This report provides a better description of the
progress made on this manuscript and it does appear promising. The names of plants simply cannot be that
unique across many languages, just like rivers which conserve names unless the
original population is massively replaced or displaced. This does not happen very often so
conservation is the rule.
Thus the language may still not be apparent but we
can expect to capture sound representations as shown here and this can lead to understanding
the language itself.
This does appear to be good work and we are coming
back to an Asian derivation for a herb manual written in a language and script
that appears to be otherwise lost to history.
The Caucasus appears to be a good place to look.
Mystery Voynich
manuscript gets preliminary alphabet
00:00 22 February 2014 by Catherine Brahic
For nearly a decade, linguists and cryptologists
have obsessed over the medieval Voynich manuscript, vigorously debating
whether it represents a long-lost language, or gibberish. Now some of its
symbols have been matched to sounds.
Stephen
Bax at the University of Bedfordshire, UK, has mapped only 14
symbols so far, but some linguists are following the development of his
preliminary "Voynich alphabet" with interest.
"I found this work much more interesting
and potentially solid than I expected to," says linguist Claire
Bowern of Yale University. "I look forward to seeing
whether it leads to further results."
The controversy surrounding the manuscript began
in 1912, when an antique book dealer purchased it near Rome, Italy. Its 240
pages are covered in scribbles and colourful drawings of plants, nude women and
stars. Previous studies of the "language" used have looked for overall patterns that are characteristic of language.
Bax opted for a letter-by-letter approach.
Juniper
clue
He selected a few words, which appear to label
drawings, judging by their position or prominence. He then compared the symbols
in these words with the name of the pictured item in other languages. Bax
likens this to techniques used in decoding Egyptian hieroglyphs that
homed in on the names of pharaohs.
The first word he tackled was a label that appears near a drawing
of a plant that might be juniper. The word looks a lot like "oror",
as written in the Roman alphabet. Bax wondered if it might be linked to the
Arabic name for juniper – which is pronounced "a'ra'r".
He then examined a label next to an illustration of a
constellation of seven stars (pictured, above right). Some have suggested this
drawing represents the Pleiades, seven stars in the Taurus constellation. The
second and fourth letters of the label resemble the o-like symbol and r-like
symbol from the juniper page – which would fit with the label spelling out a
word sounding similar to "Taurus". Taking this to be true, Bax was
able to assign sounds to the other three letters in this word.
Bax also turned to labels of drawings of what look like a
coriander plant and a Centauri plant (above), both of which start with the same
symbol. Although these plants have many names in different indo-European
languages, all start with a "c". So Bax suggested that this symbol
might correspond to the "c" sound in "Voynichese".
Altogether, this approach allowed him to decode
14 symbols, which he has posted online.
The attempt is interesting, if partial and provisional,
says Marcelo Montemurroof the University of Manchester, UK,
who recently used information theory to conclude that Voynich had the
characteristics of a language. "A real breakthrough will occur
when a significant portion of the manuscript is explained. The evidence is
still very thin."
Oodles
of text
Bowern agrees. Preliminary alphabets for Linear B – a Greek-like
script found on the island of Crete, and the Mayan hieroglyphs – were only
confirmed when other linguists were able to use them to decode independent bits
of text, she says. The translations also had to make sense, with no exceptions.
What Bowern finds most promising is the sheer
volume of text in the Voynich manuscript. "There's oodles of it," she
says. That means there should be plenty of opportunity to test Bax's alphabet
further. Previous attempts to decode ancient scripts have sometimes failed
because there aren't enough examples of the language.
In June, Bax hopes to assemble a group of linguists to focus on
his method and eventually arrive at a complete alphabet.
He is also exploring what it would mean if his
alphabet is correct. Similarities with Latin, Greek and Arabic letters, and
other linguistic and historical details, lead him to speculate that it
originated in the Caucasus region of western Asia. He believes it might be the
written form of an otherwise unwritten dialect. That would be in stark contrast
to another recent analysis that used plant drawings in the manuscript to conclude that it may have
been written in an extinct Mexican language.
Listen to Bax talk
about his work.
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