Talk:Voynich manuscript

maybe a cipher applied to each word separately than to the whole text?

I wonder if it could be a cipher, which processes each word as separate text.

To illustrate, consider a simple Vigenere cipher with keyword "LEMON", applied to English. A plaintext:

How much wood would the woodchuck chuck, if the woodchuck would chuck wood?

would produce ciphertext:

Ssi ahnl icbo aaiyo xts jzspqufgw qufgw, ws elq kbzhovhno ichwh ovhno icbo?

This cipher essentially destroyed the letter frequency and the Zipf's law. But it would not, if each word was encoded separately, i.e. seek always was reset to "L" at start of each word. Therefore we get:

Ssi xyov hsar hsgzq elq hsarpsyoy nlgqx, tj elq hsarpsyoy hsgzq nlgqx hsar?

Note that every occurence of a word of plaintext is mapped always to the same sequence in ciphertext, i.e. "wood" always becomes "hsar". In this case, Zipf's law is untouched.

Of course, I don't want to suggest that VMs is encrypted in Vigenere applied to each word separately - that was only an illustration. Rather, I consider some cipher which is essentially a revesible function, that maps a word into a sequence of characters, not necessarily the same length.

A Codebook cipher was suggested, and was countered that "book-based ciphers are viable only for short messages, because they are very cumbersome to write and to read". Note that a codebook is such a reversible function, that maps words into sequences of chars which denote their position in a book, but, I must admit, cumbersome to perform.

However, instead of looking up in the codebook, the plaintext words could be "calculated" into ciphertext words by some reversible, mathematical function. Briefly, it would be some hybrid of a letter-based cipher and word-based code.

Going further, we can also consider some variants:

• this mapping could be not entirely reversible (i.e. some different plaintext word become equal ciphertext sequences) and it's up to reader to choose which interpretation lays in context. If, for example, brother produces the same sequence as larch, and we meet this sequence in certain context, we read "My brother went to school" rather than "My larch went to school". Analogical problem affects homograms and homophones in natural languages; their meaning depends on context. And dropping the vowels before encoding has similar efect.

• one word can produce more than one sequence, and vice versa.

--Grzes 22:12, 1 August 2005 (UTC)

telescope and microscope drawings

A few claim that the fact that some of the drawings appear to have required a microscope and others a telescope, long before either were invented, mandates the involvement of extraterrestrials. Others see these factors as further cause for suspicion regarding the manuscript's authenticity.

The telescope is from 1608, the microscope from 1609. When is the manuscript presumedly dated to be "long before" the invention.

AFAIK the manuscript has never been physically/chemically dated, as the Yale University wouldn't allow it. Which in itself casts some doubt over its authenticity.--84.188.195.179 19:28, 11 March 2006 (UTC)

Voynichese adds nothing to article

sometimes dubbed "Voynichese" I deleted this: since the manuscript hasn't been deciphered, this adds no information. I added some detail from the very carefully presented Voynich Ms site, however. I removed the link to the rector at Prague, who won't ever have his own entry at Wikipedia. "of Cronland" is part of his name. Wetman 22:59, 7 Feb 2004 (UTC)

rewrote, but it's still too long

I did a substantial rewrite of this page. There are still many gaps, and I will try to fill some of them over the next few weeks, as time permits. Please contribute!

BTW, the page is now rather long, perhaps too long. The text surely can be shortened (sorry, I can't help it...), but perhaps the longer sections could be split off? What would be the proper naming convention -- "history (Voynich Manuscript)"? "Voynich Manuscript history"? "history of the Voynich Manuscript"? Jorge Stolfi 05:54, 9 Mar 2004 (UTC)

I don't think the page is too long; it's an interesting subject.

Also, I restored the full version of the image as opposed to the framed image; the compression process did great violence to that black and white image, and now there's a much larger ToC that leaves whitespace on the page into which the image can fit. Smerdis of Tlön 15:03, 9 Mar 2004 (UTC)

John Dee secret agent of QEI & Necromincon connection (alleged)

Actually, I'm surprised that two aspects of this topic have been overlooked:

1. IIRC, the connection with John Dee implies that he obtained/created the manuscript while serving as a secret agent for Queen Elizabeth. (I'd add this informaiton, but I no longer have the book that suggests this possiblity, & I can't say much more about this possibility than what I've just written.)

2. Beginning with Colin Wilson, who mentions the Voynich Manuscript in his short story "The Return of the Lloigor", it has appeared in a number of Cthulhu Mythos stories as a possible copy of the Necronomicon. -- llywrch 19:47, 11 Mar 2004 (UTC)

several addtnl points to add

Here are some topics that should be added to the "Theories and Speculation/Contents and Purpose" section:

• Astronomy. René Zandbergen's suggestions about the Zodiac diagrams being astronomical tables (ephemeris,star rises, etc.); Robert Firth's proposed identification of the classical planets.
• Bogus illustrations. Theory that illustrations are only a decoy for sensitive text, e.g. Stojko's proposed decipherment.
• Spa catalog. Example of the Puteolans, organ-shaped tubs as metaphors for relevant illness, Wenceslau's bath-bible, etc.
• Anatomy. Biological section could be an anatomical treatise, disguised as a spa catalog.
• Cathar suicide rituals (and also Elizabeth Batory?). (Should we mention Brumbaugh's cucumber juice etc. bit? ewww!...)
• Shennong Bencao as the contents of the recipes section.

Any volunteers? Jorge Stolfi 05:46, 16 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Well, if someone were to flesh out those ideas a little more, we could the Theories about Contents and Purpose and break that off into a seperate article, which would reduce the size of this one and allow for a more detailed explanation of the others. --Mitsukai 01:43, 4 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Comments from sucessfull nomination at Featured article candidates

I and several others have worked on this one: it's been recently overhauled by Jorge Stolfi, and it strikes me that it's shaping up nicely. Smerdis of Tlön 17:01, 10 Mar 2004 (UTC)

• Second. I just read it, it's interesting and well-written. Dpbsmith 13:20, 15 Mar 2004 (UTC)
• Second, My only difficulty is a repeated avoidance of 'has yet found' in favor of 'couldn't find', as for example in the discussion of Eastern language possibilites. A grammatical issue, really. ww 18:35, 15 Mar 2004 (UTC)
• I'll support this one. It kept me interested right up till the end. Gentgeen 09:49, 16 Mar 2004 (UTC)
• Second, a great article. Quoth 04:31, 20 Mar 2004 (UTC)
• Support, a great read. Fascinating. fabiform | talk 23:53, 20 Mar 2004 (UTC)
• Support, an intrigueing article. --Smári McCarthy 15:32, 21 Mar 2004 (UTC)
• Support enthusiastically. Fredrik 17:00, 21 Mar 2004 (UTC)
• Support. Great article. Jacob1207 20:09, 21 Mar 2004 (UTC)
• Support. Nice. jengod 00:17, Mar 25, 2004 (UTC)
• Added to Featured articles. Gentgeen 00:52, 25 Mar 2004 (UTC)

end of moved comments

Wow! Thanks... Jorge Stolfi 02:16, 25 Mar 2004 (UTC)

'skryer' = odd spelling

This word skryer seems to be introduced as a kind of specialized term, but it looks like a variant spelling of "scryer" (or "scrier"), from the ordinary word "to scry" [1]. Is this the case, or is this an unrelated, deceptively similar term? —Muke Tever 20:46, 27 May 2004 (UTC)

I learned the word from John Dee's diaries; now I am no longer sure whether he spelled it "skryer", or whether it was my mistake. Anyway, thanks for the correction.
Jorge Stolfi 09:30, 31 May 2004 (UTC)

Dr. Jones!

Let he who illuminated this, illuminate me. mnemonic 05:55, 2004 Jun 20 (UTC)

redundant glyphs

The article in its present form states that some glyphs only appear at the beginning, middle, or end of a "word". Could it be that some letters in the VM script are written a certain way depending on location in a word, as in Arabic script? Maybe some analysis could reveal what written glyphs represent the same "letter"?

In many mediaeval scripts the "letters" look different depending on the position in the word (for example the letter "s" in the "gothic textura" script.

---

"sequences where the same common word appears three times in a row occur (as if an English text contained the string and and and)"

Or "very very very"?

Microscopes and telescopes

Microscopes and telescopes

> an irregularly shaped object with four curved arms, ... on close inspection, > the central part of the "galaxy" looks rather like a pool of water.

I've come across a similar description for a "pheasant tail" comet with a reference to a Chinese silk with comet images used for divination.

what's ductus?

Could someone please explain what's a "ductus", as in the sentence

The ductus of the script flows smoothly, as if the scribe understood what he was writing when it was written; the manuscript does not give the impression that each character had to be calculated before being put on the page.

I didn't understand what this sentence meant or its significance. (BTW, overall, this article is great!)

Zashaw 00:30, 21 Jun 2004 (UTC)

I didn't know either. After a bit of hunting, I came across this explanation:

"The ductus of a letter is the order in which its constituent elements are drawn."

I used that to insert an explanation in to the text.--Danny Rathjens 02:33, 2004 Jun 21 (UTC)

"Ductus" is used generally in paleography to describe the appearance, flow, degree of cursiveness, and "fluency" of a script. If you're lettering an illuminated manuscript, your lettering will be much more careful than if you are copying out a text for personal use. Likewise, if you are calculating a secret code with a polyalphabetic cypher, and writing down groups like FHEFH TRYEN DHRPV and so forth, your script will be much less fluent than when writing in the clear in your native language. Smerdis of Tlön 16:16, 21 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Why abbreviated VMs?

I don't understand the connection between the name and the abbreviation used throughout the article. Shouldn't it simply be 'VM' rather than 'VMs'? I've always understood that adding an s at the end is to indicate plurality. e.g. "I always forget my PINs." to indicate more than one PIN. Isn't the 'Voynich Manuscript' singular?--Danny Rathjens 02:40, 2004 Jun 21 (UTC)

It is singular, but (I presume) it's based on "ms", a common abbreviation for manuscript: hence "VMs" for Voynich. It does look like a typo, though. — Matt 02:48, 21 Jun 2004 (UTC)

I can venture a guess, though I more or less think there's no need for abbreviation here and the ought to be spelled out. MS is the abbreviation for manuscript (but both letters should be capitalized, not only the M.) Properly, it should be VMS or Voynich MS: I think it'd be better just to find-and-replace VMs with Voynich manuscript. -- Nunh-huh 02:52, 21 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Actually, I believe ms for manuscript is properly not capitalized; depending, of course, on the society in which one asks. I rarely see it capitalized in publishing. Vms looks odd; VMs makes sense to me. -- Mariko

The Chicago Manual of Style uses "MS": others may or may not use "ms". It makes good sense to avoid "Ms" to avoid confusion with the female equivalent of "Mr". - Nunh-huh 18:50, 21 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Flemish account of Carthar rites?

I remember listening to a lecture on the manuscript where the speaker asserted that it was a Flemish monograph on the Cathari rites. The implication was that it was a very obscure dialect with its own pre-roman alphabet. When I find more information about this, and assuming it's even remotely credible, I'll add mention of it. Sure sounded reasonable at the time... - Clarknova 18:06, 1 Jul 2004 (UTC)

My memory suggests that Flemish has had two writing systems. One was in Roman times and pre-dated the Cathars by quite a bit. The other (modulo handwriting differences) was the usual Latin alphabet. Mere substitution of another alphabet is not effective in preventing cryptanalysis and has been known to the informed since ca 1000CE. See History of Cryptography. Use of a dialect of some known language -- however obscure -- should make little cryptanalytic difference as statistical cryptanalytic techniques (available since ca WWI) are not impeded (see Index of coincidence.

If the document was written post 1400 as believed from image style and such , than the survival of information about the Cathars is hard to credit, given the entire lack of direct information about them from any other known source. That Crusade was incredibly brutal and quite effective. Perhaps the information is not authentic if it is about the Cathars? In any case, this does not seem plausible to me. I think I would suggest taht you not get your hopes up too far. ww 19:15, 1 Jul 2004 (UTC)

about the new images

first:

1- for some reason I can't make the images smaller. can somebody help me here?

2- I am ot sure about the copyright issue here. I simply downloaded those images from another web site. But still this things is centuries old! the discussionabout copyright takes place in the

Wikipedia:Reference_desk#copyright_of_a_object_in_a_image_x_copyright_of_the_image_of_an_object

--Zero00 00:19, 9 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Kelley, Enochian, Cardan grille

The "hoax" section says that Kelley "apparently" used a Cardan grille in his construction of Enochian. Any evidence for this? It would seem odd given the nature of Enochian. P.Riis 06:40, 18 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Just an additional note: I asked this question (in a bit more detail) on Talk:Edward Kelley--the same assertion is made there. I think it's a conflation of two different things Graham Rugg has asserted. P. Riis 02:33, 12 Oct 2004 (UTC)

OK, I'm removing the reference to the use of a Cardan grille in Enochian. P. Riis 18:38, 16 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Micrography

Fairly sure I've seen a theory that the script is in fact composed of tiny markings visible under magnification and forming a second level of script. Think that theory was debunked on the basis that the second script was in fact an artifact resulting from cracking of the aging velum. Add this with a Wikipedia link to micrography?

Absolutely right. This was the hypothesis of Professor William Newbold of the University of Pennsylvania. His book was published posthumously in 1928 and refuted by John Manly of the University of Chicago three years later. Anyway, I'll add what I can to the article. Lusanaherandraton 11:17, 13 September 2005 (UTC)

Rohonczi Codex is looking much like the VMS (opinion by Mart Vabar)

Rohonczi Codex was found in Hungary some decades before the VMS, afaik. It is written on paper from mid-XVI th c. (so, the VMS could be older than it). It has his own Wikipedia entry, too. In many ways it is similar to the VMS ... but there are not (yet?) of crypto folklore around it. IMHO, this similarity is more than superficial.

I hope it is not against Wiki netiquette, if I give quite a lot of links to the illumina of this treasure (to compare them with VMS, which could be looked at the website of Beinecke of course ... and if it is against the netiquette here, please just delete this part):

http://www.dr-savescu.com/codex/original/optm_42.jpg

http://www.dr-savescu.com/codex/original/optm_45.jpg

http://www.dr-savescu.com/codex/original/optm_51.jpg

http://www.dr-savescu.com/codex/original/optm_52.jpg

http://www.dr-savescu.com/codex/original/optm_76.jpg

http://www.dr-savescu.com/codex/original/optm_83.jpg

http://www.dr-savescu.com/codex/original/optm_102.jpg

http://www.dr-savescu.com/codex/original/optm_105.jpg

http://www.dr-savescu.com/codex/original/optm_113.jpg

http://www.dr-savescu.com/codex/original/optm_199.jpg

http://www.dr-savescu.com/codex/original/optm_210.jpg

i agree. - listen to codex rochonchi - http://www.intellact.com/72.wav - the melody is embended in. There are also translated pages.

Manuscript or manuscript?

The page has been renamed from "Voynich Manuscript" to "Voynich manuscript". Since that is the name of this specific manuscript, not of a general class of manuscripts, I would think that the more correct form is the capitalized one, as in "White Mountain", "Domesday Book", etc. I vote to undo the move... Jorge Stolfi 04:36, 9 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I agree. "Voynich Manuscript" is a proper noun. PRIIS 20:35, 13 Nov 2004 (UTC)

What's the most common style used in the literature on the VM? — Matt 00:02, 28 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Seems to be fairly evenly split. Scientific American, inexplicably, uses V. m. There's actually a subtle semantic distinction, whether "manuscript" is being used as a common noun or as part of a proper noun. Seems to me that here it's being used here as part of a proper noun (as, for example "Mississippi River"--even the most hardcore "down stylist" would never write "Mississippi river"). PRIIS 04:33, 28 Nov 2004 (UTC)

The V. m. seems plausible to me, because I would take this to be an as-yet-unnamed manuscript. So rather than being titled "Voynich Manuscript" as a proper noun, it's being referred to descriptively as "Voynich's manuscript". Omitting the possessive on such constructs is fairly common in academic fields; for example, see the Bose-Einstein condensate, also with the second word in lowercase. --Delirium 08:45, 14 September 2005 (UTC)

"Sphynx" Quote

Baresch apparently was just as puzzled as we are today about this "Sphynx" that had been 
"taking up space uselessly in his library" for many years.

Where is this quote from?--Iustinus 09:28, 27 Nov 2004 (UTC)

It's from a letter from Baresch to Athanasius Kircher, transcribed here. PRIIS 03:44, 28 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Thanks! That's exactly what I wanted. --68.79.55.15 04:22, 28 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Letters with Positional Variants

Also, the distribution of letters within the word is rather peculiar: some characters only occur 
at the beginning of a word, some only at the end, and some always in the middle section – 
an arrangement found in Arabic, but not in the Roman, Greek or Cyrillic alphabets.

Mostly true, but don't forget about s vs ∫ in the Roman alphabet (of the time). Greek at the time had many more, of which one alternation is still in use: σ vs ς. --Iustinus

Amazing, I found a link about "Kokturk runes", which demonstrates the different use of glyphs in the words beginning and end.

http://members.internettrash.com/pkk/a-alph2.jpg

You see, if the VMS is written in some kind of Tataric, Turcic dialect, then the "Kokturk" (or "old Turcic", used in large areas of Eurasia) runes are among the top three candidates for "mystery glyphs" (or letters, which are probably not descending from Italian "humanist hand"). Mart Vabar

Dear Mart thanks for some interesting posts. However, this page is for discussing the article, not the place to share new research about the VMs. I'd recommend that you participate in the Voynich MS mailing list if you'd like to discuss your own research-- it's very active, and there are people there who have been studying the manuscript for years, and you're sure to get useful feedback on your ideas. PRiis 04:05, 4 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Rudolph II

The earliest confirmed owner of the manuscript was a certain Georg Baresch, an obscure alchemist who lived in Prague in the early 17th century.

What about the Holy Roman Emperor Rudolph II? See e.g. [2] --Susurrus 12:46, 1 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Yale library scans

Posted links to the catalog description and hires digital scans of the VM from the Yale Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript library. --JeremyLydellHaugen 01:32, 2005 August 2 (UTC)

distracting internal links

This is a great article on a fascinating subject, but there are many internal links that aren't really necessary. ("The Voynich manuscript is a mysterious illustrated book of unknown contents, written some 600 years ago by an anonymous author in an unidentified alphabet and unintelligible language.") Are readers of this article really likely to want to read an entry on "book"? IMO these are trivial topics and the html link is distracting to the eye. Something like Zipf's law, on the other hand, seems entirely appropriate for an internal link, as this is a related topic which the curious reader would likely want to explore.

Yeah, you're right, there does seem to be some over-"wikification". We should't be linking common-or-garden words; feel free to dive in and unlink them! — Matt Crypto 15:57, 26 August 2005 (UTC)

Anthony Ascham(s)

Is the link to Anthony Ascham correct? Presumably not as the diplomat's dates (c.1614-1650) do not match with the 1550 publication date of the A Little Herbal. Does anyone know enough to disambiguate these Ascham chaps? — Stumps 06:08, 3 November 2005 (UTC)

Athanasius Kircher

This article calls Kircher a "Dr. Know-it-all" and says that he is remembered more for his failures than his successes. Doesn't this violate neutral point-of-view? And anyway, Kircher was one of the first people to observe miroorganisms and to suspect that they could cause the plague. The article Athanasius Kircher refers to the "outstanding breadth and excellence of his work, his inventions, and the sheer depth of contributions he made to knowledge," which "lead to him being compared to Leonardo Da Vinci." So don't we have a bit of a mis-characterization here? D SCH 04:40, 5 November 2005 (UTC)

I had at least two references that give that assessment:

1. Gods, Graves, Scholars by Ceram. Tells that Kircher had "deciphered" the Egyptian hieroglyphs and said that they were mystic symbols; that "discovery" held back the true decipherment by many decades. Elsewhere I read that he would provide decipherments to hyeroglyphic texts that other people would send him -- including completely fake ones.
2. In some book about the history of geology, Kircher is "credited" with a model of the interior of the earth that was pure (wrong) speculation, but which was widely acclaimed in his age. IIRC, he also had proposed reconstructions for some dinosaur fossils that were equally preposterous.

As for him being a "know-it-all", that may be irreverent language but it seems to match the image that people had of him. He was *the* top scientist at the Vatican, and as such he received thousands of letters from all over the world, reporting on all sorts of observations and experiments, and asking all sorts of questions. the letters that Baresch sent to Kircher were typical of the lot.

He certainly had his successes (for instance, he published a dictionary of coptic that was esential to the true decipherment of the hyeroglypsh by Champollion), but it seems quite correct to say that he is remembered today "more for his failures than his successes". Note that it is a statement about what people think of him, not a statement about him.

As for his observation of microorganisms, that is the first time I heard of it. I thought Leuweenhoek (sp) was the first. And the comparison to Leonardo seems far off: he was very learned, but does not strike me as a creative genius.

All the best, Jorge Stolfi 16:45, 13 February 2006 (UTC)

Dominant viewpoint

Is there any dominant viewpoint today among people who have studied it about what the VM is? The article doesn't seem to indicate this, but I was wondering. Everyking 00:25, 13 February 2006 (UTC)

It has been a year since I last checked the mailing list, but I would say that there is still no dominant viewpoint. Until 5-6 years ago the majority of the people working on it assumed that it was some sort of cipher. As of last year, there seemed to be a substantial faction who thought it was a hoax, and a few who held other theories. But that is just an impression, not the result of any poll.
Jorge Stolfi 18:34, 13 February 2006 (UTC)

How do they know the author remained anonymous?

How do they know the author remained anonymous if the text is indecipherable? - Cobra Ky (talk, contribs) 05:05, 18 February 2006 (UTC)

Well, if he gave away his identity in his writings, he sure as heck did it in a strange way... =S 惑乱 分からん 17:48, 28 September 2006 (UTC)

da Vinci connection

Has anyone seen the page at "http://www.edithsherwood.com/"? The page by Edith Sherwood Ph. D (I don't know who that is...) gives some pointers about the origin of the Voynich manuscript. Please comment on this and may be we can add it to the article...—The preceding unsigned comment was added by Syleshkumar (talk • contribs) 15:18, 30 April 2006 (UTC).

Don't follow tha above link. You'll get a Trojan.—The preceding unsigned comment was added by 80.189.11.137 (talk • contribs) 15:19, 17 May 2006 (UTC).

I've disabled the html link just in case. The above two comments were made by single-edit users. -Wikianon 07:58, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

1921 photostatic reproduction

The article says a "photostatic reproduction" of the first page was made by Voynich at or before 1921. Curous about the method used, I clicked the link on "photostatic" which went to Photocopying. But that article says that electrostatic copying was not invented until 1937, and not pratically developed unil 1947. So, is this wrong? Was some other method used? If so, what? Pimlottc 19:41, 22 August 2006 (UTC)

Name pronounciation

I am currently translating this in greek, and I was pretty sure the word "Voinich" should be pronounced with the "ch" as in "Mach" but I came upon some greek web pages that have the name pronounced with the "ch" as in "cheese" (possibly according to Voinich's Polish roots). So, which one is correct? Thanks in advance - Badseed 21:45, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

According to the French article on the person, his Polish name was Wilfryd Michał Habdank-Wojnicz, and Polish cz is [tʃ] as in cheese. Good enough? ;) —Nightstallion (?) 13:25, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

Thanks alot Nighstallion :) (and Mushroom & Syzygy who helped on this). Going for the pagemove :) - Badseed 22:59, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

I think I know the language and the alfabet used to write the manuscript. It's the same language and writing as in Codex Rohonczi, only the ability of writing its different. The mainly difference is that Codex is written with capital and the manuscript is so called hand writting. sorry for my english. if you want to know more my e-mail adress is tdggeorge@gmail.com

Hoax counterclaim

I put a "citation needed" on the counterclaim to Rugg's work. The way the sentence is written now is an example of weasel words. RelHistBuff 14:41, 14 September 2006 (UTC)

Contradiction?

The intro says it's thought to have been written about 400 years ago, but later on the article says: "most experts assign the book to dates between 1450 and 1520" (500 years ago).Everyking 07:54, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

I noticed that. And if most experts say that, why does the article go on so much about the possibility that Bacon (too early) or Dee and Kelley (too late) wrote it? To my eyes (I've done some postgrad research with late-medieval/early-sixteenth-century documents), 1450-1520 is in the right ballpark for the document as pictured. qp10qp 17:31, 12 November 2006 (UTC)

Zipf's law

Language scholars have noted that the manuscript shares certain word statistics (Zipf's law) with natural languages that random text generally lacks. On the other hand, some research indicates that random text demonstrates such features as well.[5]

Actually, the kind of frequency/ranking distribution that is stated by Zipf's law is the one you get if you create arbitrary (random) texts from a given alphabet. More information on Zipf's law can be found in Foundations of Statistical Natural Language Processing by Manning and Schütze.

I would be interested which "language scholars" claimed that Zipf's law describes something inherent to natural language.

IMHO the sentence is much to general. Either cite a source, or remove it.

--zeno 16:21, 12 November 2006 (UTC)

Sunflower

I fail to see how this [image] can be said to resemble a sunflower, are we sure it's the correct page? The plant pictured looks a lot like an Astrantia; flowers, leaves and roots all match.

62.113.159.156 01:18, 2 December 2006 (UTC)

I've changed the caption on the image, the "sunflower" is a different illustration.

62.113.159.156 17:28, 13 January 2007 (UTC)

Hungarian emroidery connection

Look at the pictures of this Hungarian emroidery http://magyar.org/ahm/index.php?projectid=4&menuid=187

Seems reminiscent of some of the plant art in Voynich. Could it be that the artist was familiar with Hungarian embroidery representation of plants and therefore this influenced their style when they painted the manuscript plants? If so this would mean that the artist grew up in the milieu of Hungary and related peoples such as Armenians, Cossacks, Tatars.

Look at the Armenian and Georgian alphabets. There is a certain similarity in style which is also shared by the Voynich writing system. One wonders whether Armenian and Georgian took on their forms partly based on an earlier non-recorded writing system. If so, that former writing system is likely to be more or less syllabic. But that is maybe a bit too speculative. A more likely reason for the similarity is that the Voynich writer lived and worked in an Armenian/Georgian milieu and therefore, when he designed his writing system, he came up with a superficial similarity.

How much effort has been put into analyzing languages like Cuman Tatar, Chuvash, Old Turkic, Armenian, Kartvelian, Adyg, and so on? This manuscript is more likely to be written in a language with central eurasian connections and less likely to be written in a well-known european language.