Voynich was: Re: Unknown Language Identifier!

On Tue, 30 Jan 2001, Lu[ISO-8859-1] ís Henrique wrote:

> On Tue, 30 Jan 2001 11:20:14 -0600, Patrick Dunn <tb0pwd1@...>
> wrote:
>
> >This assumes the Voynich Ms is written in alphabet characters
>
> Which is probably not true. Last I read there seem to be some probability
> that the "words" are indeed syllables and that each letter takes two
> characters.
>
> >and is a natural language. Myself, I suspect a conlang.
>
> It could still be matched against Hildegard's Ignota Lingua, if we could
> convince the author or the identifier to include it in his database. (But,
> then, the prize is already going being divided by three...) What other
> conlangs were knonw at that time?
None, widely known, anyway.  But that doesn't mean it can't be a conlang
other than IL.  In fact, IL is almost unusuable as anything but a
noun-cipher.  Certainly we're not the first group of people to share the
hubris of believing we can create a language -- we're just the first group
of such people with internet access.

Aruably, Pepys wrote in a conlang: a mixture of Latin, English, Greek, and
all written in shorthand.  It doesn't seem unlikely that the Voynich Ms.
Author might not have done something similar.

But why?  If it is indeed an herbal, as the illustrations seem to
indicate, or even an alchemical text, why such amazing convolutions to
ensure secrecy?  Perhaps it is driven not so much by secrecy as by
aesthetic concerns.

I've been reading a lot of Don DiLillo lately: what kind of alchemy is
superior to that of language?  Talk about alchemy!  Meaning becomes
unmeaning, unmeaning becomes meaning, cipher becomes language, language
becomes nonsense.

It could be a frickin' phone book.  I'm still impressed.  ANd it is pretty
to look at.

--Pat

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