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Oh look, it's a dain.
- Oh look, it's a dain.
-
RE: Oh look, it's a dain.
MarcoP > 25-04-2023, 09:28 PM
(25-04-2023, 05:50 PM)nablator Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
(25-04-2023, 04:24 PM)R. Sale Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.But, seriously, dain is a word, apparently a variant, known to anyone of the VMs era familiar with French, but has the translation been discussed previously? Perhaps I've missed it.
There is a lot to discuss because, as we all know, EVA is THE TRUTH and one match with an alternate spelling of a random word just has to mean something, right?
I agree. If one spends enough time reading late medieval manuscripts, it becomes clear that in those scripts almost all letters are problematic, if you don't know the underlying language.
It seems clear that Voynichese took its inspiration from symbols and abbreviations used in cursive manuscripts. In my opinion, numerals played an important role, with EVA:odly showing considerable similarity with You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.. Certainly, in early XV Century manuscripts, the shape of EVA:d is most frequently seen as the digit 8, rather than the Latin characters 'd' or 's'.
The possibility that in-sequences are minims is often discussed. The problem of parsing minims was so great that in medieval times scribes introduced a small dot to distinguish i from part of m, n, u etc. Without the dot, 'dain' in the French manuscript could just as well be read as 'dam' or 'dani'. Courier's transliteration renders dain as 8AN; a reminder of the many possible choices faced when mapping Voynichese to a different alphabet.
If one wanted to push the parallel with cursive manuscripts, EVA:in is of course close to the frequent Latin ending 'um', rendered with a macron-ligature. But a macron was used to mark all kinds of abbreviations, so that the Latin preposition You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. can be written in a way that is comparable with EVA:ain. -
RE: Oh look, it's a dain.
Helmut Winkler > 26-04-2023, 08:09 AM
I suppose it is no use but for the record
1) dain is d' aui with an abbr. stroke and means dicit auicenna and in my opinion a key to the whole thing
2) the 'unknown writing system' IS a late medieval script, I would say a Gothic cursive or a Bastarda consisting more or less of abbreviations -
RE: Oh look, it's a dain.
Koen G > 26-04-2023, 09:31 AM
(26-04-2023, 08:09 AM)Helmut Winkler Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.1) dain is d' aui with an abbr. stroke and means dicit auicenna and in my opinion a key to the whole thing
The problem with what you propose, or with R.Sale's wild deer for that matter, is that it's not expandable to the rest of the writing system. It is easy to pick out a few convincing readings, but Voynichese has such un-languagelike structure that any effort to apply the chosen system to the whole thing is doomed to fail.
Let's say you are right and EVA:dain means "according to Avicenna", then this implies that paraphrases of Avicenna, i.e. actual linguistic information, is contained in the Voynichese following or preceding EVA:dain. But the structure of Voynichese words does not allow them to be read like that. It's the same with every system that tries to read Voynichese as relatively plainly written text: as soon as you choose a meaning for part of it, you will be unable to make sense of the rest.
For example, if we assume that EVA:a represents an actual "a", one immediately obvious problem is that in most languages, "a" can occur at the beginning and ending of a word. In both English and Latin, one of the most frequent positions of "a" is as the first letter of the word, and in Latin, word-final "a" is frequent as well. In EVA, word-final and word-initial "a" is a rarity. So then one has to come up with a solution for this, which would probably involve assuming EVA:y as a positional variant of EVA:a. This in turn leads to problems elsewhere, like the fact that you are reducing your already limited phoneme inventory.
What Marco said about numerals is also important, and I think the proportion of number-like glyphs in Voynichese is higher than what we would expect if Latin glyphs were chosen without a bias towards numerals. -
RE: Oh look, it's a dain.
Helmut Winkler > 26-04-2023, 10:25 AM
Koen,
you don't understand the system, no offence meant. Voynich words for example are a conatenation of abreviations, no wonder you find them unlanguagelike, another problem is that there is no reason to believe that every group of glyphs always means the same thing, there are several numerals and I think they have a certain meaning, I could go on but I have not got the time at present. One of the main mistakes of he Voynich mainstream is the believe that we have a consistent encrypted text -
RE: Oh look, it's a dain.
Koen G > 26-04-2023, 12:13 PM
(26-04-2023, 10:25 AM)Helmut Winkler Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.you don't understand the system, no offence meant
Oh, I definitely don't understand the system. But I think if you were to expand the system you propose to a page of Voynichese text, that you would soon have to admit that it is untenable. But I hope I am mistaken and what you propose would actually work. I won't be able to assess that without some more concrete examples though. -
RE: Oh look, it's a dain.
R. Sale > 26-04-2023, 07:44 PM
I simply would like to express my surprise to find that 'dain' is a word that is actually a valid part of French vocabulary. Not sure how much it is still in use and if a VMs connection was previously made. Is the word 'dain' as an equivalent of 'fallow deer', an actual part of the VMs narrative? That seems unlikely. Does it have some other meaning or purpose? That is not yet known.
Helmut's proposal is interesting and as Koen suggests, what is needed are more examples. Abbreviations occur frequently in liturgical calendars. In Latin and highly formulaic I presume, though I don't know them, they are probably familiar to interested investigators.
What needs to be done to advance the investigation of abbreviations? -
RE: Oh look, it's a dain.
Aga Tentakulus > 26-04-2023, 08:50 PM
I don't know what to make of it.
So "dain" in Alemannic is the meaning of "your".
In MHD High German "dein" Alemannic Southern German "dain".
High Alemannic "diin" and Bavarian only "dai".
Everything is German, but in dialect.
The naming by EVA is something completely different. -
RE: Oh look, it's a dain.
Common_Man > 28-04-2023, 03:24 PM
(26-04-2023, 12:13 PM)Koen G Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.But I think if you were to expand the system you propose to a page of Voynichese text, that you would soon have to admit that it is untenable.
Whenever this problem comes to my mind, I start thinking in terms of a "language" that is as-is in the labels, and "ciphered" (like with a grill/cylinder) in the main text. Not a new idea in any way, and I want to work more on this and show some proof of concept, but I cant quite think it through..