Another Possible Voynich Breakthrough

bmearns writes "Over the past few weeks we've been hearing a lot about a possible breakthrough in decoding the infamous Voynich manuscript, made by a team of botanists who suggested that the plants depicted in the manuscript may have been from the New World and the mysterious writing could be a form of an Aztec language. But the latest development comes from linguist Stephen Bax, of Bedfordshire University, who believes he has identified some proper names (including of the constellation 'Taurus') in the manuscript and is using these as a crib to begin deciphering the rest of the text, which he believes comes from the near east or Asia."

full/original poublicaiton:

[bammmmm]

http://cms.herbalgram.org/herb... [herbalgram.org]

Re:finally

[Baloroth]

Atlantis was solved over 2000 years ago: Plato made the story up. He says as much. It was never intended to be taken as an actual real place, it was just a story told by a fictional character in one of his dialogs (the Timaeus, to be specific) to make a point.

Re:Schizophrenia

[infogulch]

Schizophrenia is not orthogonal to intelligence.

Surely you meant "schizophrenia is orthogonal to intelligence", otherwise you're saying that all schizophrenics are geniuses.

Re:Simpler answer: It was a con

[plasticsquirrel]

You may want to read the article before jumping to conclusions. The authors have identified many of the plants and animals as those of the New World, including specific breeds of cattle introduced from Spain, animals like the Ocelot, and others. Their study is very thorough, and it includes study of texts they have found with similar scripts and languages. Their conclusion is that it came from 16th century Spain, and was written in an Aztec language by natives who had been educated by the Spanish (and their evidence for this is quite convincing). From the conclusion of the research:

We note that the style of the drawings in the Voynich Ms. is similar to 16th century codices from Mexico (e.g., Codex Cruz-Badianus). With this prompt, we have identified a total of 37 of the 303 plants illustrated in the Voynich Ms. (roughly 12.5% of the total), the six principal animals, and the single illustrated mineral. The primary geographical distribution of these materials, identified so far, is from Texas, west to California, south to Nicaragua, pointing to a botanic garden in central Mexico, quite possibly Huaztepec (Morelos). A search of surviving codices and manuscripts from Nueva España in the 16th century, reveals the calligraphy of the Voynich Ms. to be similar to the Codex Osuna (1563-1566, Mexico City). Loan-words for the plant and animal names have been identified from Classical Nahuatl, Spanish, Taino, and Mixtec. The main text, however, seems to be in an extinct dialect of Nahuatl from central Mexico, possibly Morelos or Puebla.

Re:Simpler answer: It was a con

[mbone]

You may want to read the article before jumping to conclusions. The authors have identified many of the plants and animals as those of the New World, including specific breeds of cattle introduced from Spain, animals like the Ocelot, and others. Their study is very thorough, and it includes study of texts they have found with similar scripts and languages. Their conclusion is that it came from 16th century Spain, and was written in an Aztec language by natives who had been educated by the Spanish (and their evidence for this is quite convincing).

Read this [ciphermysteries.com] for a contrary (and, I think, better informed) view.

Re:No progress at all...

[Anonymous Coward]

You do realise that in the languages families this is puported to be from, that's normal patterning of a aggulnative language; heavy on prefixes, and repetition (both word and morpheme level) This is compounded by the fact many of the languages are few on morphemes.

"fachys.ykal.ar.ataiin.Shol.Shory.cThres.y,kor.Sholdysory.cKhar.or,y.kair.chtaiin.Shar.are.cThar.cThar,dansyaiir.Sheky.or.ykaiin.Shod.cThoary.cThes.daraiin.sa o'oiin.oteey.oteos,roloty" -- Beginning of First page of the voynich transcript using latin characters. -- Looks like a language to me.

I personally love http://my.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E1%80%A1%E1%80%9B%E1%80%B1%E1%80%AC%E1%80%84%E1%80%BA This example for a language that is nothing but repeated circles.

"A koi aku la lakou ia ia a hilahila oia, i mai la ia, E hoouna aku oukou. A hoouna aku la lakou i kanalima kanaka; a imi lakou ia ia i na la ekolu, aole i loaa. A hoi hou mai la lakou ia ia, (no ka mea, e noho ana no ia ma Ieriko,) i aku la ia ia lakou, Aole anei au i olelo aku ia oukou, Mai hele oukou?" (Old Testament)

"oka maeuhane e nana ana oe maloko oka abenana ma kahi mamao he hoailona laki ia no ka hoomahuahua ana aku i kona ma pomaikai.
ina he kanaka mahiai e holopono ana kana mau mea kanu ina he kanaka ma ka oihana e pii ana kana ma hana ina he kanaka ilihune mahuahua ana kana mau keiki a pelaaku." (Newspaper)

"Aymar aruxa arsuta aru, qillqata aruwa. Jichhurunakanxa waranqh waranqh aymaranakarakiw uraqpachan mirantatasipki, janiw Los Andes ukawjanakt utjki aymaranakaxa."

Or look at http://dv.wikipedia.org/wiki/%DE%89%DE%A6%DE%87%DE%A8_%DE%9E%DE%A6%DE%8A%DE%B0%DE%99%DE%A7 For an example of repeated glyphs over, and over again.

Or even inuktitut article for the eye: http://iu.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E1%90%83%E1%94%A8
Seeng repeated glyphs over and over, looks like complete gibberish, or variants that aren't significant, actually are. dot over the i or no? significant in Turkish. i, j, originally just a cursive swish to differentiate i at end of word from a trailing tail.

Re:No progress at all...

[Anonymous Coward]

But, taking the modern transcription of the text,
f2v.P.1;H> kooiin.cheo.pchor.otaiin.o.dain.chor-dair.shty-
f2v.P.2;H> kcho.kchy.sho.shol.qotcho.loeees.qoty-chor.daiin-
f2v.P.3;H> otchy.chor.lshy.chol.chody.chodain-chcthy.daiin-
f2v.P.4;H> sho.cholo.cheor.chodaiin=
f2v.P.5;H> kchor.shy.daiiin.chckhoy-s.shey.dor.chol.daiin-
f2v.P.6;H> dor.chol.chor.chol.keol.chy.chty-daiin.otchor.chan-
f2v.P.7;H> daiin.chotchey.qoteeey.chokeos-chees.chr.cheaiin-
f2v.P.8;H> chokoishe.chor.cheol.chol.dolody=

It does look like a natuar langague, with prefixed grammatical cases/subject marking;
heavy word and syllable Repitition (like vietnamese, or african languages)
And grammatical agreement created by infixes or outfixes (wrapping word with both pre- and postfix)

That and the fact there were more than 3 distinct consistant handwriting styles in there, means that at least three people could write this fluently with ink without thinking about the letter-shapes.