
Voynich Manuscript partially decoded, text is not a hoax, scholar finds - sweedy
http://www.medievalists.net/2014/02/20/voynich-manuscript-partially-decoded-text-hoax-scholar-finds/
======
Renaud
I'm not sure why we only consider that this manuscript is either a hoax or a
forgotten language. Why can't it be an expression of whimsical fantasy?

When I was 12, as an introvert kid with too much imagination, I started
inventing my own language. I would make up words, sometimes based off various
other languages, sometime simply based on how they sounded.

It had a couple of different writing systems, one was a slightly modified
version of Greek alphabet, another, more complex, was made of dots and small
squiggles that were fast to write (I was fascinated with the Arabic writing
system at the time and took inspiration from it even though it didn't look
anything like that).

I would write pages of nonsense in that writing system, just to see how it
would flow or change over time, just to find patterns, just to have fun.

I even invented my own calendar, using the 88 day revolution of Mercury around
the Sun as the year.

When I look at the Voynich Manuscript, all I see is the product of a fertile
imagination that went a lot farther than my early teenage attempts at building
a coherent world for myself.

I believe that these unconvincing attempts at finding meaning elsewhere -or
degrading the object by calling it a hoax- are distracting us from the real
beauty of this work of love and imagination.

~~~
pavanky
Unlike late 20th century, Writing in the 15th century was rare and a costly
endeavor. It is possible that it is an expression of whimsical fantasy. But it
would be highly unlikely for this reason.

~~~
Renaud
Well, it certainly point toward a rich patron in any case, someone who could
afford all this manual labour.

But what is more likely? That this is a forgotten language of which only a
single mystifying example exists (ignoring the completely unlikely plants
being described in the manuscript), or that it is a work of fantasy that has
merits of its own?

~~~
indrax
Now _you_ are making a false dichotomy.

~~~
carbon43
I just created a user account for the first time to tell you that he is not
actually making a false dichotomy. Had he initially presented those two as the
only possible options, you would be correct. But in his response what he was
in fact doing was asking which of two choices seemed more realistic, in the
context of his initial statement being questioned.

Sorry.

------
bencollier49
The combination of the Voynich Manuscript's history of translation claims,
taken together with the origin of this work
([http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/educationnews/3326436/I...](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/educationnews/3326436/Is-
this-the-worst-university-in-Britain.html)), leads me to view this with at
least something of an air of caution.

~~~
Typhon
I read the paper and found it to be intelligible and interesting, making
reasonable attempts to justify sound, plausible hypothesis. Obviously he may
not be right, but his explanations are well worth reading.

~~~
caseydurfee
This describes many, many translation attempts of the Voynich Manuscript,
though. At this point it's hard for me to consider another one of these
attempts worth reading, because they all seem to follow the same pattern.

Try and identify plants/stars/places in the text by their real names, work
backwards from those names, find some other semi-intelligible parts of the
manuscript based on that, then handwave away the 80% of the manuscript that
has to be gibberish because the information density is too low to be some kind
of natural language... why is another attempt along these lines interesting?

~~~
lotsofmangos
_At this point it 's hard for me to consider another one of these attempts
worth reading_

Then your commentary on the subject is utterly worthless.

~~~
bronson
How many papers on perpetual motion machines have you wanted to read in the
last year?

Does that make any commentary that you might make on the subject utterly
worthless?

~~~
akiselev
To dismiss a paper on perpetual motion machines you just need to know the
implications of the first or second law of thermodynamics, about which there
is, for all intents and purposes, unanimous consensus.

To dismiss attempted translations of the Voynich manuscript, you'd need to
read the attempted translation because there is no consensus whatsoever about
the manufascript, except for the fact that it is untranslated.

~~~
bronson
That would only be true if every attempted translation were unique.

In other words, once you've dismissed one paper barking up the wrong tree you
can confidently dismiss all the others that appear to be barking up the same
tree.

------
Luyt
There is a skeptoid episode about the Voynich manuscript:
[http://skeptoid.com/episodes/4252](http://skeptoid.com/episodes/4252)

 _" A famous analysis done in the 1970's by US Navy cryptographer Prescott
Currier found that the Voynich manuscript is written in two distinct
languages. He used the term languages, but also cautioned that they're also
consistent with different subject matter, different encryption schemes, or
possibly just different dialects. He called them Voynich-A and Voynich-B.
Interestingly, Voynich-A and Voynich-B are in two different handwritings,
though both use the same alphabet and script. Every page of the book is
written entirely in either A or B. The Biology and Star sections of the book
are written in Voynich-B; the others are written in Voynich-A. The exception
is the first and largest section, Botanical, which contains some of each. But
they're not simply interspersed. The way the book is bound uses bifolios,
which are groups of pages folded together, which are then stacked on top of
one another to be bound. Each bifolio in the Voynich manuscript is written
entirely in one language or the other."_

~~~
cLeEOGPw
Existance of Voynich-A and Voynich-B dialects supports the theory that the
script was invented by a small group of people. Different languages also is
consistent with the theory that the script is written in some language that
didn't previously have a writing.

------
adamnemecek
Here's a PDF for anyone who wants to take a stab :-)

[http://brbl-dl.library.yale.edu/pdfgen/exportPDF.php?bibid=2...](http://brbl-
dl.library.yale.edu/pdfgen/exportPDF.php?bibid=2002046&solrid=3519597)

~~~
Geee
Hah, on the page 85 that 'P' character got a bit out of hand. :)

It's weird that every paragraph starts with either the 'K' or 'P' characters.
Not sure if that could be possible with real languages.

~~~
lloeki
> It's weird that every paragraph starts with either the 'K' or 'P'
> characters.

It's not like many languages out there end (or wrap, even!) their sentences
with a couple of unique symbols.

------
hcarvalhoalves
Well, he's trying to recognize the plants and work out backwards from their
known names, but there's a lot of assumptions and glossing over involved in
this approach.

1) A figure hints at a sunflower, but the idea is refuted based on the
supposed location and date of this manuscript (sunflower is native from the
American continent).

2) Another figure was recognized as "coriander", that looks nothing like it,
but they went with it anyway because the transcript was possible.

It looks like a botanist is more likely to figure out this manuscript than a
linguist. The other theory that this manuscript is about plants from the
american continent [1] is less flawed in my opinion. It could also explain why
it's in an totally unfamiliar script, as it could be a pre-Spanish language,
or an attempt from a foreign to codify it.

[1]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7199751](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7199751)

~~~
trycatch
Agree, it's hard to look at this [1] and say with a straight face that
"coriander" was "convincingly identified". Short googling leads to half a
dozen of alternative identifications.

[1]
[http://www.edithsherwood.com/voynich_botanical_plants/plant....](http://www.edithsherwood.com/voynich_botanical_plants/plant.php?id=76)

------
TeMPOraL
I still seriously consider the xkcd interpretation to be the most likely one.

[https://xkcd.com/593/](https://xkcd.com/593/)

Human nature doesn't change.

------
EGreg
This is pretty cool, and if it is not a hoax then this is one of the only
documents that remains a mystery in the age of us cracking codes, not just
ones like the Zimmermann telegram and the Venona project, but even the
Vigenère cipher which was eventually broken and deciphered.

So this could be like navajo code talkers ... an organic language that is hard
to decipher because it comes from a culture so unconnected to anything, that
it developed its own symbolism. This is an intersection of cryptography and
history.

------
bnegreve
> _Voynich Manuscript partially decoded, text is not a hoax, scholar finds_

As the author of this work states it himself, this is a "proposed partial
decoding" and it is "tentative and provisional".

But anyway, the methodology is interesting and the video is worth watching.
Although I'd be surprised all his speculations are correct, it seems to be the
way to go.

------
marlin
This news led me to finally have a look at the manuscript, there are some very
curious details in the text.

First you should get the PDF copy from [http://brbl-
dl.library.yale.edu/pdfgen/exportPDF.php?bibid=2...](http://brbl-
dl.library.yale.edu/pdfgen/exportPDF.php?bibid=2002046&solrid=3519597)

The page numbering used below is taken from the Yale PDF.

* On page 49v in the left margin, you can clearly read "1 2 3 4 5", suggesting again to me that the writer had previous knowledge of other languages. The same page has more arabic number series in the left margin of the page, "0 2 9" repeats, and "8 9" occurs (read top-down). I may be confused by the apperance of the symbols. However the "1 2 3 4 5" sequence is a extremely unlikely coincidence.

* These numbers in the left margin can be seen on several other pages, such as 54v. Again, i may be confused by the appearance of the symbols. However the more i look at it, it does look like a code.

* On 57v, we can see what appears to be an alphabet sequence in the circles. The sequence is mirrored on the other part of the same circle in the second circle counted from the outside.

* Page 66r again has a left-column top-down list of symbols, what looks like a encryption key of sorts.

Many clues in the document makes me believe it is unlikely to orginate from
america, such as crossbowmen, castles and bath houses.

I published a longer write up on my blog, at
[http://martinlindhe.blogspot.se/2014/02/the-other-day-
news-b...](http://martinlindhe.blogspot.se/2014/02/the-other-day-news-broke-
about-stephen.html)

~~~
cLeEOGPw
If I remember correctly from earlier discussions about this script, these
numbers were written much later by some other owners to keep track of the
ordering.

~~~
marlin
There are page numbering on every 2 pages in the top right/left corner.

But I am not referring to these numbers.

Here is the "12345" sequence on 49v:
[http://www.jasondavies.com/voynich/#f49v/0.5/0.5/2.50](http://www.jasondavies.com/voynich/#f49v/0.5/0.5/2.50)
(top left corner, read top-to-bottom)

Here is the "alphabet sequence", on 57v:
[http://www.jasondavies.com/voynich/#f57v/0.5/0.5/2.50](http://www.jasondavies.com/voynich/#f57v/0.5/0.5/2.50)

at least the second & third from outside circles have repeating patterns of
symbols. It looks a bit like a substitiution code key to me.

For reference, the page numbering you mentioned can be seen here, "57" in top
right corner:
[http://www.jasondavies.com/voynich/#f57r/0.5/0.344/2.50](http://www.jasondavies.com/voynich/#f57r/0.5/0.344/2.50)

However I have not managed to look through much at all of previous research on
this document. Just sharing my thougts.

~~~
cLeEOGPw
Well, since the script seems to be influenced by Arabic writings, authors
should have known Arabic numbering too. But it's not clear if these are
original writings, as you said, we should look into previous research.

------
Juha
The video offers very interesting view on how he approaches the problem and
proceeds to solve the problem. From scientific point of view it just seems
like guesswork, but as video goes further it's clear he has a real methodology
to it. I was also very impressed how he all the time seemed very objective and
used words like "probably", "could" and "possibly" to communicate that his
findings still need further review.

------
thearn4
I wish I knew more about linguistics to understand his this work further.

Though it seems a bit odd to host his work on his own personal site, rather
than one hosted by his institution.

~~~
privong
> Though it seems a bit odd to host his work on his own personal site, rather
> than one hosted by his institution.

Anecdotal experience of mine is that there's a trend for some academics (at
least in astronomy) to put everything on their personal site. It makes for
more consistent "personal branding", as your web presence isn't moved every
2-3 years as you move from postdoc to postdoc to faculty position.

~~~
pavel_lishin
It reminds me of attending freshman orientation. It was suggested to us that
we use our university e-mail address for all professional communication.

They didn't really have a good answer for whether that e-mail would stick
around after I graduated. Or whether access to that account would be available
forever, or whether it would be free.

I didn't even bother asking why anyone would want an ugly e-mail address like
pxl014000@utdallas.edu to be their official formal means of communication.

~~~
privong
> They didn't really have a good answer for whether that e-mail would stick
> around after I graduated. Or whether access to that account would be
> available forever, or whether it would be free.

Yeah, that can be an issue. It seems to be pretty common now for universities
to let folks keep their email addresses (since they often outsource the
addresses to google).

> I didn't even bother asking why anyone would want an ugly e-mail address
> like pxl014000@utdallas.edu to be their official formal means of
> communication.

Very true. Though, often one can set up an email alias (assuming you don't
have a name that's too common!).

~~~
thaumasiotes
UCSC wanted to charge me for the "privilege" of retaining an @ucsc.edu
address. I think there were options of annual or lifetime payments.

That didn't seem plausible to me, but I guess they must be getting something
from some sucker somewhere. :/

------
aaron695
Why can't people just realise humour is not unique to one's own time period
and culture.

Jumped the shark here -

"He also speculates that the reason this work is written in a language never
seen before was that it was made by a small group of people who belonged to a
culture that didn’t have a written form."

~~~
Noxchi
I belong to a culture (North Caucasian) that doesn't / didn't have it's own
writing script in that time frame. That also faced havoc due to mongol
conquest (so this might have created refugees).

This discovery excites me because the person also mentions that it has
Caucasian characters in the manuscript. So maybe it was written by my
ancestors.

~~~
slurry
> This discovery excites me because the person also mentions that it has
> Caucasian characters in the manuscript.

That actually, to my mind, increases the probability that it is nothing
serious. When Westerners 'discovered' the Caucasian alphabets there was a
brief mania for them among the small number of people who got excited by that
kind of thing. One result was the 'Theban alphabet':

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theban_alphabet](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theban_alphabet)

Which looks semi-profound and a little like Georgian, but is only just a bog-
simple glyph cipher on top of the Latin alphabet, based partly on the recent
publication of Georgian grammar in Latin.

Voynich's Caucasian characters may have just been following the latest trend
in cryptography/occultism.

------
darkhorn
Statistics student here. If one of the languages in the manuscript is a Turkic
dialect then statistical word analyses won't be helpfull.

