A key to understand the VMS

[Sam G]

I think the point about similar words having similar frequencies would be at least partially true of Mandarin syllables as well (it is also only partially true of Voynichese).  Off the top of my head, xian/jian/qian are all very common in Mandarin but xiong/jiong/qiong are relatively rare.  This is true despite the fact that there is no relationship between these syllables in terms of meaning.