Is the Voynich Manuscript encrypted (encoded, enciphered)? (April 2024)

[pjburkshire]

Is the Voynich Manuscript encrypted (encoded, enciphered)? (April 2024)

I think the Voynich Manuscript...

- is a constructed language.
- is encrypted and the base language is Latin.
- is encrypted and the base language is a non-Latin European language.
- is encrypted and the base language is a non-European language.
- is encrypted but I don't know the base language.
- is not encrypted but an unknown script of an unidentified natural language.
- is not a human language but written by mermaids/angels/extraterrestrials/etc.
- is something meaningful but other than the above options.
- is meaningless, all you people were duped by a hoax.
- Don't know / Not sure / No comment.

[pjburkshire]

Poll is set to close in 21 days; Saturday, April 27, 2024.

[Mark Knowles]

I have put "is encrypted and the base language is Latin" as that is what I think most likely. However this is my guess. Maybe I should have put "is encrypted but I don't know the base language" as that would probably be my position in practice.

[merrimacga]

I like the second to last option. ;-)

But I selected "is something meaningful but other than the above options". To be more exact, I currently think it is either encrypted or in an unknown script and in dialects of two or more contemporaneous natural languages and I wouldn't yet rule out Latin being one of those languages. There aren't many possibilities I am willing to rule out at this point except that I think the most complicated ones are the least likely. Assuming, of course, it isn't actually a hoax or a meaningless text, which I currently think is even less likely, given what it would take to produce either one by or before 1912 when Voynich acquired it.

[Koen G]

I'm the only one who doesn't know 

[Pepper]

The more I learn about the VMS, the less sure I am about anything. The only thing I'm completely satisfied with is that it's a genuine 15th century document and not a modern hoax.