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MichelleL11 · 03-05-2022, 10:34 PM

(03-05-2022, 09:45 PM)nablator wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.All this does not make grammar absent, on the contrary: they tried to write as well as they could.

Adding in my experience in attempting to translate a multipart medical recipe from cipher to Latin to English. Please note I am working with an academic who has excellent Latin skills and I have lost count of the number of times he has said in response to my challenges to his possible readings based on my baby-steps Latin knowledge of correct forms and documented abbreviations : "Recipe writers in this time period really didn't care too much about following proper Latin grammar or entirely consistent abbreviations."

I have to keep telling myself, something as basic as consistent spelling was entirely optional. It is a distinct culture clash across the time span and decidedly no fun if the cipher was complex. But on the other hand, I don't let it slide so much as to provide "word salad."

I mean, we ultimately got the meaning of the text by allowing lots of freedom in verb, noun, and abbreviation forms but without (1) the context of "we know this is a recipe so this is likely either an ingredient, a step in the preparation, or an indication" and (2) the use of a "relatively consistent" 1:1 substitution cipher, and (3) the almost certainty the plaintext would be in Latin (which it was), it would have been significantly harder.

And dare I say it, maybe even impossible? But, that being said, I haven't given up hope on figuring out the pattern(s) of Voynichese yet. Smile