at least the NSA from its discovery in 1953 until Häyhänen's defection in 1957." Wonder how it compares to: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solitaire_(cipher) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solitaire_(cipher) ==== On the mountain was a treasure Buried deep beneath a stone And the valley people swore They'd have it for their very own https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7sUtaMbQmpk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7sUtaMbQmpk
  - esrauch 6y ago
    Eh, seems about the expected result to me.
- ilzmastr 6y ago
  Great link. The scientist Kevin Knight that did much of the cracking has written about Voynich as well: https://www.aclweb.org/anthology/W11-1511.pdf https://www.aclweb.org/anthology/W11-1511.pdf
ilzmastr 6y ago
It's not so easy to find a unicode transcription, but I would think that would be the first step in 2020. There is some info here [1] about such a transcription but it does not feel "definitive". Does anyone know if there is a copy paste-able transcription of the manuscript anywhere? When linear B was decoded the first thing many researchers did was to transcribe every word they could get their hands on, then sort by beginnings and endings of words [2]. I suppose that is what the poster has done since they say there are no inflected word endings, but perhaps a cipher hides these, or they do not have enough data? [1]: http://www.turkicresearch.com http://www.turkicresearch.com [2]: https://medium.com/@ilyakavalerov/greek-before-homer-how-linear-b-was-cracked-8c6fc2e7b193?source=friends_link&sk=e8441a3a0b1f6eb262ec2ca3014b1e61 https://medium.com/@ilyakavalerov/greek-before-homer-how-lin...
- andyjohnson0 6y ago
  There is a transliteration of the Voynich text at [1]. I have no way to judge how complete or accurate it is, but it appears to be a useful piece of work. [1] http://www.voynich.nu/transcr.html http://www.voynich.nu/transcr.html
  - ilzmastr 6y ago
    As early as 1994, as recently updated as of 04/2020! Great link thank you!
  - DonaldFisk 6y ago
    The most widely used transliteration, by Takahashi into EVA, is mentioned on that page, which is on Rene Zandbergen's web site. There was no intention of making EVA phonetically accurate, as we don't know how, if at all, the Voynich Manuscript text was supposed to be pronounced. However, it is reasonably pronounceable. You can find Takahashi's EVA transliteration at http://www.voynich.com/pages/PagesH.txt http://www.voynich.com/pages/PagesH.txt
    - dane-pgp 6y ago
      For what it's worth, there has been some work on parsing Voynich words into syllables, which might be a more helpful level to work at. "Taking into account words which couldn’t be syllabified (2.6%), words with more than three syllables (0.4%) and words with rank errors (1%) we can see that the Body Rank Order theory accounts for 96% of all word types with more than four tokens." https://agnosticvoynich.wordpress.com/2019/05/06/a-new-word-structure/ https://agnosticvoynich.wordpress.com/2019/05/06/a-new-word-...
scandox 6y ago
I always found the style and imagery strongly reminiscent of some of the works of Artists included in the Prinzhorn collection (Artistry of the Mentally Ill was his major work). It has that atmosphere of a self contained mental world.
nemo 6y ago
>I've been reading the so-called secondary literature for about a year. What compels me to come out is the discovery over this past year that for the most part commentators really do not know what they are doing. Bright red flag.
- __void 6y ago
  ...few things are certain but that voynich's manuscript is NOT in Latin is sure: they would have already translated it centuries ago (i.e. when it was written). This person by his admission has only been studying the problem "online" for a year on "so-called secondary literature" and "hi-res scans", so writing things like: > What compels me to come out is the discovery over this past year that for the most part commentators really do not know what they are doing. is simply ridiculous. This man is arrogant and full of himself and like all arrogant people he ignores hundreds of papers on the topic written by hundreds of people before him. This is not how research is done.
Igelau 6y ago
I'm of the opinion that it's not supposed to make sense. I think it's a sample: a demo herbal void of any valuable content. Its purpose is to showcase the abilities of the author/illustrator and nothing more.
- deathcakes 6y ago
  Voynich Manuscript as Lorem Ipsum is my favourite theory so far!
- moftz 6y ago
  Why not just copy sections of the Bible if it's just a sample of work? Why go through the extra effort of creating a new script and possibly a new language just to show how well you can write? Latin would have been the predominate language for manuscripts at this time so writing in Latin would have been a better example of the writer's skills. These kinds of manuscripts took a lot of effort and resources to put together so if someone was just trying to make a portfolio of their work, do you think they would need to produce such a large volume when several pages would have sufficed?
  - Raphmedia 6y ago
    We use Latin in "Lorem Ipsum" because most people are unable to read it today. This makes sure that the viewer focus on the page layout and images and not the text itself. If it was written in Latin during an era where everyone could read Latin, it wouldn't be the same concept.
    - Fargren 6y ago
      You are not wrong, but bear in mind that Lorem Ipsum is not latin, is latin-looking gibberish.
      - AquinasCoder 6y ago
        It's ultimately a corrupted version of Cicero's "de Finibus Bonorum et Malorum".
anotheryou 6y ago
I can't recommend Volder Z's youtube serien on it enough. Sadly he has taken them down since promising an update for a looong time... For the super interested, I have downloads :) All I can link you is a (still great) video on alphabet evolution https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ul8NVfWKXZg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ul8NVfWKXZg
- Randor 6y ago
  Hi, Volder Z (Derek Vogt) came to the conclusion that it was a Romani language written by nomadic peoples and written in a Syriac derived script. The Enochian project has attempted to phonologically translate the Voynich manuscript: https://kulibali.github.io/enochian/ https://kulibali.github.io/enochian/
  - anotheryou 6y ago
    cool, first word I hovered over translated to penis XD
    - anotheryou 6y ago
      haha, downvotes. Don't be so prude, have a laugh with me. (or enjoy the chance to double downvote if that does something for you)
- reza_n 6y ago
  Bummer, he pretty much proved he was on the right path with his translation theories. Maybe this was done to protect his work? As in, hes now working to complete the translation and did not want others to beat him to it. One can hope...
- dane-pgp 6y ago
  His video explaining how the astronomical diagrams depicted a specific known eclipse was extremely compelling (if I am remembering it correctly). Another intriguing video is [0] by Sukhwant Singh. I think he over-estimates how much of the VM he has decoded, but some of his observations are hard to ignore. For example: * 08:30 interpretation of a diagram in the VM being a map of the Middle East * 12:46 & 13:26 explanations of the distinctive headgear * 14:00 & 14:35 & 15:00 observation that the buildings looking like mosques and minarets * 19:46 explanation of the unusual cylindrical containers [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wmvmSCd2Jg0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wmvmSCd2Jg0
isoprophlex 6y ago
Are there transcriptions available of voynich script into ascii? Someone with access to GPT3 should try having it translate some bits into English. Would be the most shocking 'look what GPT can do' moment, to me!
- dane-pgp 6y ago
  Alternatively, there is an AI technique for translating between languages without needing a bilingual dictionary or parallel texts[0]. There may not be enough data in the Voynich manuscript to generate an accurate translation of any word in it, but the model generated by the AI might be enough to decide which language is closest to Voynichese, or which transcriptions of the manuscript are the least "noisy". [0] https://www.technologyreview.com/2017/11/29/241639/artificial-intelligence-can-translate-languages-without-a-dictionary/ https://www.technologyreview.com/2017/11/29/241639/artificia...
  - DonaldFisk 6y ago
    For this to succeed, the text would have to be meaningful in some language, which is by no means certain. All languages have grammars, but nobody has yet discovered any grammar for the Voynich Manuscript operating outside of words.
    - dane-pgp 6y ago
      If it is not meaningful in any language, then we would not expect it to obey Zipf's Law, however it has been shown that it does (as mentioned by an earlier commenter). https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/6085/has-it-been-mathematicaly-determined-that-the-voynich-manuscript-is-not-gibberis/16748#16748 https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/6085/has-it-bee...
      - DonaldFisk 6y ago
        If it didn't obey Zipf's Law, we could safely conclude it wasn't in an unencrypted language, but you can't make the reverse inference, as lots of phenomena obey Zipf's Law which are nothing to do with language. I've generated a fake Voynich Manuscript which I can assure you is entirely meaningless, but it obey's Zipf's Law. Here it is: http://www.fmjlang.co.uk/voynich/generated-voynich-manuscript.html http://www.fmjlang.co.uk/voynich/generated-voynich-manuscrip... And here's the proof it obey's Zipf's Law: http://www.fmjlang.co.uk/voynich/VoynichZipf.html http://www.fmjlang.co.uk/voynich/VoynichZipf.html Two other researchers (Gordon Rugg and Torsten Timm) have also generated fake Voynich Manuscripts, and theirs obey Zipf's Law too.
twic 6y ago
> the illustrations of women bathing strongly suggest that the work is concerned with distinctly European traditions of balearic treatment of illnesses I assume the author means "balnearic", but i certainly prefer to imagine that he is referring to the foam party at Amnesia.
- PaulDavisThe1st 6y ago
  Why not both? https://soundcloud.com/dimkelly_music/sets/balnearic https://soundcloud.com/dimkelly_music/sets/balnearic
mci 6y ago
If you look closer at "michiton oladabas"[0], you will notice a smudge above the first "i" and a spot above the middle "a". So let us read it as "míchiton oladábas". Now reverse it, treating "ch" as one letter, like in Czech spelling. You get "sabádalo notichím" or "notichím sabádalo". Both mean "was investigated by 'no' Tichý" in Early Modern Czech. In 2003, I posited that a Mr Tichý, an early researcher of the Voynich Manuscript scribbled this Czech "cipher" on its last page. Pros: * The manuscript has been traced back to the library of Georg Baresch (1590–1622) from Prague. It may have belonged to the Holy Roman Emperor Rudolf II (1552–1612) or to his physician Jakub Horčický (1575–1622), both living in Prague. * The accents are exactly where they are supposed to be in Czech. * Tichý is a popular Czech surname. "Tichím" is now spelled "Tichým". AFAIK, "sa" is a dialectal variation of "se". * What would you write on a book you have investigated? Con: * What the heck is 'no'? The hypothesis was met with cold reception on the VMs mailing list and I never cared about it too much but I still find it more credible than the reading in this article. [0] http://inamidst.com/voynich/michitonese http://inamidst.com/voynich/michitonese
- dane-pgp 6y ago
  > Tichý is a popular Czech surname. Could "No" be an abbreviated first name, like "Tho" for "Thomas" or "Gn" for "Gnaius"? http://www.drshirley.org/latin/names02.html http://www.drshirley.org/latin/names02.html
  - mci 6y ago
    I was thinking about it (my guess was Norbert) but why would you abbreviate your first name and merge it with the surname? Another option is a corruption of "netichým" (by the unquiet one; there is no surname Netichý), "nad tichým" (over quiet), or "na tichém" (on quiet). Both "nad" and "na" are unaccented like "sa", which nicely explains merging them with "tichím". As for the last option, I know nothing about the probability of confusing the instrumental "tichým" with the locative "tichém" in Czech. Most importantly, though, these expressions (unless they are some obscure, antiquated idioms) really need a following noun, just like in English. Neither "multos" nor "sotlum" is a noun.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
edgarvaldes 6y ago
I can't explain why, but I would be sad the day the Voynich gets solved.
- michrassena 6y ago
  I have a similar feeling with no rational basis. The fact that something so accessible exists and which no one can decode is a bit inspiring. I've certainly enjoyed exploring the world's languages trying to find a match for what I see in the manuscript, however unlikely it is that a non-expert could decode it. It does feel like a treasure hunt anyone can join. Once we can read the text, it will most likely describe something mundane. Perhaps it is a text on herbology, like it appears. For me the mystery is worth more than whatever the manuscript contains. I don't think it will open the door to understanding history and a culture like the Rosetta stone did.
saberdancer 6y ago
It's quite possible it is a hoax intended to get a interested buyer to buy the book. If Rudolf II owned it, it's likely he payed a lot to get it. It wouldn't be a first forgery/hoax.

103 points by diodorus 6y ago

There's the xkcd interpretation: https://m.xkcd.com/593/ https://m.xkcd.com/593/

Readers may also find the Copiale cipher[1] interesting. It has been around since the 1700s, unsolved, until 2011 when a team figured out (with the help of a computer or 2) it was a homophonic german cipher, and decoded the whole thing. [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copiale_cipher https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copiale_cipher [2]https://www.wired.com/2012/11/ff-the-manuscript/ https://www.wired.com/2012/11/ff-the-manuscript/

Igelau 6y ago
> an initiation ritual in which the candidate is asked to read a blank piece of paper and, on confessing inability to do so, is given eyeglasses and asked to try again, and then again after washing the eyes with a cloth, followed by an "operation" in which a single eyebrow hair is plucked. For the amount of time and effort it took to extract this secret, that's a hilarious letdown.
- 082349872349872 6y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VIC_cipher https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VIC_cipher > "Although certainly not as complex or secure as modern computer operated stream ciphers or block ciphers, in practice messages protected by it resisted all attempts at cryptanalysis by at least the NSA from its discovery in 1953 until Häyhänen's defection in 1957." Wonder how it compares to: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solitaire_(cipher) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solitaire_(cipher) ==== On the mountain was a treasure Buried deep beneath a stone And the valley people swore They'd have it for their very own https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7sUtaMbQmpk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7sUtaMbQmpk
- esrauch 6y ago
  Eh, seems about the expected result to me.
ilzmastr 6y ago
Great link. The scientist Kevin Knight that did much of the cracking has written about Voynich as well: https://www.aclweb.org/anthology/W11-1511.pdf https://www.aclweb.org/anthology/W11-1511.pdf

ilzmastr 6y ago

It's not so easy to find a unicode transcription, but I would think that would be the first step in 2020. There is some info here [1] about such a transcription but it does not feel "definitive". Does anyone know if there is a copy paste-able transcription of the manuscript anywhere? When linear B was decoded the first thing many researchers did was to transcribe every word they could get their hands on, then sort by beginnings and endings of words [2]. I suppose that is what the poster has done since they say there are no inflected word endings, but perhaps a cipher hides these, or they do not have enough data? [1]: http://www.turkicresearch.com http://www.turkicresearch.com [2]: https://medium.com/@ilyakavalerov/greek-before-homer-how-linear-b-was-cracked-8c6fc2e7b193?source=friends_link&sk=e8441a3a0b1f6eb262ec2ca3014b1e61 https://medium.com/@ilyakavalerov/greek-before-homer-how-lin...

andyjohnson0 6y ago
There is a transliteration of the Voynich text at [1]. I have no way to judge how complete or accurate it is, but it appears to be a useful piece of work. [1] http://www.voynich.nu/transcr.html http://www.voynich.nu/transcr.html
- ilzmastr 6y ago
  As early as 1994, as recently updated as of 04/2020! Great link thank you!
- DonaldFisk 6y ago
  The most widely used transliteration, by Takahashi into EVA, is mentioned on that page, which is on Rene Zandbergen's web site. There was no intention of making EVA phonetically accurate, as we don't know how, if at all, the Voynich Manuscript text was supposed to be pronounced. However, it is reasonably pronounceable. You can find Takahashi's EVA transliteration at http://www.voynich.com/pages/PagesH.txt http://www.voynich.com/pages/PagesH.txt
  - dane-pgp 6y ago
    For what it's worth, there has been some work on parsing Voynich words into syllables, which might be a more helpful level to work at. "Taking into account words which couldn’t be syllabified (2.6%), words with more than three syllables (0.4%) and words with rank errors (1%) we can see that the Body Rank Order theory accounts for 96% of all word types with more than four tokens." https://agnosticvoynich.wordpress.com/2019/05/06/a-new-word-structure/ https://agnosticvoynich.wordpress.com/2019/05/06/a-new-word-...

scandox 6y ago

I always found the style and imagery strongly reminiscent of some of the works of Artists included in the Prinzhorn collection (Artistry of the Mentally Ill was his major work). It has that atmosphere of a self contained mental world.

nemo 6y ago

>I've been reading the so-called secondary literature for about a year. What compels me to come out is the discovery over this past year that for the most part commentators really do not know what they are doing. Bright red flag.

__void 6y ago
...few things are certain but that voynich's manuscript is NOT in Latin is sure: they would have already translated it centuries ago (i.e. when it was written). This person by his admission has only been studying the problem "online" for a year on "so-called secondary literature" and "hi-res scans", so writing things like: > What compels me to come out is the discovery over this past year that for the most part commentators really do not know what they are doing. is simply ridiculous. This man is arrogant and full of himself and like all arrogant people he ignores hundreds of papers on the topic written by hundreds of people before him. This is not how research is done.

Igelau 6y ago

I'm of the opinion that it's not supposed to make sense. I think it's a sample: a demo herbal void of any valuable content. Its purpose is to showcase the abilities of the author/illustrator and nothing more.

deathcakes 6y ago
Voynich Manuscript as Lorem Ipsum is my favourite theory so far!
moftz 6y ago
Why not just copy sections of the Bible if it's just a sample of work? Why go through the extra effort of creating a new script and possibly a new language just to show how well you can write? Latin would have been the predominate language for manuscripts at this time so writing in Latin would have been a better example of the writer's skills. These kinds of manuscripts took a lot of effort and resources to put together so if someone was just trying to make a portfolio of their work, do you think they would need to produce such a large volume when several pages would have sufficed?
- Raphmedia 6y ago
  We use Latin in "Lorem Ipsum" because most people are unable to read it today. This makes sure that the viewer focus on the page layout and images and not the text itself. If it was written in Latin during an era where everyone could read Latin, it wouldn't be the same concept.
  - Fargren 6y ago
    You are not wrong, but bear in mind that Lorem Ipsum is not latin, is latin-looking gibberish.
    - AquinasCoder 6y ago
      It's ultimately a corrupted version of Cicero's "de Finibus Bonorum et Malorum".

anotheryou 6y ago

I can't recommend Volder Z's youtube serien on it enough. Sadly he has taken them down since promising an update for a looong time... For the super interested, I have downloads :) All I can link you is a (still great) video on alphabet evolution https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ul8NVfWKXZg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ul8NVfWKXZg

Randor 6y ago
Hi, Volder Z (Derek Vogt) came to the conclusion that it was a Romani language written by nomadic peoples and written in a Syriac derived script. The Enochian project has attempted to phonologically translate the Voynich manuscript: https://kulibali.github.io/enochian/ https://kulibali.github.io/enochian/
- anotheryou 6y ago
  cool, first word I hovered over translated to penis XD
  - anotheryou 6y ago
    haha, downvotes. Don't be so prude, have a laugh with me. (or enjoy the chance to double downvote if that does something for you)
reza_n 6y ago
Bummer, he pretty much proved he was on the right path with his translation theories. Maybe this was done to protect his work? As in, hes now working to complete the translation and did not want others to beat him to it. One can hope...
dane-pgp 6y ago
His video explaining how the astronomical diagrams depicted a specific known eclipse was extremely compelling (if I am remembering it correctly). Another intriguing video is [0] by Sukhwant Singh. I think he over-estimates how much of the VM he has decoded, but some of his observations are hard to ignore. For example: * 08:30 interpretation of a diagram in the VM being a map of the Middle East * 12:46 & 13:26 explanations of the distinctive headgear * 14:00 & 14:35 & 15:00 observation that the buildings looking like mosques and minarets * 19:46 explanation of the unusual cylindrical containers [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wmvmSCd2Jg0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wmvmSCd2Jg0

isoprophlex 6y ago

Are there transcriptions available of voynich script into ascii? Someone with access to GPT3 should try having it translate some bits into English. Would be the most shocking 'look what GPT can do' moment, to me!

dane-pgp 6y ago
Alternatively, there is an AI technique for translating between languages without needing a bilingual dictionary or parallel texts[0]. There may not be enough data in the Voynich manuscript to generate an accurate translation of any word in it, but the model generated by the AI might be enough to decide which language is closest to Voynichese, or which transcriptions of the manuscript are the least "noisy". [0] https://www.technologyreview.com/2017/11/29/241639/artificial-intelligence-can-translate-languages-without-a-dictionary/ https://www.technologyreview.com/2017/11/29/241639/artificia...
- DonaldFisk 6y ago
  For this to succeed, the text would have to be meaningful in some language, which is by no means certain. All languages have grammars, but nobody has yet discovered any grammar for the Voynich Manuscript operating outside of words.
  - dane-pgp 6y ago
    If it is not meaningful in any language, then we would not expect it to obey Zipf's Law, however it has been shown that it does (as mentioned by an earlier commenter). https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/6085/has-it-been-mathematicaly-determined-that-the-voynich-manuscript-is-not-gibberis/16748#16748 https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/6085/has-it-bee...
    - DonaldFisk 6y ago
      If it didn't obey Zipf's Law, we could safely conclude it wasn't in an unencrypted language, but you can't make the reverse inference, as lots of phenomena obey Zipf's Law which are nothing to do with language. I've generated a fake Voynich Manuscript which I can assure you is entirely meaningless, but it obey's Zipf's Law. Here it is: http://www.fmjlang.co.uk/voynich/generated-voynich-manuscript.html http://www.fmjlang.co.uk/voynich/generated-voynich-manuscrip... And here's the proof it obey's Zipf's Law: http://www.fmjlang.co.uk/voynich/VoynichZipf.html http://www.fmjlang.co.uk/voynich/VoynichZipf.html Two other researchers (Gordon Rugg and Torsten Timm) have also generated fake Voynich Manuscripts, and theirs obey Zipf's Law too.

twic 6y ago

> the illustrations of women bathing strongly suggest that the work is concerned with distinctly European traditions of balearic treatment of illnesses I assume the author means "balnearic", but i certainly prefer to imagine that he is referring to the foam party at Amnesia.

PaulDavisThe1st 6y ago
Why not both? https://soundcloud.com/dimkelly_music/sets/balnearic https://soundcloud.com/dimkelly_music/sets/balnearic

mci 6y ago

If you look closer at "michiton oladabas"[0], you will notice a smudge above the first "i" and a spot above the middle "a". So let us read it as "míchiton oladábas". Now reverse it, treating "ch" as one letter, like in Czech spelling. You get "sabádalo notichím" or "notichím sabádalo". Both mean "was investigated by 'no' Tichý" in Early Modern Czech. In 2003, I posited that a Mr Tichý, an early researcher of the Voynich Manuscript scribbled this Czech "cipher" on its last page. Pros: * The manuscript has been traced back to the library of Georg Baresch (1590–1622) from Prague. It may have belonged to the Holy Roman Emperor Rudolf II (1552–1612) or to his physician Jakub Horčický (1575–1622), both living in Prague. * The accents are exactly where they are supposed to be in Czech. * Tichý is a popular Czech surname. "Tichím" is now spelled "Tichým". AFAIK, "sa" is a dialectal variation of "se". * What would you write on a book you have investigated? Con: * What the heck is 'no'? The hypothesis was met with cold reception on the VMs mailing list and I never cared about it too much but I still find it more credible than the reading in this article. [0] http://inamidst.com/voynich/michitonese http://inamidst.com/voynich/michitonese

dane-pgp 6y ago
> Tichý is a popular Czech surname. Could "No" be an abbreviated first name, like "Tho" for "Thomas" or "Gn" for "Gnaius"? http://www.drshirley.org/latin/names02.html http://www.drshirley.org/latin/names02.html
- mci 6y ago
  I was thinking about it (my guess was Norbert) but why would you abbreviate your first name and merge it with the surname? Another option is a corruption of "netichým" (by the unquiet one; there is no surname Netichý), "nad tichým" (over quiet), or "na tichém" (on quiet). Both "nad" and "na" are unaccented like "sa", which nicely explains merging them with "tichím". As for the last option, I know nothing about the probability of confusing the instrumental "tichým" with the locative "tichém" in Czech. Most importantly, though, these expressions (unless they are some obscure, antiquated idioms) really need a following noun, just like in English. Neither "multos" nor "sotlum" is a noun.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

edgarvaldes 6y ago

I can't explain why, but I would be sad the day the Voynich gets solved.

michrassena 6y ago
I have a similar feeling with no rational basis. The fact that something so accessible exists and which no one can decode is a bit inspiring. I've certainly enjoyed exploring the world's languages trying to find a match for what I see in the manuscript, however unlikely it is that a non-expert could decode it. It does feel like a treasure hunt anyone can join. Once we can read the text, it will most likely describe something mundane. Perhaps it is a text on herbology, like it appears. For me the mystery is worth more than whatever the manuscript contains. I don't think it will open the door to understanding history and a culture like the Rosetta stone did.

saberdancer 6y ago

It's quite possible it is a hoax intended to get a interested buyer to buy the book. If Rudolf II owned it, it's likely he payed a lot to get it. It wouldn't be a first forgery/hoax.