I'm not sure why we only consider that this manuscript is either a hoax or a forgotten language. Why can't it be an expression of whimsical fantasy?<p>When I was 12, as an introvert kid with too much imagination, I started inventing my own language. I would make up words, sometimes based off various other languages, sometime simply based on how they sounded.<p>It had a couple of different writing systems, one was a slightly modified version of Greek alphabet, another, more complex, was made of dots and small squiggles that were fast to write (I was fascinated with the Arabic writing system at the time and took inspiration from it even though it didn't look anything like that).<p>I would write pages of nonsense in that writing system, just to see how it would flow or change over time, just to find patterns, just to have fun.<p>I even invented my own calendar, using the 88 day revolution of Mercury around the Sun as the year.<p>When I look at the Voynich Manuscript, all I see is the product of a fertile imagination that went a lot farther than my early teenage attempts at building a coherent world for myself.<p>I believe that these unconvincing attempts at finding meaning elsewhere -or degrading the object by calling it a hoax- are distracting us from the real beauty of this work of love and imagination.
The combination of the Voynich Manuscript's history of translation claims, taken together with the origin of this work (<a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/educationnews/3326436/Is-this-the-worst-university-in-Britain.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/educationnews/3326436/I...</a>), leads me to view this with at least something of an air of caution.
There is a skeptoid episode about the Voynich manuscript: <a href="http://skeptoid.com/episodes/4252" rel="nofollow">http://skeptoid.com/episodes/4252</a><p><i>"A famous analysis done in the 1970's by US Navy cryptographer Prescott Currier found that the Voynich manuscript is written in two distinct languages. He used the term languages, but also cautioned that they're also consistent with different subject matter, different encryption schemes, or possibly just different dialects. He called them Voynich-A and Voynich-B. Interestingly, Voynich-A and Voynich-B are in two different handwritings, though both use the same alphabet and script. Every page of the book is written entirely in either A or B. The Biology and Star sections of the book are written in Voynich-B; the others are written in Voynich-A. The exception is the first and largest section, Botanical, which contains some of each. But they're not simply interspersed. The way the book is bound uses bifolios, which are groups of pages folded together, which are then stacked on top of one another to be bound. Each bifolio in the Voynich manuscript is written entirely in one language or the other."</i>
Here's a PDF for anyone who wants to take a stab :-)<p><a href="http://brbl-dl.library.yale.edu/pdfgen/exportPDF.php?bibid=2002046&solrid=3519597" rel="nofollow">http://brbl-dl.library.yale.edu/pdfgen/exportPDF.php?bibid=2...</a>
Well, he's trying to recognize the plants and work out backwards from their known names, but there's a lot of assumptions and glossing over involved in this approach.<p>1) A figure hints at a sunflower, but the idea is refuted based on the supposed location and date of this manuscript (sunflower is native from the American continent).<p>2) Another figure was recognized as "coriander", that looks nothing like it, but they went with it anyway because the transcript was possible.<p>It looks like a botanist is more likely to figure out this manuscript than a linguist. The other theory that this manuscript is about plants from the american continent [1] is less flawed in my opinion. It could also explain why it's in an totally unfamiliar script, as it could be a pre-Spanish language, or an attempt from a foreign to codify it.<p>[1] <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7199751" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7199751</a>
I still seriously consider the xkcd interpretation to be the most likely one.<p><a href="https://xkcd.com/593/" rel="nofollow">https://xkcd.com/593/</a><p>Human nature doesn't change.
This is pretty cool, and if it is not a hoax then this is one of the only documents that remains a mystery in the age of us cracking codes, not just ones like the Zimmermann telegram and the Venona project, but even the Vigenère cipher which was eventually broken and deciphered.<p>So this could be like navajo code talkers ... an organic language that is hard to decipher because it comes from a culture so unconnected to anything, that it developed its own symbolism. This is an intersection of cryptography and history.
> <i>Voynich Manuscript partially decoded, text is not a hoax, scholar finds</i><p>As the author of this work states it himself, this is a "proposed partial decoding" and it is "tentative and provisional".<p>But anyway, the methodology is interesting and the video is worth watching. Although I'd be surprised all his speculations are correct, it seems to be the way to go.
This news led me to finally have a look at the manuscript,
there are some very curious details in the text.<p>First you should get the PDF copy from <a href="http://brbl-dl.library.yale.edu/pdfgen/exportPDF.php?bibid=2002046&solrid=3519597" rel="nofollow">http://brbl-dl.library.yale.edu/pdfgen/exportPDF.php?bibid=2...</a><p>The page numbering used below is taken from the Yale PDF.<p>* On page 49v in the left margin, you can clearly read "1 2 3 4 5", suggesting again to me that the writer had previous knowledge of other languages. The same page has more arabic number series in the left margin of the page, "0 2 9" repeats, and "8 9" occurs (read top-down). I may be confused by the apperance of the symbols. However the "1 2 3 4 5" sequence is a extremely unlikely coincidence.<p>* These numbers in the left margin can be seen on several other pages, such as 54v. Again, i may be confused by the appearance of the symbols. However the more i look at it, it does look like a code.<p>* On 57v, we can see what appears to be an alphabet sequence in the circles. The sequence is mirrored on the other part of the same circle in the second circle counted from the outside.<p>* Page 66r again has a left-column top-down list of symbols, what looks like a encryption key of sorts.<p>Many clues in the document makes me believe it is unlikely to orginate from america, such as crossbowmen, castles and bath houses.<p>I published a longer write up on my blog, at <a href="http://martinlindhe.blogspot.se/2014/02/the-other-day-news-broke-about-stephen.html" rel="nofollow">http://martinlindhe.blogspot.se/2014/02/the-other-day-news-b...</a>
The video offers very interesting view on how he approaches the problem and proceeds to solve the problem. From scientific point of view it just seems like guesswork, but as video goes further it's clear he has a real methodology to it. I was also very impressed how he all the time seemed very objective and used words like "probably", "could" and "possibly" to communicate that his findings still need further review.
I wish I knew more about linguistics to understand his this work further.<p>Though it seems a bit odd to host his work on his own personal site, rather than one hosted by his institution.
Why can't people just realise humour is not unique to one's own time period and culture.<p>Jumped the shark here -<p>"He also speculates that the reason this work is written in a language never seen before was that it was made by a small group of people who belonged to a culture that didn’t have a written form."