This entry is about the Ratyvfu project, an admittedly useless endavour began by the author of this entry, feel free to call him a lunatic geek. :)

Simple Encryption and ROT13

A simple way to make a secret message is to use a substitution cipher. For each letter of your alphabet you specify a unique value to replace it with when encoding the message. Then you use the same map in reverse for decoding. Often the values in the code are the same as the alphabet, but you have probably encountered 'numbers for letters' puzzles which are substitution where the encrypted message uses a different alphabet.

One of the simplest substitution ciphers is the Caesar Cipher, which simply shifts the letters of the alphabet a certain number of places. If, for example, you use a shift of three, you replace every A with a D, every B with an E and so on until you replace X with A, Y with B and Z with C. What's good with the Caesar Cipher is that you can specify a new code as just a number, what's bad is that this makes it ridiculously easy to break.

A funny thing about using the Caesar Cipher with the regular 26 letter alphabet and a shift of 13, is that trying to encrypt the secret message again brings back the original. With a shift of three you have to either shift back three, or forward 23, and so it goes with all other options, except thirteen. This is particularly convenient with computers, since you then only need one simple function to both decrypt and encrypt.

So when is this useful? It's quick and requires only a small program, but so what? It's certainly no good for keeping secrets. Well, maybe it is, but only in two cases:

• It keeps secrets from someone who doesn't know it's a code. Like a program looking for email-addresses on the internet. A person will see that it's gibberish and decode it, a program will just see that it's not an email-address.
• It keeps secrets from someone who doesn't want to know. Like when you just have to reveil the plot in your post about the new James Bond movie, you can write: "I just loved it, especially the bit where he" and then encrypt the spoiler.

For these two reasons ROT13 as it is called is a part of almost all programs for reading Internet (Usenet) news.

Ratyvfu

If you encode the word English the aforementioned way, you get the 'word' Ratyvfu. The goal of the Ratyvfu-project is to create a language using the regular 26-letter alphabet of the English language, that is as close to correct English as possible when ROT-13d (rotted), while being somewhat pronounceable in the non rotted form.

This poses some challenges, as an enourmous amount of english words are totally useless when rotted, while other words are more or less pronounceable. E.g. one, three, five, seven = bar, guerr, svir, frira, pronouncable, while two, four, six, eight = gjb, sbhe, fvk, rvtug, quite a mouthfull.
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This problem can be solved in a couple of ways, the best is to find suitable replacement words, that don't rot badly. The benefit is that it looks good when transformed to 'English', depending on how good a replacement can be found. On the other hand it looks stupid if the replacement doesn't mean the exact same as the original word, and it can be really hard to find one that does.

Example: The number two turns into gjb, definitely unpronounceable. No good alternatives exist and words like pair, couple, duo, twain and twins transform into cnve, pbhcyr, qhb, gjnva and gjvaf. Equaly unpronouncable.

We could go on looking for a better synonym that is readable, use a word that's not precisely a synonym but might ewoke the right idea, or we can deliberately misspell the English. For two then we could use binary (ovanel) or tvo (gib). Substituting V's for W's look like a good idea since I is more likely to create a readable word than J.

Using synonyms is prefered before stooping to misspell, but this depends on the available synonyms, and the effect of the misspelling. For two the change to tvo looks hairy in English, but is still a good choice since there are no good synomyms available, and since the result (gib) looks so good.

The third possible option, after using synonyms and misspellings, is to redefine pronounciation. The letter 'v' for example can be used as a vowel, much like old roman inscriptions, or the letter 'j' could be pronounced as an 'i' when it's impossible to use the normal pronounciation. The jury is still out on this option though. It all depends on whether the focus should be on readability in 'English' or in 'Ratyvfu'.

A fledgeling Ratyvfu 'grammar' can be found at A863831.