1 Way to Happily Read the Voynich Manuscript First Page?

A very interesting question about the how to read the Voynich manuscript remains unsolved. No one seems to actually be able to read the Voynich manuscript. Digital versions have allowed study of the manuscript all around the world. And this seems to open up a case for unprecedented research. In fact, some people claim that AI can help solve the mystery. But how? or, to be more specific, how to read the Voynich Manuscript first page?

Does natural language processing come close to getting a grip of the gibberish in the manuscript? Indeed, many transliteration schemes are available. But they only serve as a digitizing aid. They, in no way, help pronouncing the content of the pages of the Voynich MS.

More on the Voynich Manuscript…

I myself have tried to read the language in use in the manuscript by pronouncing it. Then I found trouble pronouncing the numerous ‘I’ in a row that the FSG has put in place. Suffice to remind you that it was to create a digital version of the manuscript. Not only that, symbols like ‘2’ (two) ended up pronounced in my head as ‘T’. I also would sometimes pronounce ‘6’ (six) as ‘S’ or ‘Z’ with no stable way of reading it.

A digital version, yay…

Next in line to consider, without spending too much time on the digitization I should say, rather than a transliteration, I want to argue that there is no way to guess what symbols are consonants and what other symbols are vowels. That is unless we get back to the script itself and arrange it in a fine way to identify the consonants and vowels.

I want to point out that the symbol ‘I’ in FSG should not be regarded as a vowel unless we find a way to prove it, or rather find a model where we could make sense out of the consecutive italic strokes that are sometimes grouped into the symbol, like ‘L’, ‘N’ and ‘M’, or sometimes written separately like ‘IE’, ‘IIE’ and ‘IIIE’ for things that seem to be one symbol.

A systematic approach

First and foremost, we should thank both the writer of the Voynich manuscript for his non cursive writing style which makes it possible to not have to second guess the symbols he wanted to write. Next, my thanks go to the First Study Group for their digitization which is quite qualitative, accurate, and having interesting features, even though there is no way you could pronounce the Voynich MS with the help of the FSG digitization.

The problem that is raised by the FSG system though, is that the consecutive italic strokes make up a chain of the ‘I’ symbol or sometimes not, so it is not an accurate way of appropriating the script suggested by the writer.

The strange italic ‘I’ stroke

Then this raises a rather revelatory question: What are the italic ‘I’ strokes counting, if counting anything? Well, the moment you ask yourself this question, equipped with knowledge of many writing systems, you realize that ‘just maybe’ the italic ‘I’ strokes are a system to count the nth syllable associated with the consonant that appears right after the italic ‘I’ symbols.

That is a lot to chew at once, but demonstration will be given when appropriate through a video on YouTube that should come up soon, so make sure you subscribe to the channel ‘Arichichi’ on YouTube that was originally aimed at teaching Japanese but which will be specifically dedicated to the Voynich MS as it seems to be my personal hobby right now.

Soon, I will offer audio coverage of the manuscript through a vocalization that uses the Japanese syllabic systems simplified to cover the limited 35-ish list of really common symbols known up to now in the FSG system.

A direct dive into the matter

Let us not make round discussions. Our aim is to answer our original question, how to read the Voynich Manuscript first page? The answer is quite easy, we approach the script in a scientific fashion to build a system that would allow us to voice out the words.

Two considerations are to be held at once, we need to take into account the shapes used in the script, identify the consonant and vowel system, and see if it makes sense given the plethora of languages that are existent worldwide. Our aim is not to point out which language the Voynich manuscript is written in. Rather, we want to validate our built system by checking whether there is any single language or group of languages that rely on a similar system.

A neat mechanism for transliteration

The burden’s on me when it comes to come up with such a system, and I want you to trust me on the fact that there is a bijection between my system and the FSG system, where we drop the three rarest symbols that only appear in diagrams and are not part of the inline corpus. Let’s dive right into it. To simplify the reading, I want you to refer to the Table 1 under the History Section of the page linked here.

Namely, the symbol section and the column FSG, where the webmaster shows the digitization of every symbol based on the FSG approach. Then, let us consider that the italic ‘I’ stroke serves as an enumerating system that allows to cycle through the vowels of the language. A quick glance at the table allows you to intuitively think that there are at most three vowels. Take a piece of paper and write down the Voynichese associated with the following symbols… ‘G’, ‘E’, ‘IE’, ‘IIE’, ‘IIIE’…

Notice something? can’t you see that the ‘E’ symbol is a derivative of the ‘G’ symbol by barring the natural ‘G’ slope with an italic ‘I’ symbol?

The next few symbols

I want you to accustom yourself to this row of symbols for a few seconds. Can’t you see that only ‘G’, and italic ‘I’ strokes are necessary to describe the row? Sure enough, you want to ask, what kind of thing will I build of this. I want you to know in advance that there is seven as much rows of this sort. But don’t take into account the tall symbols which would require a specific treatment for now.

So, all in all, picture that our first row, ‘G’, ‘E’, ‘IE’, ‘IIE’, ‘IIIE’ is a series of one consonant. To this consonant, I attach a cycle of five vowels. Let us chose ‘M’ for this row, and call no italic ‘I’ stroke in the ‘G’ symbol, the ‘A’ vowel. We obtain the sound ‘MA’. One italic ‘I’ stroke leading to ‘E’, call it ‘ME’. One more would lead to ‘MI’. Another will lead to ‘MO’. And lastly to ‘MU’.

That then suggests that we consistently cycle through the vowels in the following order, for each consonant associated group. Namely, the list of increasing italic ‘I’ strokes chains us through this list of vowels ‘A’, ‘E’, ‘I’, ‘O’, ‘U’. The first group associated with the ‘M’ consonant is the group ‘G’, ‘E’, ‘IE’, ‘IIE’, ‘IIIE’ (FSG). So we obtain the sounds ‘ma’, ‘me’, ‘mi’, ‘mo’, ‘mu’. Want more on how to read the Voynich manuscript first page? Please continue reading.

Let’s mine more symbols in our way to read the Voynich Manuscript first page

Next, select the ‘H’ consonant and attribute it to the ‘2’ FSG symbol and its derivatives. We obtain the group ‘2’, ‘R’, ‘IR’, ‘IIR’, ‘IIIR’ (FSG), or rather ‘ha’, ‘he’, ‘hi’, ‘ho’, ‘hu’.

Next, attribute the ‘S’ consonant to the ‘8’ FSG symbol. We group it with ‘K’, ‘IK’, ‘IIK’, ‘IIIK’. We then identify our ‘sa’, ‘se’, ‘si’, ‘so’, ‘su’ sounds.

Next, take the ‘R’ consonant and attribute it the ‘O’ FSG symbol. We group it with ‘L’, ‘N’, ‘M’, ‘IIIL’. We then identify our ‘ra’, ‘re’, ‘ri’, ‘ro’, ‘ru’ sounds.

The tricky part comes here. We should stretch our mind a bit. This is to identify the transformation sequence that appears in the association with the ‘N’ consonant sound. Lay out the FSG symbols ‘C’, ‘A’, ‘6’, ‘T’, ‘S’. Realize then that there is a writing style where they seem to morph, one into the other. Thus you obtain our ‘na’, ‘ne’, ‘ni’, ‘no’, ‘nu’ row.

A hazardous set

From the main symbol corpus remain the nine symbols. They constitute a transformation sequence from the the FSG symbol ‘4’. Its first row is the ‘T’ consonant row. And we will do the FSG ‘Z’ transform by changing the ‘T’ sound to ‘D’. We should consider the following sequence… ‘4’, ‘D’/’DZ’, ‘H’/’HZ’, ‘P’/’PZ’, ‘F’/’FZ’ and associate to these the following sequence… ‘ta’, ‘te’/’de’, ‘ti’/’di’, ‘to’/’do’, ‘tu’/’du’. With this we would have completed all main characters of the FSG grid, which amount to 34 symbols. There is no apparent logic in the four remaining symbols. So I don’t want to deal with them as of yet.

Now the fun part comes below where I want to offer a transliteration of the Voynich Manuscript first page, folio 1r. My approach found resistance with two ‘I’ symbols that seem to precede a character of which the transformation is not based on adding italic ‘I’ strokes, so I really don’t know what I should make out of that occurrence. I don’t want to be treacherous to the FSG rendering given in the following link, so I won’t just delete the ‘I’. I will replace it with the following ‘?’ symbol. So here goes the results… Try to accustom yourself to the reading and see if you feel the language now.

How to read the Voynich Manuscript first page? (folio 1r) – with vowels

Did you read the Voynich Manuscript first page?

I want to be sincere, the choice of the vowel order for the italic ‘I’ stroke sequence is completely mine. The choice of the consonant for each discussed row based on the script is completely mine. I started by making sure that the last line, a foreword page signature, would be legible in some foreign language. It just so happened that it was Italian. ‘sanonero’ would then stand for Italian ‘sano nero’ which means ‘healthy black’.

The following is a rendition, Arabic style, that is, with no vowels, of the same text. Enjoy!

How to read the Voynich Manuscript first page? (folio 1r) – without vowels

Until next time…

Next up, I will branch into two sequences. The first will discuss what we can find of the language in the first page. The second will provide you with the transliteration of the following pages based on my system.

Make sure to visite my home page to see what I was up to back then… Just so you get a chance to have reasons to thank me for having changed my mind.