The Voynich Ninja
How Many Common, Unique Letters Do *You* Think There Are? - Printable Version

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How Many Common, Unique Letters Do *You* Think There Are? - rikforto - 21-02-2026

What it says on the tin!

Three things:

  1. I know you don't know. I don't know. None of us know. But if you had to put down one number, not a range, what would it be?
  2. The threshold for "common" is up to you.
  3. Unique means they aren't variants of each other. I think it's pretty common to take n to be a final form of i, and so that would be one letter, not two. Ligatures don't count as a new letter, either.

Feel invited to also expand your answer into a range, explain your cutoff, list your alphabet, and generally explain yourself. I'm curious about all that too!

(If you're wondering my motivations, I was working on something and I found myself asserting that most of us think there are fewer than a certain number of letters. I wondered if that impression was, you know, true?)

RE: How Many Common, Unique Letters Do *You* Think There Are? - oshfdk - 21-02-2026

(21-02-2026, 02:12 PM)rikforto Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
  1. I know you don't know. I don't know. None of us know. But if you had to put down one number, not a range, what would it be?

If I absolutely had to put one number, the number would be ~12 (10-14), if "common" means occurring in almost any long paragraph. Generally, I think EVA does a very good job separating meaningful differences from minor variations.

RE: How Many Common, Unique Letters Do *You* Think There Are? - Rafal - 21-02-2026

I marked here common signs from EVA alphabet:
   

I would totally ignore capital EVA letters as different things.

It gives 18 letters.
Then I could assume that these are variants of the same letter:
- i and n
- c, e, and h
- f and p

It gives 14 letters.

But this approach has limitations. You have groups of letters (ligatures???) like  cTh  which are probably single symbols

RE: How Many Common, Unique Letters Do *You* Think There Are? - nablator - 21-02-2026

None: glyphs are not letters. Calling them letters presupposes a simple substitution is possible.

RE: How Many Common, Unique Letters Do *You* Think There Are? - Rafal - 21-02-2026

Quote:None: glyphs are not letters. Calling them letters presupposes a simple substitution is possible.

[pedant mode]
Yes, not every writing system contains letters. Chinese signs aren't letters.
But if Voynichese glyphs are not letters then EVA shouldn't be called an alphabet  Wink

You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
An alphabet is a writing system that uses a standard set of symbols, called letters, to more or less represent particular sounds in a spoken language
[/pedant mode]

RE: How Many Common, Unique Letters Do *You* Think There Are? - rikforto - 21-02-2026

People will have to decide if digraphs, etc. count as letters for this question. Go with God, nymphs, the entirely uncontroversial beast on You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. that we all agree on the identity of, really whatever will lead you to a sensible answer

RE: How Many Common, Unique Letters Do *You* Think There Are? - RadioFM - 21-02-2026

I'm not sold on any one parsing, and I change my mind easily on the matter. Flip a folio and the text behaves somewhat differently than before, it's fraught with exceptions.
Anyway, just for the fun of it though:
i = n
ch = c'h
s is to e what r is to i
g is to e what m is to i
ai* variant of che* in some way
p f = t k

al ar ol or dy digraphs
ch ~ ee  ?
qo- ~ o-  ?
d ~ s in some way?

RE: How Many Common, Unique Letters Do *You* Think There Are? - Jorge_Stolfi - 21-02-2026

(21-02-2026, 02:12 PM)rikforto Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.What it says on the tin!But if you had to put down one number, not a range, what would it be?

The ones I consider proper glyphs are
  • a o y (the "circles")
  • d l r s (the "dealers")
  • q (or qo)
  • Ch Sh ee (the "benches")
  • k t  (the "kites")
  • CKh CTh (the "platform kites")
  • n in iin  (the "codas")
So that would be 18, if I still can count right.  However:
  • That ee is technically two glyphs, but I think it is better to consider it one glyph with two disconnected parts (like Latin lowercase "i") for other reasons.
  • Ditto for in and iin.
  • I think m is an abbreviation or calligraphic variant at end of words, not a distinct glyph.
  • I don't think that the position of the plume in Sh matters; so sh and Cs for me are just Sh.
  • I think Ih and other  glyphs with I in place of C are probably handwriting accidents.
  • Ditto for the "long platforms" CTHh CKHh; they are probably CThe CKhe with bogus ligature.
  • I believe that the "puffs" p and f and their platform versions CPh and CFh are fancy forms of the kites or combinations with kites, not distinct letters.
  • The other EVA characters like b g j u x v are too rare to count as letters.  Maybe some are letters, but excluding them should not make much difference.

HOWEVER, I believe that, like most languages that use the Latin alphabet, Voynichese uses digraphs to cover all sounds of the language. In particular, I suspect that benches (including ee), kites, and platform kites can take a single e suffix to form 7 additional "letters",  bringing the total to 25. (Like "l", "n", "c" in Portuguese can take an "h" suffix to form and "lh", "nh", "ch" which stand for three additional sounds.)  And the circles a o y may in fact be modifiers for the preceding or following letters. 

So I don't think that either 18 or 25 is a reliable estimate for the phonemes of Voynichese.

All the best, --stolfi

RE: How Many Common, Unique Letters Do *You* Think There Are? - rikforto - 21-02-2026

(21-02-2026, 08:40 PM)Jorge_Stolfi Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.HOWEVER, I believe that, like most languages that use the Latin alphabet, Voynichese uses digraphs to cover all sounds of the language.

I think this is likely to be true, but I want to point out that's pretty surprising! Usually digraphs arise when trying to fit an existing alphabet to a new language. They are an odd choice when you are trying to solve the problem of representing a language from first principals and can just create a new letter to spec. Maybe this tells us something about the internal history of Voynichese, maybe the scribe was simply imitating the scripts he was familiar with. But that we both find ourselves drawn to this explanation should come as a surprise.

RE: How Many Common, Unique Letters Do *You* Think There Are? - Jorge_Stolfi - 22-02-2026

(21-02-2026, 09:31 PM)rikforto Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I think this is likely to be true, but I want to point out that's pretty surprising! Usually digraphs arise when trying to fit an existing alphabet to a new language. They are an odd choice when you are trying to solve the problem of representing a language from first principals and can just create a new letter to spec. Maybe this tells us something about the internal history of Voynichese, maybe the scribe was simply imitating the scripts he was familiar with. But that we both find ourselves drawn to this explanation should come as a surprise.

Indeed, alphabets created from scratch usually have one glyph for each sound of the language.  

But there are exceptions.  In the syllabic alphabets for Japanese (hiragana and katakana), a diacritic ゛is used  to turn the unvoiced consonant of some syllables like ta, ka, sa into the corresponding voiced consonant, namely da, ga, za.  In other languages like Guaraní and Portuguese a vowel can be pronounced "plain" or "nasalized" (sort of like with an "n" pronounced at the same time), which in the official scripts is indicated by a tilde ~ diacritic.  

So perhaps the e suffix of Voynichese serves a similar function.

And if the Author's native script used digrams for certain soulds, he may have carried over the practice without thinking.  Like, if he was German, he may have chosen to write the German hard "ch" sound as a digraph, with the Voynichese glyph for the "k" sound and the glyph for the "h" sound.

Eventually we will find out...

All the best, --stolfi