Reading Support

The author of the Voynich Manuscript (VM) was most likely a multilingual traveler who wrote this manuscript during his/her trip to Byzantium Istanbul (then known as Constantinople) and Europe (today's Italy, Greece, and the Balkans) before 1453. Evidence suggests that the author used some plant names and words in the phonetic form found in the Black Sea dialects of Turkish. Additionally, the author also used words recorded in the Marmara/Thrace and Istanbul region dialects of Turkish. Although these regions are close/adjacent to each other, we think the author's spoken Turkish could have been one of the dialects of these regions from 600 years ago. At the same time, the author may have used Turkish in the phonetic form spoken by a minority. We have not yet been able to precisely identify the specific minority group or regional dialect of Turkish spoken by the author in the current phase of our ongoing reading efforts. It is for this reason that we expect researchers and linguists to contribute to our study. Hopefully, in this way, these unknown details can be understood, and the texts can be quickly translated into modern languages. Additionally, if you are a botanist and know about plant naming in Old Turkish, you may have the chance to tell which plants the plant drawings in this manuscript belong to because multidisciplinary collective work will always progress faster than work done by a few people in their spare time.
We also want you to know that the author sometimes abbreviated some words while writing this book. The author also wrote some words by separating them into syllables. Moreover, as far as we understand from the deciphered sections, the author also combined some words that would normally be expected to be written separately, writing them as compound words. We can say that the author wrote this work using/creating around 340 writing signs/letters, including syllable characters. All these were deliberate measures taken by the author to make the reading difficult. This is likely because the author intended only a particular reader (or a few individuals) who knew the sound equivalents of this special alphabet to read the content of this work, while others could not read this book with this special form.
For all these reasons, researchers who want to contribute to these reading efforts should not expect to read conventional Old Turkish texts. Because these texts were written in a deliberately complicated/made more difficult manner. The development and use of this special alphabet are for the same reason.,
Although the main writing language in the work is Turkish, the author likely wrote some words (such as geographic toponyms, plant names, star names, etc.) in different languages of the geographical region of the time (probably in Greek, Italian/Latin languages areas from 600 years ago) within the Turkish sentence structure. Therefore, both those who know Old Turkish and those who do not can help in identifying the words in this work, searching for overlaps between drawings and words on the same pages, or reading the Old Turkish content of the texts. You can detail your reading suggestions by referring to the ATA alphabet transcription and by reading a few of our articles on this topic beforehand, and if you wish, you can help translate the entire work into contemporary languages by sharing the various words and sentences you match with us.
If you contribute to these research efforts, the process of fully translating the texts into today's languages can also be accelerated.
For your suggestions or possible additional questions, you can contact us through our contact page.
Thank you for reading.