![]() How does one go about deciphering a script and text like the one in the Voynich manuscript? One can use the number of signs (letters) in the text, the length of the different words, the combination of the signs and recurrence of patterns as clues. By comparison, Linear B, a syllabic script which predates the Greek alphabet by several centuries, was deciphered mainly on the basis of short inscriptions on clay tablets, not a book-length manuscript. As the manuscript contains 288 pages, it is certainly not the lack of material that has hindered the interpretation of the text. Who wrote the manuscript? In which language? What is it about? What is the meaning or reference of these strange drawings of dragons, bathing naked ladies and maps of known and unknown places? Why are there no corrections in the manuscript? Naked lady in Voynich manuscript: What is she doing? And with what?Īs a linguist, one is of course curious about the text, and one wants to know whether it is written in a known or unknown language. But other than that, only mysteries remain. The text and illustrations could be newer, but could be from the same time as well. The Voynich manuscript is written on parchment that is dated to the first half of the 15 thcentury. The first known owner of the manuscript, Voynich My friend, Eric, became a car mechanic and I became a linguist. We have not managed to decipher the Voynich manuscript. In this contribution I will argue that the manuscript is in fact not interesting at all for language nerds.Īs a teenager, a friend and I challenged each other in writing short texts in secret scripts, and we became better and better in deciphering them, while we also improved our skills in making our codes more complicated. Linguists have tried as well, but all in vain. ![]() Cryptographers-specialists in secret writing-have broken their brains on it. People have claimed it could be written in a form of Hebrew, in a Romance language, in an earlier form of Romani, an Indic language, or even in a language from another planet. Nobody has been able to translate the manuscript there have been many proposals, but all have been rejected. It has been publicly available for a century, and now it is also available online. The manuscript is more than 500 years old. It is written in a totally unknown script in an unidentified language. No one has yet been able to decipher it, and many have tried. This manuscript is one of the big enigmas of medieval history and, for that matter, linguistics. Last year I was contacted by someone who claimed to have deciphered the Voynich manuscript.
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