The Voynich Ninja

I am working on a more detailed response to your conception of Chinese and what it has to do with the identification you have made and I have run aground on this post:

(03-07-2026, 06:53 PM)Jorge_Stolfi Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.But let me try one last time to clarify what seems to be a major source of your confusion.  

A character like Z or 水 on a piece of paper has physical existence, and its identification as the "Z" character or the "水" character is essentially an objective fact.  Its meaning, in contrast, does not have physical existence: it exists only in the minds of people, and can be different for each person, and change with time, context, etc.  

Thus the claim that "the meaning of a Chinese character is a word" is not just wrong, but nonsensical: because there is no such thing as "the" meaning of the character 水.  

Back in 300 BCE, that character may have meant a word to the "Divine Farmer", in his spoken language.  But, by the time of the "dictation", that language had been lost for more than a thousand years, and no one knew what that word could have been.  Not even people who spoke languages that descended from it.   

And yet 水 continued to have meaningS to this day, not only to speakers of all Sinitic languages but also to speakers of Japanese, and to scholars reading old Korean and Vietnamese books.  Maybe to some of those people the meaning of 水 is a word -- but it will be a different word to different people, and none of those words is "THE" meaning of  水.  But to other people the meaning of 水 is not a word but the concept of water; and it so happens that, for most people who know that character, it indeed means the concept of water -- either directly, or indirectly through a word that means water to them.

So what would 水 have meant to a hypothetical Cantonese-speaking Dictator in 1400?  If to him 水 meant a word, it must have been the Cantonese syllable, that, in spoken Cantonese, evokes the concept of "water"  (Today it would be seoi2, but of course it would be something else by then.)  And water is what, in that scenario, the Author would have thought of when he heard that spoken syllable.  Or years later, when he read the phonetic transcription of that syllable in his notes.

Maybe the Dictator knew also the reading of 水 in Old (1400 CE)  Mandarin, and/or in some conventional "Classical" spoken language.  But, in that case, for him the meaning of 水 would not be one of those words, but the concept of water.  

But it does not matter.  The existence of those other readings, and whether the Dictator knew them or not, would have been entirely irrelevant to the "dictation scenario" or its likelihood.  When the Dictator saw 水 on the book, he would still have said the CANTONESE syllable for water.

Sorry for the long quote, but I wanted to be clear about the full scope of my question here: What do you mean by "meaning"? Outside the context of our larger disagreement I would understand it to be a claim about semantics; that is, there is no fixed semantic meaning for 水 and that varies between languages.

In light of your other remarks, and even the 7th paragraph of the quote, that does not seem to be the case. For instance:

(27-06-2026, 03:51 AM)Jorge_Stolfi Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.But he meaning of each character is exactly the same for both Mandarin and Cantonese speakers.

(26-06-2026, 04:12 PM)Jorge_Stolfi Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.But that is not true for the Chinese script -- because it is not phonetic!  In Chinese writing, each symbol (or pair of symbols) represents directly a concept.  Each symbol also represents a sound; but it represents a different sound for the speakers of different languages, while the concept is essentially the same for all Sinitic languages (and even, to some extent, for some non-Sinitic ones). 

(26-06-2026, 04:12 PM)Jorge_Stolfi Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.In the case of the Chinese script, in contrast, learning the mappings from glyphs to sounds and from glyphs to concepts requires memorizing another table with 50'000 entries or so. That learning normally takes on the order of 10 years at school.  (In theory one would have to learn only one of the two mappings, but in practice details like homophones and synonyms mean that the two tables must be learned together.)  Again, while the mapping from glyphs to sounds is different for each language, the mapping from glyphs to concepts is very much the same for all Sinitic languages.

(Please note I have added a 0 to 50'000 as I believe that was your meaning and you have used that figure elsewhere in the post, but you may have intended 5,000 and I would be interested to know if that was your intent.)

(26-06-2026, 08:13 PM)Jorge_Stolfi Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Each Sinitic language has settled on a different mapping of hanzi to spoken words (syllables).  But the carving of the "idea space" into lexical chunks associated with the hanzi has become practically the same for all Sinitic languages.  That is what makes written Chinese an effective means of communication between speakers of different Sinitic languages; and this use is what has stabilized that "mental geography" against the natural tendency of languages to diverge over time.  

In light of this consistency, am inclined to interpret "meaning" as something more akin to "phonetic realization" than a difference in semantics, but I wanted to give you the chance to clarify what distinctions you're trying to draw

Quote:conlangyalesbaby Wrote:[url=https://www.voynich.ninja/post-87888.html#pid87888][/url]I believe if the MS-408 were Chinese or an Asian dialect than the glyphs would have had numerous representations.

What do you mean?


I thought Asian languages maintained thousands of symbols so one would think a thousand voynich glyphs.

(16-07-2026, 05:42 PM)rikforto Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.In light of this consistency, am inclined to interpret "meaning" as something more akin to "phonetic realization" than a difference in semantics, but I wanted to give you the chance to clarify what distinctions you're trying to draw.

I don't know if I can help, since you quoted four or five times I explained it and concluded the exact opposite of what I said.

The meaning of a symbol, a hanzi, a string of written letters, a diagram etc. is whatever the person who looks at it thinks it mean. The meaning of a spoken word, alarm, clap, whistle, etc is whatever the person who hears it thinks it mean. 

In either case, the meaning lives only in the mind of that person, and therefore may be completely different for different persons.  Thus there is no such thing as THE meaning of something.  Including a given hanzi. Including a given Mandarin or Cantonese syllable. 

We can infer what something means to someone else by analyzing their reactions when they see or hear that something.  Like, watching which way the guests of a hotel in Germany turn when they rush out after a fire alarm and see the sign "NOT AUSGANG  ▶" at the end of the hallway.

By that method we can tell that, in fact, the meaning of the syllable that can be represented in IPA as [fa˥] is mostly the same for all native Mandarin speakers, and mostly the same for all Cantonese speakers; but those are two very different meanings -- one is a general notion of sending out and expanding, the other is the general idea of flower or blossom.  

And by that method we can also tell that the meaning of the hanzi 水 is mostly the same for any Chinese or Taiwanese native, namely "things, actions, and qualities that have to do with the substance that chemists denote by H2O, mainly in its liquid phase".  And that is roughly the meaning of that hanzi also for Japanese natives, and for many people in Southeast Asia, even if their native language and script are not at all related to the Chinese ones.

And by that method we can also deduce that (according to my earnest lalamo) that meaning of 水 is mostly the same as the meaning of the spoken syllable [ʂwəi̯˨˩˦] (IPA; pinyin shuǐ) to Mandarin speakers, or of the spoken syllable [sɵy̯˧˥] (IPA; jyutping seoi2) to Cantonese speakers.  Except that [sɵy̯˧˥] may have additional alternative meanings to a Cantonese speaker when he hears it in a poem or recitation of a literary work; while that allegedly is not the case for the Mandarin speaker.

And we do not know what one would should have said to the Divine Farmer to get him to think of H2O, nor what he would say when asked to read 水 aloud.  In bot cases the answer would probably have been a single syllable too; but AFAIK no one really knows what that syllable was, or whether it had a tone.  We do not even know whether the modern Mandarin and/or Cantonese readings evolved from it, or whether all three readings evolved from some other language.

It may be that some Mandarin speakers (especially monolingual ones), when they see the hanzi 水,they will first think of the spoken syllable [ʂwəi̯˨˩˦], and then that syllable gets them to think of H2O etc.  This claim may seem more plausible to those who believe that we think by juggling words in out brain, rather than non-verbal concepts.  I personally think that this view (and its more extreme form, the Whorfian Hypothesis) is bullshit.  But, anyway, that claim should matter only to neurologists and psychologists; because the observable reaction of people to seeing 水 will be the same, whether they think of H2O directly or via the spoken word.

Quote:

(26-06-2026, 04:12 PM)Jorge_Stolfi Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.In the case of the Chinese script, in contrast, learning the mappings from glyphs to sounds and from glyphs to concepts requires memorizing another table with 50'000 entries or so.

(Please note I have added a 0 to 50'000 as I believe that was your meaning and you have used that figure elsewhere in the post, but you may have intended 5,000 and I would be interested to know if that was your intent.)

There are two different things one must learn: the hanzi and the lexicon. 

To be literate in any Chinese language one must learn a certain number of hanzi, their pronunciation, and their general meaning.  The sources I have seen put that minimum number somewhere between 2500 to 5000.

But, in order to use a language -- Chinese or not -- one must also learn a large enough fraction of its lexicon -- the terms (words or phrases) that refer to specific concepts.  

Thus, in English, the word "writer" is associated to a certain general concept, the word "type" is associated to another, and the word "block" to another.  But the compound "typewriter" is associated to a fourth specific concept: which is included in the general concepts of "type" and "writer",  but cannot be deduced from them.  That makes "typewriter" a separate item of the English lexicon.  And the same goes for the phrase "writer's block": it refers to a concept that is contained in the general concepts of "writer" and "block", but cannot be deduced from them. Thus "writer's block" is a fifth entry of the lexicon.  And all these five entries must be learned before one can understand the respective phraes. 

In contrast, the concept evoked by the phrase "writer's nephew" can be deduced from the general concepts associated with "writer" and "nephew".  So "writer's nephew" is not generally considered a separate entry in the English lexicon.

A good dictionary for any language must ideally list every entry of its lexicon, describing its meaning and specifying both the written signs and the spoken sounds that should evoke it in the mind of a native speaker who has learned it.  It should have entries for "typewriter" and "writer's block", in addition to "type", "writer" and "block".  But not even the best dictionaries will list every phrase that has a special meaning to some speakers of the language.  Thus no entry  for "writer's nephew".  (Even though that may be a lexicon entry for the patrons of some hypothetical pub in Auckand where it has acquired the meaning of "someone who sips beer through a straw", after a legendary event that happened there in 1927; or to the members of You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.'s Fan Club.) 

Likewise, the hanzi pair 電話 and the syllable pair diàn huà are a distinct entry in the Mandarin lexicon, whose meaning is that tool that scammers use to trick fools into revealing their bank password.  That meaning cannot be deduced from the general meaning of 電 diàn (nowadays mostly things having to do with electricity; notwithstanding that when the character was coined, 2000 years ago, it meant a lightning bolt; and that it was created by combining two characters created 3000 years ago, when turtles could still feel the future in their bones, which respectively meant to the shamans the concept of lightning bolt and the concept of spheroidal globules of H2O in liquid form moving vertically through the atmosphere in the general direction of the local gravity field, from clouds to the ground, which may seem redundant but was included anyway in 電 merely as a mnemonic for its proper pronunciation.) and the general meaning of 話 (mostly things having something to do with speech).  Thus people learning Mandarin or any Chinese language must learn the meaning of 電話, even after learning the meanings of 電 and 話 and their pronunciations in that language.

So, how many entries of the Mandarin lexicon must one learn to be reasonably fluent in the language -- say, as much as the average native speaker at the end of high school?  AFAIK this number is surprisingly similar for all languages, Chinese or not: several tens of thousands.  But of course the number of lexicon entries that one knows will vary a lot from person to person, will generally increase with age, and will be higher for people who read more books or are exposed to richer language.  

(You can estimate the size of your lexicon by asking someone else to open a good dictionary on one page out of every (say) 20 pages, read aloud the first word or phrase defined on that page, and note down whether you can give a more or less correct definition for it, from memory.  With that score and the total counts of pages and entries in the dictionary you can estimate how many of the words and phrases defined therein you know.)

So that was the "50'000" that I guessed in my posts. 

All the best, --stolfi

(16-07-2026, 10:48 PM)Jorge_Stolfi Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.And by that method we can also tell that the meaning of the hanzi 水 is mostly the same for any Chinese or Taiwanese native, namely "things, actions, and qualities that have to do with the substance that chemists denote by H2O, mainly in its liquid phase".  And that is roughly the meaning of that hanzi also for Japanese natives, and for many people in Southeast Asia, even if their native language and script are not at all related to the Chinese ones.

Two questions here:

1. Is it your contention that they are the same "things, actions, and qualities" in all languages?
   
2. Is it your contention that there is no way to recover the words intended by the writer?
   

(16-07-2026, 10:17 PM)conlangyalesbaby Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I thought Asian languages maintained thousands of symbols

The author did not rewrite the hieroglyphs; he recorded their sounds.

(17-07-2026, 03:23 AM)rikforto Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

(16-07-2026, 10:48 PM)Jorge_Stolfi Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.And by that method we can also tell that the meaning of the hanzi 水 is mostly the same for any Chinese or Taiwanese native, namely "things, actions, and qualities that have to do with the substance that chemists denote by H2O, mainly in its liquid phase".  And that is roughly the meaning of that hanzi also for Japanese natives, and for many people in Southeast Asia, even if their native language and script are not at all related to the Chinese ones.

Two questions here: 1. Is it your contention that they are the same "things, actions, and qualities" in all languages?

Among speakers of all Chinese ("Sinitic") languages, mostly yes.  Although there can be sgnificant differences from person to person, more than from language to language.  Like, someone may know that, in some contexts, 水 may refer to ice or steam or sweat or lymph; whereas another person may know only uses of 水 where it refers to liquid water.

For speakers of other languages who may know that Hanzi, like Japanese, its general meaning may include some things would not be included for a Chinese speaker.

Quote:Is it your contention that there is no way to recover the words intended by the writer?

  

There is no way to know what the languages spoken in 300 BCE sounded like.  

We do not know that even for Latin or Greek, which used "phonetic" scripts since well before that.   Linguists believe that Latin "C" before "E" or "I" originally had the same "K" sound as before other vowels, but it changed to a "ch" or "s" sound by the time Vulgar Latin split into the Romance languages.  But they can't tell when that change happened, or whether it happened at different times in different parts of the Empire.

There are clues in the "phonetic" elements of compound Chinese characters, and in poetry manuals that list characters whose readings are said to rhyme; but those clues are only relative -- for example, they tell us that, when and where the hanzi for "star" was changed from 晶 to 星, it sounded somewhat like 生. But we do not know for sure what either sounded like, there and then.  Linguists have guesses, but they are far from certain.  

In fact, linguists know (from comments by writers of the time) that the languages of China were as diverse and mutually unintelligible as those of today, even though the same writing script was used by many of them.

All the best, --stolfi

Alright, a few more because I'm really not trying to strawman you but I am genuinely struggling to understand why you are making some of the distinctions you are making, more than the what of them.

(17-07-2026, 11:24 AM)Jorge_Stolfi Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Among speakers of all Chinese ("Sinitic") languages, mostly yes.  Although there can be sgnificant differences from person to person, more than from language to language.  Like, someone may know that, in some contexts, 水 may refer to ice or steam or sweat or lymph; whereas another person may know only uses of 水 where it refers to liquid water.

So is the idea here that the differences are idiolectic, that is unique to different speakers? And if yes, what is the shared "mental geography" and "idea space" you referred to above that is apparently is the same for all speakers?

(17-07-2026, 11:24 AM)Jorge_Stolfi Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

Quote:Is it your contention that there is no way to recover the words intended by the writer?

  

There is no way to know what the languages spoken in 300 BCE sounded like.  

We do not know that even for Latin or Greek, which used "phonetic" scripts since well before that.   Linguists believe that Latin "C" before "E" or "I" originally had the same "K" sound as before other vowels, but it changed to a "ch" or "s" sound by the time Vulgar Latin split into the Romance languages.  But they can't tell when that change happened, or whether it happened at different times in different parts of the Empire.

There are clues in the "phonetic" elements of compound Chinese characters, and in poetry manuals that list characters whose readings are said to rhyme; but those clues are only relative -- for example, they tell us that, when and where the hanzi for "star" was changed from 晶 to 星, it sounded somewhat like 生. But we do not know for sure what either sounded like, there and then.  Linguists have guesses, but they are far from certain.  

In fact, linguists know (from comments by writers of the time) that the languages of China were as diverse and mutually unintelligible as those of today, even though the same writing script was used by many of them.

Can I infer from this that your statements about the differences between different varieties of Chinese is entirely based on phonological differences?

(17-07-2026, 11:51 AM)rikforto Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Can I infer from this that your statements about the differences between different varieties of Chinese is entirely based on phonological differences?

No, you can't.  Why do you have to "infer" things that I didn't write?

Quote:So is the idea here that the differences are idiolectic, that is unique to different speakers? And if yes, what is the shared "mental geography" and "idea space" you referred to above that is apparently is the same for all speakers?

You seem to expect all things to be binary.  Either the meaning of a Hanzi is always a word, or it is never a word. Either the meaning of 水 is exactly the same for all Mandarin speakers, or is completely different for each speaker.  Either the meaning is the same for Mandarin and Cantonese speakers, or it is completely different. Either all Chinese languages have the same grammar, or they have completely different grammars.  Either one reads the hanzi as they were pronounced in 300 BCE, or one cannot read the classics at all.  Either the Author would have understood every word and compound that the Dictator said, or he would have understood absolutely nothing.  Either there is not a single error in the VMS, or the whole text is just random gibberish.   A solution to the Voynich puzzle either immediately provides the correct decoding of every word in the book, or it is a wrong solution...

Can you handle the idea that every statement is always only partly true or partly false?  That two languages may share 90% or 99.9% of their grammars, rather than either 0% or 100%? 

But now *I* must ask, why are we having this discussion?  It is obvious now that you don't care any more for the Chinese Origin Theory, for the Dictation Scenario, or or for the claim that the SPS is the SBJ. In fact it seems you no longer care about the Voynich manuscript at all.  The discussion has now derailed to the socioliguistic  situation in China and its political correctness and implications. 

Well, sorry, but this is the wrong thread for that topic, and I am the wrong person for you to debate it. Again, I don't even speak any Asian language except a tiny tiny bit of Japanese, and I have never been to China.  I think I know some things about linguistics and the psychology of language, but strictly as an "interested amateur".  So maybe it would be more productive for you to take the discussion to another forum and with more qualified people?

But let me ad just one more bit of advice that linguist and Voynichophile Jacques Guy posted to the mailing list some 30 years ago:

Quote:When I use my finger to point to the Moon, no one mistakes the finger for the Moon. Why is it then, that when I use a word to point to an idea, people often mistake the word for the idea?

Some say that Buddha himself said so.  Worth meditating on it.

All the best, --stolfi

Personally, I don't think that a Chinese theory is likely, my main reason for this is that Chinese is a Sino-Tibetan language, and You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. to You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. contain the names of some of the months of the year in some sort of Romance language, along with You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. containing text in a corrupted form of the Latin alphabet, either way, You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. is definitely written in an Indo-European language, not a Sino-Tibetan, or to be more specific, a Sinitic one.

I think this is the main thing I want to actually quote and answer:

(17-07-2026, 03:50 PM)Jorge_Stolfi Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.But now *I* must ask, why are we having this discussion?  It is obvious now that you don't care any more for the Chinese Origin Theory, for the Dictation Scenario, or or for the claim that the SPS is the SBJ. In fact it seems you no longer care about the Voynich manuscript at all.  The discussion has now derailed to the socioliguistic  situation in China and its political correctness and implications. 

(16-07-2026, 05:42 PM)rikforto Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I am working on a more detailed response to your conception of Chinese and what it has to do with the identification you have made

In fairness, I do not understand why we are having this conversation either, that is why I am asking you about that post. I am not being difficult or rhetorical when I say that I do not understand why you are asking me to justify the relevance of something you wrote. Presumably, based on how it is structured, it has something to do with my contention that Chinese people write rather than drawing pictures. It never concludes by saying that Chinese people do read, or why picture drawing should count as reading. So I am just as lost as you, and I was hoping you might provide an explanation for why you wrote the things you did and how they relate to both the semantic notion of "meaning" and the other quotes I pulled. I have not received a defintion of "meaning" that works for both positions, nor have you explained why you are putting forth both radical skepticism about what anyone understands, but also telling me that all speakers from a group of unrelated languages have the same mental geography.

Obviously I think these are in logical opposition or I would not have set them up as a contradiction you need to account for. That said, I am perfectly comfortable with the resolution being a synthesis position or some other third way. But if you want me to understand how these ideas coexist, you must write down an accounting of that coexistence. I quoted you because I read your posts, so writing the same thing slightly reworded with lots of bold emphasis will not resolve the contradiction I have identified. If I could do it on my own, I would not have asked about the seemingly contradictory posts, I would just put that resolution into the write-up.

This sort of thing happened with my question about recovering the words from writing. I asked if the words can be recovered. You treated me to a long digression about differences in phonology. Formally, you never concluded if the words could be recovered or not. I inferred---wrongly---that this was because what was being recovered was different only up to phonology. You then did not take the opportunity after seeing that I drew the wrong conclusion to tell me what the right conclusion to draw from that analysis would be.

I am at a bit of a juncture here. I have asked for clarification about how this fits together now several times. You know, or have had ample opportunity to ask, what I'm trying to get you to explain. You are resorting to strawmanning my other positions and painting me as unreasonable rather than write a conclusion to your points. I will be happy to characterize our interaction that way in my write-up---that is much easier than figuring out how this abstruse point about personal meaning is relevant. That said, if you think it is, and you would like to be the one to set explicit definitions and draw conclusions about your points, please do so