
Voynich Manuscript has been deciphered? - mrspeaker
https://ling.auf.net/lingbuzz/003737
======
zazen
There is sober discussion of the purported deciphering at these two links:

[https://www.voynich.ninja/archive/index.php/thread-2175.html](https://www.voynich.ninja/archive/index.php/thread-2175.html)

[https://ciphermysteries.com/2017/11/10/gerard-cheshire-
vulga...](https://ciphermysteries.com/2017/11/10/gerard-cheshire-vulgar-latin-
siren-call-polyglot)

Headline is lacking a [2017], and also appears to be entirely untrue.

------
mrspeaker
This was in an email to the Society of American Archivists today (I can't find
a publicly linkable version):

Some of you may be interested to know that Manuscript MS408 (Voynich) has been
deciphered. A peer-reviewed article will be formally published in 2019. In the
meantime, three pre-print papers are available to freely download from the
linguistics website LingBuzz:

The first paper explains the writing system and language:
[http://ling.auf.net/lingbuzz/003737](http://ling.auf.net/lingbuzz/003737)

The second paper translates a pictorial map from the manuscript:
ling.auf.net/lingbuzz/003808

The thirds paper focuses on volcanic details from the map:
ling.auf.net/lingbuzz/004381

Please disseminate this information to other scholars who may find it
interesting and useful. Regards, Dr. Gerard Cheshire. University of Bristol.

~~~
balabaster
Having done some cursory reading, I'm not understanding a couple of things.
Particularly, I'm curious why anyone would've considered it necessary or
desirable to encrypt the information this manuscript appears to contain?

~~~
spathi_fwiffo
to troll people for generations? which is basically what they've done.

~~~
balabaster
So now that we've deciphered it, the content demonstrates that our efforts to
do so were an entire waste of time? Did we learn anything of value during this
process? Or was it totally pointless?

------
bhaak
Don't get your hopes up too much.

This blog post from 2017 looks at a draft of the document:
[https://ciphermysteries.com/2017/11/10/gerard-cheshire-
vulga...](https://ciphermysteries.com/2017/11/10/gerard-cheshire-vulgar-latin-
siren-call-polyglot)

It's not really a favorable review.

~~~
bunderbunder
Another post from the same blog trashes another hypothesis:
[https://ciphermysteries.com/2014/02/08/voynichese-
abjad](https://ciphermysteries.com/2014/02/08/voynichese-abjad)

In it, way down at the bottom, the author drops a fairly concise argument for
what I think is the most compelling hypothesis of all: That it's a covertext
for a cipher. The idea that it's a message written in the clear is hard to
reconcile with how the text doesn't behave at all like a natural language. The
idea that it was a prank or an art project is hard to reconcile with just how
much time and money was clearly spent in producing it. The idea that it's a
legitimate book, but one where only a relatively small fraction of the text
contains any semantic content, is relatively easy to reconcile with both.

~~~
pavel_lishin
> _The idea that it was a prank or an art project is hard to reconcile with
> just how much time and money was clearly spent in producing it._

Why is it hard to imagine someone pouring a lot of work into art?

~~~
bunderbunder
Largely for historical reasons: The materials that went into it would have
been immensely expensive at the time it was written, and people generally had
less free time back then. Meaning that the cost to do something like the
Voynich Manuscript, in terms of both time and money, would have been _much_
higher back then than they are now.

That's not to say that it's impossible, per se, just that, if that's the
conclusion we are to draw, then it would perhaps cast the Voynich as being
even more singular than it already is.

~~~
village-idiot
Most people had less time back then, but a few people had a _lot_ of free
time. “Bored noble” explains a fairly decent amount of artistic and scientific
output before the industrial revolution.

~~~
bunderbunder
There's also the angle that, in the same way that the text doesn't
statistically resemble real languages, it also doesn't seem to be a great
match for known examples of asemic text (e.g., _Codex Seraphinianus_ ),
either.

~~~
village-idiot
That’s really beyond my linguistic knowledge to comment on.

All I’m saying is that a bored noble would have the time and resources to
create an expensive work purely for their own entertainment. Humans have done
far weirder things over the centuries than that.

~~~
bunderbunder
One would have, but there are also cultural barriers to consider. I'm no
expert on late medieval or early renaissance Italian culture, but what amateur
reading I've done paints a picture of a culture where the nobility may have
been literate and able to write letters, but serious writing such as creating
vellum books was still considered dull, dirty, grueling work that was beneath
their station.

Henry Darger (who was, IIRC, a janitor) was mentioned elsewhere in the thread.
I think that you might get a more culturally comparable example out of the
idea of Sarah Winchester whiling her time away in a manner more akin to how
Edward Leedskalnin did.

------
jordigh
This isn't the first time someone has claimed to have deciphered it. What's
different this time?

~~~
SmellyGeekBoy
My thoughts exactly. I've been on the internet for 25 years and this claim was
one of the very early things I remember seeing and has popped up every 5 or 6
years since. I won't hold my breath.

In fact the entirety of my knowledge of this document is as a result of
reading the claims of people online who've claimed to have deciphered it.

Edit just to add: Personally I think it was created as a work of art and has
no hidden meaning.

~~~
jhart99
You are not alone in that thought. I think it is interesting that someone at
the NSA was interested in the Voynich manuscript came to about the same
conclusion as you.

[https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu//dc.html?doc=5301815-National-
Sec...](https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu//dc.html?doc=5301815-National-Security-
Agency-Cryptolog-Vol-2-No-8-9)

------
pseudolus
The New Yorker published, prior to the "deciphering", a short and interesting
overview of the history and cultural relevance of the Voynich Manuscript [0].

[0] [https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/the-
unsolvable-m...](https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/the-unsolvable-
mysteries-of-the-voynich-manuscript)

------
pseudolus
It's an interesting paper although the contents of the Voynich Manuscript
itself, partial excerpts of which are contained in the paper and include
planting instructions and bathing preparation instructions, will probably
underwhelm the legion of conspiracists that have emerged over the years.

Is a full translation of the manuscript available yet?

~~~
duiker101
Were there conspiracy theories about this too? Just by looking at the images I
always felt like the general idea of the manuscript wasn't so mysterious.

~~~
basch
Not quite a conspiracy theory about the Voynich Manuscript, but its a fun
twist,
[http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/adamcurtis/entries/78691781-c9b7-...](http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/adamcurtis/entries/78691781-c9b7-30a0-9a0a-3ff76e8bfe58)

------
raverbashing
I remember someone saying it might have been related to the Syriac alphabet, I
wonder what came out of it.

------
mordae
I'd still wager a great sum on the possibility that the book is an elaborate
hoax designed to coax some cash out of some stupid aristocrat.

There were a lot of charlatans at the court of that particular period and the
Czechs just love to make fun out of Rudolf II. I highly suggest this
(socialist-era) movie --
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Emperor_and_the_Golem](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Emperor_and_the_Golem)
\-- to join in on the joke.

------
gibspaulding
I'm rather fond of Randall Munroe's theory:
[https://www.xkcd.com/593/](https://www.xkcd.com/593/)

