Preliminary Voynich Alphabet

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

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn25105-mystery-voynich-manuscript-gets-preliminary-alphabet.html#.UwzfzPldUtQ

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.