APOD: The Mysterious Voynich Manuscript (2010 Jan 31)

[JohnD]

New Scientist reports new work that favours the Voynich being "a secret language or code".
See: http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg2 ... -text.html

John

[geckzilla]

See the end of the previous page in the thread.

[JohnD]

Oh, nads!
Spocked by BMA1.
John

[BMAONE23]

It is an interesting read though

[wincel]

Hi, I saw that Voynich manuscript picture mentioned and when looking at it, the letters looks indeed peculiar. Now I'm into fantasy things and for webdesign you often need something that looks "fantasy" enough as a font, so I'm always out looking for unique fonts/letters and languages to use that hit a "style" or atmosphere. Long story short, I've seen only a single page from that Voynich manuscript but doesn't it look a lot like the Osmanya alphabet?
http://www.obib.de/Schriften/AlteSchrif ... .html~Text

[Beyond]

Hi, I saw that Voynich manuscript picture mentioned and when looking at it, the letters looks indeed peculiar. Now I'm into fantasy things and for webdesign you often need something that looks "fantasy" enough as a font, so I'm always out looking for unique fonts/letters and languages to use that hit a "style" or atmosphere. Long story short, I've seen only a single page from that Voynich manuscript but doesn't it look a lot like the Osmanya alphabet?
http://www.obib.de/Schriften/AlteSchrif ... .html~Text

I couldn't find any Osmanya alphabet at your link. Where's it hiding?

[Case]

... but doesn't it look a lot like the Osmanya alphabet? http://www.obib.de/Schriften/AlteSchrif ... .html~Text

I couldn't find any Osmanya alphabet at your link. Where's it hiding?

It’s there, in the Africa section, just before the America section: Somalisch (Osmanya)

[Beyond]

Thanks Case. That seems to be something that you wouldn't have known, unless you knew it.

[wincel]

It is an artificial letter system some sheik came up with (he invented a few) to write Somali language down. He published it in the early 1920th.

[The_Pyat]

Records an ancient pilgrimage from Fennoscandia to the Perm in the northern Urals marked by passage via waterways, many of which were subterranean. http://voynichbirths.blogspot.com/2015/ ... cient.html

[JohnD]

News about the Voynich manuscript from Keele U in the UK, reported in New Scientist.

Gordon Rugg noted that the language in the manuscript follows Zipf's Law, a statistical distribution whereby in "natural language utterances, the frequency of any word is inversely proportional to its rank in the frequency table." I quote from the Wiki article, because I don't understand it either. This has been taken as evidence that the manuscript is in a real language, not gibberish. Rugg has been able to construct a simple system using a grid of nonsense syllables and a card with holes in it that revealed syllables of the grid, that when put together in a passage of 'text', satisfy Zipf. Thus the previous assertion is proved wrong.
It sounds like the Acronym Generator, but is worthy of publication in an proper journal, Cryptologia - http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10. ... 16.1206753

John

[geckzilla]

This article seems legit enough. https://www.the-tls.co.uk/articles/publ ... -solution/

[Chris Peterson]

This article seems legit enough. https://www.the-tls.co.uk/articles/publ ... -solution/

Interesting. It certainly sounds reasonable and plausible. I'd like to hear some commentary by other medievalists.

[neufer]

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<<Astronomical, 21 folios: Contains circular diagrams suggestive of astronomy or astrology, some of them with suns, moons, and stars. One series of 12 diagrams depicts conventional symbols for the zodiacal constellations (two fish for Pisces, a bull for Taurus, a hunter with crossbow for Sagittarius, etc.). Each of these has 30 female figures arranged in two or more concentric bands. Most of the females are at least partly nude, and each holds what appears to be a labeled star or is shown with the star attached to either arm by what could be a tether or cord of some kind. The last two pages of this section were lost (Aquarius and Capricornus, roughly January and February), while Aries and Taurus are split into four paired diagrams with 15 women and 15 stars each. Some of these diagrams are on fold-out pages.>>