Since the only recognisable language in the Voynich is Occitan, why aren’t we supposing that the rest of the manuscript is too?

A sort of Old Occitan, to which plain text occitan was added later (in the 15thC) to translate the month-names?

Rene

http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vivaro-alpin

Probably all the info you’d want!

That’s very true – and in fact plenty of the mid-Quattrocento Sforza ledger ciphers have a cipher letter for the Latin “9″. Even Tristano Sforza’s 1450 cipher (see The Curse p.176) has one, which I’d guess he was probably using prior to 1450.

But I’m actually suggesting something I haven’t obviously seen in other contemporary ciphers: that perhaps the Voynich encipherer used symbols to encipher the “macron” (arched bar).

Cheers, ….Nick Pelling….

As I replied to Emily just now, looking for direct correlations with letter-shapes in existing alphabets is a very “D’Imperio” thing to do: the way I currently see it, the “aiiv” and “aiir” family (when combined with their wildly irregular instance counts) is a bit of a giveaway that (a) there’s a covertext at play, and (b) any similarities between shapes in the covertext and existing alphabets is not only deliberate but also probably misleading.

As far as the idea of Voynichese having Occitan plaintext (whether abbreviated or not) goes… I’m rather more convinced (as you’ll see later in the book) that it is Italian, contracted broadly in the common scribal style well-documented circa 1450. The whole issue of Occitan and the various marginalia is something that desperately requires a better kind of scan to resolve, sadly.

Glad to hear you’re enjoying The Curse – I thought you would!

Cheers, ….Nick Pelling….

I am really enjoying the book, by the way,

Christopher Hagedorn.

Reading your book, I’d say that having the VMS turn out to be written in anything but Latin or a variant of Occitan would surprise me. But how does this sound: Occitan with Latin steganographic contractions? It doesn’t sound far-fetched for a person with knowledge of both languages, and must certainly fall into what a Quattrocento encipherer would be able to come up with.

Lastly, of course I cannot possibly be the first person who thought of this. Do you know where I can find any more on this theory? (Perhaps later in The Curse I’m at page 90-something)

Christopher Hagedorn.

My basic observation is that Herbal-A “plants” look like collages of plant-based bits, while Herbal-B “plants” look like there’s something geometric and strange going on. If you link that with all the other Quattrocento books of secrets and machine notebooks, you may (as I do) end up with the whole Machinery Complex inference: but I fully appreciate that that remains a step too far for many people.

As you say, I think the smoothness of the writing is by design, not by accident.

As for their sources… possibly, but I’m not entirely sure if that helps us (it’s a bit of a “D’Imperio” exercise, if you know what I mean). Understanding if Steve Ekwall is right about the mnemonic aspect of the gallows might well prove more useful!

Cheers, ….Nick Pelling….