I see comments suggesting that it wouldn't be worth the effort to translate this based on the author's hypotheses, but there has been a substantial community around trying to do just that for a long time. FWIW The NSA appears to have published a book around 1978, The Voynich Manuscript: An Elegant Enigma [1], and a couple of the things from this article jump out at me after having read that book that raise red flags about the article's interpretation. The idea that there were multiple artists is far from being universally accepted, and experts who have studied this in the past have not been able to conclusively state that there were more than one or two authors or artists, although the possibility does remain open. Secondly, the suggestion that each glyph represents a full word in latin has also been studied - see the link for more information, but the frequency distributions and vocabulary size do not seem to make sense if that is the case (someone please correct me if I'm wrong).
In all I am surprised more progress has not been made since the advent of the internet and its crowd-sourcing potential. There is definitely no shortage of interpretations all over the internet, and in headlines from time to time. The last one I recall from a couple of months ago suggested that there was a specific Jewish birthing practice being illustrated on one of the pages that suggested a certain origin of the text. [2]
The idea that the Voynich manuscript is a medical text seems plausible, but the theory that it uses a logographic representation (one symbol per word) rather than an alphabetic or even a syllabaric (one symbol per syllable) one seems less likely to me. A cursory examination of the manuscript (http://www.voynich.nu/folios.html) reveals that the lexicography looks much more like an alphabetic encoding than a logographic one like Chinese. The symbols are collected into word-like groups separated by white space. Also, it appears that there are too many repeated symbols and insufficiently many distinct symbols for a logographic language.
There are many crank analyses of the Voynich manuscript floating around out there. The only thing I've seen that has any believability (I'm a former linguist) is this:
As I understand it, Voynich has a too low information content to be an alphabetic (or -- a fortiori -- logographic or syllabic) representation of a human language. If true then it is almost certainly not 'real writing'.
The videos are an impressive phonological reconstruction, but I predict (based on the assumption that the math isn't lying), that it would be effectively impossible to get much beyond ad-hoc phonetic correspondences with Romany, to any predictive morphology or syntax.
The solution in this article is rather plausible. If the writing is in a highly restricted vocabulary, with highly restricted syntax, and highly constrained domain, it would be possible to get the observed information density.
Comparing it to, say, Linear B or Egyptian hieroglyphs is instructive. Both of those clearly have the information density of regular human language.
In the end, the solution might be a combination. It might use some Roma/Syriac nouns, but it seems clear it doesn't use them in anything like a normal linguistic context.
I rarely comment here anymore, but I wanted to break that tradition to say thank-you. I have been routinely frustrated—or more honestly, just annoyed—at Voynich attempts for exactly the reasons you highlight. I have no idea if this is correct, but it's the only serious modern attempt I've seen, and I genuinely really appreciated this.
Very interesting videos! Do you know of any discussion by linguists of this analysis? I checked /r/linguistics and couldn't find anything, but I'm a bit worried about posting it there since I'm not enough of a linguist to judge the merits of the analysis myself. I found some discussion of Bax's work here: https://www.reddit.com/r/linguistics/comments/64p2hw/secret_... but nothing about Volder.
Very good indeed. The third video is also amazing. Volder (and Prof Stephen Bax?) has very convincing arguments. Also he demonstrated incredible linguistic knowledge. It is inspiring.
> tl;dr: it's probably real writing, likely related to Roma/Syriac
Roma and Syriac are two radically different languages (Indo-European vs Semitic), so it's peculiar that the conclusion would be that it's one of the two!
Where's the actual solution? I feel like I'm missing something because what I see is some plausible commentary about it and some interesting discussion of Latin and ligatures but where's the actual decoding of the writing?
As I read it, the writing is un-decodable because it's not really "writing" in the conventional sense, it's recipes encoded using single-letter abbreviations, many of which require an index to decipher. No index is present, and the author surmises that it was never completed, or lost.
Other than declaring that the solution is obvious to a self-declared expert such as himself, the author (Nicholas Gibbs) doesn't appear to give any proof of his theory.
I wonder if perhaps the article is a teaser for a forthcoming documentary?
> A chance remark just over three years ago brought me a commission from a television production company to analyse the illustrations of the Voynich manuscript and examine the commentators’ theories.
"As someone with long experience of interpreting the Latin inscriptions on classical monuments and the tombs and brasses in English parish churches, I recognized in the Voynich script tell-tale signs of an abbreviated Latin format."
Oh, my.
Either this is a parody or a tutorial on how to identify "crazy person goes down rat hole" situations.
Agreed. It's a super strange article (sure, written like an academic, but even most don't bury the lede that badly!)
From the article it isn't clear if all or just a portion of the text is decipherable using the implied logic (ligatures of abbreviations of medicinal items).
You know, it does seem odd that there's no background on the author and his qualifications attached to the article, and I can't seem to find any sign of him elsewhere.
Fascinating, if accurate - and I rather hope it is. If it is, it would make the whole thing a rather instructive example of how siloing knowledge can hide truth; the author's domain knowledge has given him the tools to identify the manuscript, but it's generally been in the domain of conspiracists and 'hidden knowledge of the ancients' types.
It would be good to see a thorough study of it to test the author's hypothesis, of course.
The solution is the heading and index...which are missing.
Author might be right, but that is essentially an un-provable statement and doesn't really amount to a solution. But rather a statement that it can't be solved.
> Author might be right, but that is essentially an un-provable statement and doesn't really amount to a solution. But rather a statement that it can't be solved.
Not at all. Someone more motivated than the author can choose to decode it. If much of it was lifted, then you can trace back the lifted "recipe" to the earlier work and construct the index.
However, it's going to be very painful, slow work. For no real gain (who really cares about a sloppily done Medieval health self-help book?).
As Czech myself, I prefer to believe the theory of several clever guys tricking someone important to buy a nonsense book of secrets, splitting the spoils, having a good laugh. Resonates well... Heidrich called us the Laughing beasts for a reason.
This guy started with a hypothesis and then set out to prove it by looking for evidence. He then said the evidence was missing (hacked off) but his hypothesis was still true. Really, it is not very persuasive.
I don't see a lot of "why" in this supposed solution. If what the author says is true, it sounds like an incredibly painstaking process to encode all of this, especially when it was something so tedious (it would make more sense if the source material were interesting or salacious!). I can sort of understand abbreviating the long plant names to individual symbols, referenced from an index, and I can understand ligatures for things like "etiam", but why make each and every single character represent a whole word? Surely the end result is that the manuscript, even with the index, becomes very, very hard to read?
And is there a good explanation for why this document apparently stands alone in history as the only manuscript written in this way? Were there others, and we just lost them? Was this just a particularly egregious example of this forgotten art, and others written in this manner were easier to decipher? Lastly, there's a whole Wikipedia page about "scribal abbreviations" - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scribal_abbreviation - if decoding the Voynich manuscript were so easy as the author makes out ("It became obvious...") then why has some other medieval expert not already figured it out in the near-century people have been studying this manuscript?
Not sure if serious, but on the off chance... seems unlikely. We create "Lorem Ipsum" gibberish to fill space because modern technology has made it trivially easy to do so. The same exercise would have taken a medieval writer many laborious hours.
A few people have hypothesized that it was the result of a case of glossolalia. Having been to the outsider art museum in Baltimore, it doesn't seem incredibly unlikely.
A sample translation is the key thing I wanted to read in this article, and all they gave was an illegible low-resolution snippet without an English translation -- very annoying.
As best as I can read, the purported Latin translation in the image at the top of the article says:
Folia de oz et en de aqua et de radicts de aromaticus ana 3 de seminis ana 2 et de radicis semenis ana 1 etium abonenticus confundo. Folia et cum folia et confundo etiam de eius decocole adigo aromaticus decocque de decoctio adigo aromaticus et confundo et de radicis seminis ana 3.
Feeding the above to Google Translate gives:
The leaves of Oz and added to the water and the aromatic radicts semen Ana ana 3 2 seed and the roots ana 1 etium abonenticus the mix. The leaves, when the leaves are decocole adigo and the mix of the aromatic decocque of the cooking adigo an aromatic mix of roots and seeds Ana 3.
Yes, I realize that the author's translation might be completely mistaken, but I'm curious to read what he thinks it says. If someone can make out the words better, please do so.
Ana is the equivalent quantity of different ingredients used in the pharmaceutical preparation in Italy.
To me that translation makes sense.
Google translate is messing up badly it should be something like this for my remote knowledge of Latin:
1 leaf of oz in water, 3 ana (equivalent quantity) of aromatic roots, 2 ana of seeds, mix very well together.
Infuse the leaves mixed together with the aromatic (roots) and with the roots infusion and mix all together with 3 ana of root seeds.
seems like it says "Folia de oz 3 et in de aqua et de radacis de aromaticus ana 3 de seminis ana 3 et de radacis seminis ana 1 1/2 [fraction unclear] etiam aromaticus confundo."
At the end of the article the author provides the following:
aq = aqua (water), dq = decoque / decoctio (decoction), con = confundo (mix), ris = radacis / radix (root), s aiij = seminis ana iij (3 grains each), etc.
"Folia" = "leaves".
"Oz"= unknown, but can this be simply ounces? I'm not sure when the abbreviation was first used or if it was used in latin at all.
"etiam"="also", "furthermore", "still"
So... "3 leaves of "oz"/ 3 oz of leaves and in water and of the roots three each of 'aromaticus' three each of seeds,and of the seeds of the root 1 1/2 each also 'aromaticus' mixed."
Still kind of a nonsense. It seems there's no mention of what plant or plants should be used, unless aromaticus is that plant.
So the whole thing is written in a form of shorthand and the core index/naming that define what the individual pieces are is missing. I wonder if this wasn't meant as a "production" manuscript but as a reference document for the replication of a larger work?
Don't have time to read this properly but have been reading about the VM lately, most interesting researchers I've found are Stephen Bax[1] and this YouTuber[2]
He doesn't address any of the central mysteries of the manuscript, including that none of the plants in the herbarium don't actually exist in nature and the "tubes" that the women in the bath section travel through, not to mention their odd skin coloration. Plus his exploration is convenient in that he doesn't have to actually decipher anything.
[+] [-] dwringer|8 years ago|reply
In all I am surprised more progress has not been made since the advent of the internet and its crowd-sourcing potential. There is definitely no shortage of interpretations all over the internet, and in headlines from time to time. The last one I recall from a couple of months ago suggested that there was a specific Jewish birthing practice being illustrated on one of the pages that suggested a certain origin of the text. [2]
[1]https://www.nsa.gov/about/cryptologic-heritage/historical-fi...
[2]https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/jul/05/author-of-myst...
[+] [-] lisper|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] atemerev|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] coldtea|8 years ago|reply
Couldn't the same (whitespace separation) be done for sentences in a logographic representation?
[+] [-] dmbaggett|8 years ago|reply
https://youtube.com/watch?v=4cRlqE3D3RQ
https://youtube.com/watch?v=8nHbImkFKE4
tl;dr: it's probably real writing, likely related to Roma/Syriac
[+] [-] sago|8 years ago|reply
The videos are an impressive phonological reconstruction, but I predict (based on the assumption that the math isn't lying), that it would be effectively impossible to get much beyond ad-hoc phonetic correspondences with Romany, to any predictive morphology or syntax.
The solution in this article is rather plausible. If the writing is in a highly restricted vocabulary, with highly restricted syntax, and highly constrained domain, it would be possible to get the observed information density.
Comparing it to, say, Linear B or Egyptian hieroglyphs is instructive. Both of those clearly have the information density of regular human language.
In the end, the solution might be a combination. It might use some Roma/Syriac nouns, but it seems clear it doesn't use them in anything like a normal linguistic context.
Caveat: IANALinguist
[+] [-] gecko|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ollin|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jdright|8 years ago|reply
Thank you for the links!
Edit: Btw, looking at some suggested videos I've found this https://youtu.be/PoNm65v1thU a bit intriguing.
[+] [-] kingofpandora|8 years ago|reply
Roma and Syriac are two radically different languages (Indo-European vs Semitic), so it's peculiar that the conclusion would be that it's one of the two!
Disclaimer, I haven't watched the video.
[+] [-] ouid|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] joshumax|8 years ago|reply
1: https://xkcd.com/593/
[+] [-] fusiongyro|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] CommieBobDole|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] singularity2001|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tbrake|8 years ago|reply
An exercise left to the reader I suppose.
[+] [-] unknown|8 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] nkurz|8 years ago|reply
So far I can can find online, this piece is the only thing he has ever published about the Voynich manuscript: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=%22nicholas+gibbs%22+voynich
Who is Nicholas Gibbs? Does anyone besides Nicholas Gibbs trust his opinion on these matters? And how did he convince the TLS to publish this drivel?
(to avoid being entirely negative, here's a link to a blog that shows what some better Voynich research looks like: https://stephenbax.net)
[+] [-] mundo|8 years ago|reply
> A chance remark just over three years ago brought me a commission from a television production company to analyse the illustrations of the Voynich manuscript and examine the commentators’ theories.
[+] [-] mcguire|8 years ago|reply
Oh, my.
Either this is a parody or a tutorial on how to identify "crazy person goes down rat hole" situations.
[+] [-] quinndupont|8 years ago|reply
From the article it isn't clear if all or just a portion of the text is decipherable using the implied logic (ligatures of abbreviations of medicinal items).
[+] [-] emmelaich|8 years ago|reply
Same guy? Editor of a paper in Ibiza.
ps. http://www.voynich.nu/ has a lot of interesting discussion; it's much linked to from wikipedia.
[+] [-] CommieBobDole|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mcguire|8 years ago|reply
"...one British academic claims..."
"Nicholas Gibbs, who is an expert on medieval medical manuscripts,...."
"Mr Gibbs, who claims to be a professional history researcher..."
[+] [-] unknown|8 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] crumbles|8 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] eponeponepon|8 years ago|reply
It would be good to see a thorough study of it to test the author's hypothesis, of course.
[+] [-] Havoc|8 years ago|reply
The solution is the heading and index...which are missing.
Author might be right, but that is essentially an un-provable statement and doesn't really amount to a solution. But rather a statement that it can't be solved.
[+] [-] bsder|8 years ago|reply
Not at all. Someone more motivated than the author can choose to decode it. If much of it was lifted, then you can trace back the lifted "recipe" to the earlier work and construct the index.
However, it's going to be very painful, slow work. For no real gain (who really cares about a sloppily done Medieval health self-help book?).
[+] [-] coldtea|8 years ago|reply
It doesn't matter if it's convenient as long as it's also true.
>Author might be right, but that is essentially an un-provable statement and doesn't really amount to a solution
Huh? Indexes can be reconstructed.
[+] [-] jacobush|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dnautics|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mordae|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] groby_b|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] klunger|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bshimmin|8 years ago|reply
And is there a good explanation for why this document apparently stands alone in history as the only manuscript written in this way? Were there others, and we just lost them? Was this just a particularly egregious example of this forgotten art, and others written in this manner were easier to decipher? Lastly, there's a whole Wikipedia page about "scribal abbreviations" - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scribal_abbreviation - if decoding the Voynich manuscript were so easy as the author makes out ("It became obvious...") then why has some other medieval expert not already figured it out in the near-century people have been studying this manuscript?
[+] [-] mntmn|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] markbnj|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] empath75|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] computator|8 years ago|reply
As best as I can read, the purported Latin translation in the image at the top of the article says:
Folia de oz et en de aqua et de radicts de aromaticus ana 3 de seminis ana 2 et de radicis semenis ana 1 etium abonenticus confundo. Folia et cum folia et confundo etiam de eius decocole adigo aromaticus decocque de decoctio adigo aromaticus et confundo et de radicis seminis ana 3.
Feeding the above to Google Translate gives:
The leaves of Oz and added to the water and the aromatic radicts semen Ana ana 3 2 seed and the roots ana 1 etium abonenticus the mix. The leaves, when the leaves are decocole adigo and the mix of the aromatic decocque of the cooking adigo an aromatic mix of roots and seeds Ana 3.
Yes, I realize that the author's translation might be completely mistaken, but I'm curious to read what he thinks it says. If someone can make out the words better, please do so.
[+] [-] tigershark|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rebuilder|8 years ago|reply
At the end of the article the author provides the following: aq = aqua (water), dq = decoque / decoctio (decoction), con = confundo (mix), ris = radacis / radix (root), s aiij = seminis ana iij (3 grains each), etc.
"Folia" = "leaves".
"Oz"= unknown, but can this be simply ounces? I'm not sure when the abbreviation was first used or if it was used in latin at all.
"etiam"="also", "furthermore", "still"
So... "3 leaves of "oz"/ 3 oz of leaves and in water and of the roots three each of 'aromaticus' three each of seeds,and of the seeds of the root 1 1/2 each also 'aromaticus' mixed."
Still kind of a nonsense. It seems there's no mention of what plant or plants should be used, unless aromaticus is that plant.
[+] [-] emeraldd|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Nursie|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] netule|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bjackman|8 years ago|reply
[1] https://stephenbax.net/?cat=5
[2] https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC-sW5dOlDxxu0EgdNn2pMaQ
Some really interesting analyses in there.
[+] [-] tarboreus|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] questerzen|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] MikeGale|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jv22222|8 years ago|reply
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voynich_manuscript
Interesting stuff!