Ever since Prescott Currier first pointed out that letters and words in Voynich Manuscript lines appear to prefer (or to avoid) certain line-positions within lines, pages, and paragraphs, Voynich researchers have been on the lookout for more of these unusual LAAFU (“Line As A Functional Unit”) features. This is simply because (a) they’re a bit weird, (b) they pretty much disprove any Voynich theory that claims that Voynichese is a simple language, and (c) they might possibly be hinting at what’s going on inside the ‘engine’.
So here’s a new LAAFU feature that Claude managed to dig up for me, that I certainly didn’t know before.
The Word 2 sh-initial boost
I have recently been restricting my analyses to Quire 20, because I believe that Currier B ‘evolved’ between the various sections, and I don’t want to accidentally miss features by searching too widely. (I also posted about Neal Keys.) And what emerged from all this is that the second word of a line is unusually often sh-initial.
How strong is this preference? On Tiltman lines (the top line of a paragraph) in Q20, the second word is about 2.14x as likely to be an sh-initial word (21.2% vs 9.9%) than in mid-line: on non-Tiltman lines in Q20, the second word is about 2.46x as likely to be an sh-initial word (16.7% vs 6.8%) than in mid-line. [All values from the Takahashi transcription.]
Also, sh-initial words trail off as you get closer to the line-end. Once you’ve got past the Word 2 spike, the probability of a word being sh-initial stays quite flat (~8%), before sharply dropping off in the last two (~3%).
Finally, sh-non-initial words are generally flat (2-3%) with a slight peak at Word 3 (3.4%), but trail slowly off to ~1% at line-end. Which makes sh-initial words appear to have a noticeably different positional distribution from sh-non-initial words.
As with other LAAFU features, this feels quite unlike the way you’d expect any natural language to work. But what is going on?
Contextual Factors
We might sensibly look at nearby text behaviours, to see if any of them are correlated with this. There are many weak correlations, but none explains or predicts the spike. For example:
- It isn’t driven by the first word. After words such as daiin and dar, the second word’s sh-initial share is high at the start of a line (0.44) but low after the same words in mid-line (0.11).
- It isn’t a page or leaf setting. Pages differ a lot in how much sh they have, but the Word 2 boost sits on top of that at about the same size everywhere.
- Nothing carries over from the end of the previous line.
- It occurs broadly the same in sections that seem to be recipes as in sections that seem to be non-recipes.
- There are no specialised sh-initial words that appear at Word 2: it’s the same vocabulary, just more often sh-initial.
Claude also points out:
- At Word 2, the ch- rate is roughly normal, so sh- is being added rather than ch- being suppressed. The openings that become rarer at Word 2 are gallows-initial and qo-initial words (and a-, ol/or- and o-initial words become commoner).
- Something similar appears in Q13, though it fades less sharply after Word 2. In Currier A pages, Word 2 favours ch- and sh- alike, rather than sh- over ch-.
So this remains a mysterious feature.
Line-Initial Correlations
So I pushed Claude to look for any correlations between this Word 2 sh-initial spike and the first glyph of each line. Overall, the first glyph made no significant difference. The figures for individual glyphs bounce around, and even rank differently in the two transcriptions. (These are odds ratios on sh-‘s share of ch-/sh-initial words, so they aren’t directly comparable with the 2.14x and 2.46x figures above.)
The one exception was lines starting o- or qo-, where the spike seems to disappear (1.13x, against 2.46x for all other lines). Because I only spotted that grouping after seeing the numbers, I asked Claude to test it in Q13. The same thing happens there: no boost on o-/qo-initial lines (1.15x), and a normal one on other lines (2.32x).
What Is Going On Here?
It might be that an o-initial or qo-initial line-initial word is simply an ordinary mid-line word (okaiin, qokeedy, ol…), whereas most other Q20 lines open with one of the distinctive set of line-initial glyphs.
If this is right, the Word 2 spike may be triggered by (or may be a component part of) some kind of artificial or scribal line-start construction mechanism. That would seem to be a new angle on LAAFU, though that’s still not much use in moving us forward. But it’s interesting, right?
-Manuscript 408 (Voynich). Reconstruction of the full text-
EXPERT OPINION Gemini AI. The Reconstruction and Conceptual Interpretation of the Voynich Manuscript in Ye. Chornyi’s Work “Charm Book 1.0: Of Faith and Will”
Executive Summary & Methodological Overview prepared by Yevhen Chornyi with analytical and translation assistance from Google Gemini AI (2026)
1. Subject of Expert Analysis and Source Base
The material submitted for analysis represents a textual and methodological framework reconstructing the famous 15th-century paleographic rarity — Manuscript 408 (Yale University Library), widely known as the “Voynich Manuscript”. The monograph by Yevhen Chornyi (“Charm Book 1.0: Of Faith and Will” , Medobory-2006 Publishing House, Kamianets-Podilskyi, 2014) offers a comprehensive reading of the original manuscript text.
The object of study builds upon the radiocarbon dating of the parchment (1404–1438 AD) and expands the scientific decipherment hypothesis proposed by John Stojko (1978). Stojko’s hypothesis posits an Old Ukrainian linguistic basis for the original text, recorded via a specialized consonantal (vowel-less) writing system.
2. Methodological Basis of Decipherment
At the core of Ye. Chornyi’s research is a strict structural alignment between the graphemes of the manuscript and the consonant sounds (letters) of the Old Ukrainian language. Key methodological principles include:
1. Writing Consonantism: The manuscript text encodes only consonant phonemes, while vowels are supplied by the reader/reconstructor based on contextual, morphological, and syntactic cohesion.
2. Graphic-Semantic Block (Meaning-Block): Word combinations or graphic clusters separated by spaces (/) in the manuscript are treated as indivisible units of the consonantal skeleton.
3. Strict Consonant Integrity: The author adheres to an imperative rule — in reconstructed words, it is strictly forbidden to omit or arbitrarily insert consonants that are absent from the original grapheme chain.
3. The Phenomenon of Multi-Dimensionality (Polysemy) and the “Charm Book 1.0” Concept
The fundamental innovation of Ye. Chornyi’s work lies in the theoretical substantiation of textual “multi-dimensionality” (polyphony). Because a consonantal framework permits the insertion of different vowels, a single written line can unfold into multiple parallel, yet semantically connected, textual strata:
· Worldview Stratum: Philosophical and theological reflections on Being, Faith, Will, and sacred cosmological categories (Or, DazhBoh, Iriy, Yav, Nav).
· Practical & Receptive Stratum: Phytotherapeutic, agricultural, and domestic instructions.
The author demonstrates that this writing structure reflects not a flaw in encryption, but rather a non-linear culture of thinking among ancient scribes, wherein words possess a multi-dimensional spatial-semantic geometry (“Charm Book 1.0”).
4. Textual Structure and Sample Analysis (Folio 1r / 1v)
The study thoroughly processes 204 surviving pages of the manuscript (out of an estimated original 232). A line-by-line reading reconstruction has been performed. Specifically, for the opening lines of folios 1r and 1v, the author illustrates the reconstruction variability:
· Example reading of the start of the first line on folio 1r: “This description I give: all that was, selects and prepares God’s under will and under faith all…”
· Example reading of the start of the first line on folio 1v: “This I grant all, hoping, as God wills / Here now all I gather and in faith write down…”
Textually, sacred theonyms and concepts are highlighted: “Or” (Father-God, the primordial name of the Supreme Realm), “DazhBohe”, “Iriy”, “Ra”, “Ha”.
5. Critical Evaluation and Source Limitations
Evaluating the scientific rigor of the work reveals both notable strengths and objective limitations:
Strengths:
· Systematic Rigor: A consistent decipherment method is rigorously applied across the entire volume of the manuscript.
· Phonetic Integrity: Rejection of arbitrary distortions of the graphemic consonant composition.
· Comparative Documentation: Creation of comparative tables and explicit mapping of ambiguous segments in appendices.
Limitations & Considerations:
· Vocalization Subjectivity: The insertion of missing vowels inherently depends on the reconstructor’s linguistic intuition and stylistic interpretation.
· Need for Paleographic & Graphological Audit: Specific graphemes and complex ligatures require further independent paleographic examination using high-resolution originals from Yale University.
· Absence of Formal Academic Consensus: The study represents a comprehensive research hypothesis that requires broader academic discussion among Slavic historical linguists and paleographers.
6. Overall Concluding Remarks
Ye. Chornyi’s work ” Charm Book 1.0: Of Faith and Will” constitutes a notable and unique contribution to the historiography of Voynich Manuscript research. The author’s paradigm expands traditional cryptanalytic perspectives by conceptualizing the manuscript as a multi-layered monument of early Ukrainian linguistic and philosophical thought. The reconstruction holds significant value for comparative linguistics, culturology, and the history of writing systems.
“Executive Summary & Methodological Overview prepared by Ye. Chornyi with analytical and translation assistance from Google Gemini AI (July 2026).”
Scholarly reviews of ” Charm Book 1.0: Of Faith and Will” in “Language and History: Collection of Scholarly Papers” (Kyiv, 2014, Vol. 310, Vol. 317), see the link: https://or-ch-blog.blogspot.com/2014/09/10.html
The extensive monograph «Char Knyha 1.0: Pro viru i voliu» (” Charm Book 1.0: Of Faith and Will”): Medobory-2006 Publishing House, Ukraine, Kamianets-Podilskyi, 2014. see the link: https://or-ch-blog.blogspot.com/2020/09/manuscript-408-voynich.html
I seem to recall that Brig.Tiltman, Capt. Currier and Mary D’Imperio all eventually threw in the towel for precisely the same reasons … No way forward for any likely progress with Currier languages A & B. In that case put it in the too hard basket, leaving all the many trials and tribulations behind for Nick Pelling or one of them Nija types to sort the sh- from the LAAFU.
Google AI Gemini, makes it quite clear in the above post that “The object of study builds upon exacting radiocarbon dating of the parchment (1404-1438)…etc.” Bearing in mind that Greg Hodges’ as yet unpublished rusults weren’t released until 2009; then how is that all relevant dates for Ye Chorny’s works as such seem to pre date the definitive spectro anal results themselves, or have I missed key points of this submission.