Voynich Manuscript

[Stephen Mann]

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/sc...-a8180951.html

Computer decryption has determined that the manuscript's base language is Hebrew, even if initial translations don't make sense.

Steve

[johndallman]

Well, maybe. Let's see how much further they get.

[Stormcrow]

Now if this could be applied to the Codex Seraphinianus, I'd be happy.

[Evil Roy Slade]

Incidentally, it is not difficult to view the Voynich Manuscript in person. Anyone can go to the Beinecke in New Haven and ask to see it, and the librarians will bring it out for you. There is no need to be a scholar or archivist, just curious.

[Flyndaran]

It's been "decoded" so often over the literal centuries that I'm not holding my breath about this one time being the absolute true answer.
Look how many times Mayan and Egyptian Hieroglyphics were deciphered before they really were.
I almost expect the Phaistos disc to be read before the manuscript.

And anyone using Google translate in a real research paper automatically triggers my skepticism.

[WaterAndWindSpirit]

The mystery of the Voynich Manuscript has been solved a long time ago.

https://xkcd.com/593/

/tongue in cheek.

[The Colonel]

Wonder if they've allowed for "one language recorded in another" - so someone using Hebrew characters to record a language that isn't Hebrew rendered phonetically...

[WaterAndWindSpirit]

Originally Posted by The Colonel

Wonder if they've allowed for "one language recorded in another" - so someone using Hebrew characters to record a language that isn't Hebrew rendered phonetically...

You mean the way we can use western letters to transcribe Japanese kanji so that a western person can know how to pronounce the opening song of their favorite anime even if they don't speak Japanese so they can sing along the opening?

[The Colonel]

Originally Posted by WaterAndWindSpirit

You mean the way we can use western letters to transcribe Japanese kanji so that a western person can know how to pronounce the opening song of their favorite anime even if they don't speak Japanese so they can sing along the opening?

That's precisely the sort of thing I was thinking of ... anyone identifying Roman characters and then trying to translate for a language of European origin would run into the buffers quite quickly...

[The Colonel]

Originally Posted by Ransom

If I understand correctly it is the opposite problem - the characters used in the manuscript are undeciphered, but this computer analysis suggests that the distribution of words matches best with a hebrew dictionary.

That would seem to make it a substitution code ... which I understood were quite easy to crack once you know roughly what's encoded...