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CS 105 – Practice with Linear B Decipherment Our Textbook CS 105 – Practice with Linear B decipherment Our textbook mentions how Alice Kober, Michael Ventris and John Chadwick figured out the identities of all of the symbols that comprise Linear B, which is the archaic Greek alphabet used during the Mycenaean period. Let’s follow in their steps by seeing how English might be constructed the same way. One difficulty we will have is that English is not Greek. In English, we have many more ways of creating syllables. The Linear B script considers each syllable to consist of a consonant followed by a vowel. This assumption works perfectly for some like “banana.” In this handout we will keep things simple and only consider words that closely conform to a classical Linear B format. Let’s suppose that we know that the English language uses 95 symbols. There are 19 consonant sounds and 5 vowel sounds. (Note: 19 times 5 is 95.) For convenience, we will refer to these symbols by number, from 1 to 95. The relationship between consonants and vowels is given by the following table: Vowel 1 Vowel 2 Vowel 3 Vowel 4 Vowel 5 Cons 1 24 41 12 69 76 Cons 2 22 47 81 92 86 Cons 3 58 95 30 61 17 Cons 4 16 84 7 56 89 Cons 5 65 42 88 52 18 Cons 6 75 6 39 72 62 Cons 7 66 23 59 11 53 Cons 8 38 46 21 28 31 Cons 9 78 34 27 85 77 Cons 10 8 54 33 2 93 Cons 11 9 19 3 45 32 Cons 12 51 26 50 67 91 Cons 13 71 60 13 14 94 Cons 14 83 40 25 80 10 Cons 15 90 49 1 87 68 Cons 16 79 4 35 74 82 Cons 17 29 15 73 20 44 Cons 18 70 37 64 43 57 Cons 19 48 63 55 36 5 The 19 consonants are these, though not necessarily in this order: B, D, F, G, H, J, K, L, M, N, P, R, S, T, V, W, Y, CH, SH The 5 vowels are A, E, I, O and U. To relieve us from the tedium of having to find a number inside the table, here is a reverse lookup table that tells you which consonant and vowel numbers correspond to a symbol number 1-95: # C V # C V # C V # C V # C V 1 15 3 21 8 3 41 1 2 61 3 4 81 2 3 2 10 4 22 2 1 42 5 2 62 6 5 82 16 5 3 11 3 23 7 2 43 18 4 63 19 2 83 14 1 4 16 2 24 1 1 44 17 5 64 18 3 84 4 2 5 19 5 25 14 3 45 11 4 65 5 1 85 9 4 6 6 2 26 12 2 46 8 2 66 7 1 86 2 5 7 4 3 27 9 3 47 2 2 67 12 4 87 15 4 8 10 1 28 8 4 48 19 1 68 15 5 88 5 3 9 11 1 29 17 1 49 15 2 69 1 4 89 4 5 10 14 5 30 3 3 50 12 3 70 18 1 90 15 1 11 7 4 31 8 5 51 12 1 71 13 1 91 12 5 12 1 3 32 11 5 52 5 4 72 6 4 92 2 4 13 13 3 33 10 3 53 7 5 73 17 3 93 10 5 14 13 4 34 9 2 54 10 2 74 16 4 94 13 5 15 17 2 35 16 3 55 19 3 75 6 1 95 3 2 16 4 1 36 19 4 56 4 4 76 1 5 17 3 5 37 18 2 57 18 5 77 9 5 18 5 5 38 8 1 58 3 1 78 9 1 19 11 2 39 6 3 59 7 3 79 16 1 20 17 4 40 14 2 60 13 2 80 14 4 We also need some clues about how some actual words would be spelled in this manner. We are given the following clues. Each clue gives you information about consonants and vowels. Word Comprises these What consonants can What vowels can you symbols you infer? infer? Shadow 36-88 Cookie 40-83 dabbawala 52-85-14-67 Honolulu 35-64-26-26 Your partner may have additional clues to share with you! When you think you have identified all of the consonants and vowels, try to decode this message: 71 12 54 80-51-81-70-87 54 45-91 21-51-85-91. 42 71 51-31 54-18? 71 29 17-70 87-70-61-91-44. .
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