This was in an email to the Society of American Archivists today (I can't find a publicly linkable version):
Some of you may be interested to know that Manuscript MS408 (Voynich) has been deciphered. A peer-reviewed article will be formally published in 2019. In the meantime, three pre-print papers are available to freely download from the linguistics website LingBuzz:
Having done some cursory reading, I'm not understanding a couple of things. Particularly, I'm curious why anyone would've considered it necessary or desirable to encrypt the information this manuscript appears to contain?
So now that we've deciphered it, the content demonstrates that our efforts to do so were an entire waste of time? Did we learn anything of value during this process? Or was it totally pointless?
It's an interesting paper although the contents of the Voynich Manuscript itself, partial excerpts of which are contained in the paper and include planting instructions and bathing preparation instructions, will probably underwhelm the legion of conspiracists that have emerged over the years.
Is a full translation of the manuscript available yet?
Were there conspiracy theories about this too? Just by looking at the images I always felt like the general idea of the manuscript wasn't so mysterious.
A few years ago there were a few rabbit holes on Reddit that one could go down into and find the occasional Voynich Manuscript related out of this world theory.
My thoughts exactly. I've been on the internet for 25 years and this claim was one of the very early things I remember seeing and has popped up every 5 or 6 years since. I won't hold my breath.
In fact the entirety of my knowledge of this document is as a result of reading the claims of people online who've claimed to have deciphered it.
Edit just to add: Personally I think it was created as a work of art and has no hidden meaning.
You are not alone in that thought. I think it is interesting that someone at the NSA was interested in the Voynich manuscript came to about the same conclusion as you.
Especially when the headline a month ago said it was a phonetic transliteration of Turkish speech, with a formal, poetic regularity. A claim which sounds much easier to prove/disprove than "a scheme mapping of letter substitution, resulting in Vulgar Latin with no grammatical and syntactical structure."
"Maybe that’s because everyone’s got the basic approach all wrong, seeing the Voynich’s script as a written language rather than a phonetic transliteration of speech. So says the Ardiç family, a father and sons team of Turkish researchers who call themselves Ata Team Alberta (ATA) and claim in the video above to have “deciphered and translated over 30% of the manuscript.” Father Ahmet Ardiç, an electrical engineer by trade and scholar of Turkish language by passionate calling, claims the Voynich script is a kind of Old Turkic, “written in a ‘poetic’ style,” notes Nick Pelling at the site Cipher Mysteries, “that often displays ‘phonemic orthography,’” meaning the author spelled out words the way he, or she, heard them.
Ahmet noticed that the words often began with the same characters, then had different endings, a pattern that corresponds with the linguistic structure of Turkish. Furthermore, Ozan Ardiç informs us, the language of the Voynich has a “rhythmic structure,” a formal, poetic regularity. As for why scholars, and computers, have seen so many other ancient languages in the Voynich, Ahmet explains, “some of the Voynich characters are also used in several proto-European and early Semitic languages.” The Ardiç family will have their research vetted by professionals. They’ve submitted a formal paper to an academic journal at Johns Hopkins University."
>Ahmet noticed that the words often began with the same characters, then had different endings, a pattern that corresponds with the linguistic structure of Turkish.
In it, way down at the bottom, the author drops a fairly concise argument for what I think is the most compelling hypothesis of all: That it's a covertext for a cipher. The idea that it's a message written in the clear is hard to reconcile with how the text doesn't behave at all like a natural language. The idea that it was a prank or an art project is hard to reconcile with just how much time and money was clearly spent in producing it. The idea that it's a legitimate book, but one where only a relatively small fraction of the text contains any semantic content, is relatively easy to reconcile with both.
Largely for historical reasons: The materials that went into it would have been immensely expensive at the time it was written, and people generally had less free time back then. Meaning that the cost to do something like the Voynich Manuscript, in terms of both time and money, would have been much higher back then than they are now.
That's not to say that it's impossible, per se, just that, if that's the conclusion we are to draw, then it would perhaps cast the Voynich as being even more singular than it already is.
Most people had less time back then, but a few people had a lot of free time. “Bored noble” explains a fairly decent amount of artistic and scientific output before the industrial revolution.
There's also the angle that, in the same way that the text doesn't statistically resemble real languages, it also doesn't seem to be a great match for known examples of asemic text (e.g., Codex Seraphinianus), either.
That’s really beyond my linguistic knowledge to comment on.
All I’m saying is that a bored noble would have the time and resources to create an expensive work purely for their own entertainment. Humans have done far weirder things over the centuries than that.
One would have, but there are also cultural barriers to consider. I'm no expert on late medieval or early renaissance Italian culture, but what amateur reading I've done paints a picture of a culture where the nobility may have been literate and able to write letters, but serious writing such as creating vellum books was still considered dull, dirty, grueling work that was beneath their station.
Henry Darger (who was, IIRC, a janitor) was mentioned elsewhere in the thread. I think that you might get a more culturally comparable example out of the idea of Sarah Winchester whiling her time away in a manner more akin to how Edward Leedskalnin did.
The New Yorker published, prior to the "deciphering", a short and interesting overview of the history and cultural relevance of the Voynich Manuscript [0].
I'd still wager a great sum on the possibility that the book is an elaborate hoax designed to coax some cash out of some stupid aristocrat.
There were a lot of charlatans at the court of that particular period and the Czechs just love to make fun out of Rudolf II. I highly suggest this (socialist-era) movie -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Emperor_and_the_Golem -- to join in on the joke.
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[ 0.22 ms ] story [ 34.9 ms ] threadSome of you may be interested to know that Manuscript MS408 (Voynich) has been deciphered. A peer-reviewed article will be formally published in 2019. In the meantime, three pre-print papers are available to freely download from the linguistics website LingBuzz:
The first paper explains the writing system and language: http://ling.auf.net/lingbuzz/003737
The second paper translates a pictorial map from the manuscript: ling.auf.net/lingbuzz/003808
The thirds paper focuses on volcanic details from the map: ling.auf.net/lingbuzz/004381
Please disseminate this information to other scholars who may find it interesting and useful. Regards, Dr. Gerard Cheshire. University of Bristol.
Is a full translation of the manuscript available yet?
For me as a wannabe software developer there is nothing to learn here. But for the sake of procrastination these articles are invaluable !
Srsly thank you for posting this here.
In fact the entirety of my knowledge of this document is as a result of reading the claims of people online who've claimed to have deciphered it.
Edit just to add: Personally I think it was created as a work of art and has no hidden meaning.
https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu//dc.html?doc=5301815-National-Sec...
http://www.openculture.com/2019/02/has-the-voynich-manuscrip...
"Maybe that’s because everyone’s got the basic approach all wrong, seeing the Voynich’s script as a written language rather than a phonetic transliteration of speech. So says the Ardiç family, a father and sons team of Turkish researchers who call themselves Ata Team Alberta (ATA) and claim in the video above to have “deciphered and translated over 30% of the manuscript.” Father Ahmet Ardiç, an electrical engineer by trade and scholar of Turkish language by passionate calling, claims the Voynich script is a kind of Old Turkic, “written in a ‘poetic’ style,” notes Nick Pelling at the site Cipher Mysteries, “that often displays ‘phonemic orthography,’” meaning the author spelled out words the way he, or she, heard them.
Ahmet noticed that the words often began with the same characters, then had different endings, a pattern that corresponds with the linguistic structure of Turkish. Furthermore, Ozan Ardiç informs us, the language of the Voynich has a “rhythmic structure,” a formal, poetic regularity. As for why scholars, and computers, have seen so many other ancient languages in the Voynich, Ahmet explains, “some of the Voynich characters are also used in several proto-European and early Semitic languages.” The Ardiç family will have their research vetted by professionals. They’ve submitted a formal paper to an academic journal at Johns Hopkins University."
And tons of other languages...
This blog post from 2017 looks at a draft of the document: https://ciphermysteries.com/2017/11/10/gerard-cheshire-vulga...
It's not really a favorable review.
In it, way down at the bottom, the author drops a fairly concise argument for what I think is the most compelling hypothesis of all: That it's a covertext for a cipher. The idea that it's a message written in the clear is hard to reconcile with how the text doesn't behave at all like a natural language. The idea that it was a prank or an art project is hard to reconcile with just how much time and money was clearly spent in producing it. The idea that it's a legitimate book, but one where only a relatively small fraction of the text contains any semantic content, is relatively easy to reconcile with both.
Why is it hard to imagine someone pouring a lot of work into art?
"In the realms of the Unreal," for the curious.
That's not to say that it's impossible, per se, just that, if that's the conclusion we are to draw, then it would perhaps cast the Voynich as being even more singular than it already is.
All I’m saying is that a bored noble would have the time and resources to create an expensive work purely for their own entertainment. Humans have done far weirder things over the centuries than that.
Henry Darger (who was, IIRC, a janitor) was mentioned elsewhere in the thread. I think that you might get a more culturally comparable example out of the idea of Sarah Winchester whiling her time away in a manner more akin to how Edward Leedskalnin did.
https://www.voynich.ninja/archive/index.php/thread-2175.html
https://ciphermysteries.com/2017/11/10/gerard-cheshire-vulga...
Headline is lacking a [2017], and also appears to be entirely untrue.
[0] https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/the-unsolvable-m...
There were a lot of charlatans at the court of that particular period and the Czechs just love to make fun out of Rudolf II. I highly suggest this (socialist-era) movie -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Emperor_and_the_Golem -- to join in on the joke.