A key to understand the VMS

[-JKP-]

Sam and all,
...

One matter that troubles me in reading analytical discussions of the written text that there seems to be so little allowance made for the disparity that exists between modern, standardised orthography and grammar and what we'd expect given conditions 'on the ground'.  If a non-native tried to copy a text in a foreign script, t or to record the sounds of another language, even if they developed a regular system and had a perfect ear, the stats would surely not be exactly parallel to what we get using modern transcriptions, orthography and grammars. As proof, one only need consider the way that Chinese or Indian or Islamic sources record names of western people and places - and the way Latins tried to do the same in the east.

The problem is not one of orthography.

The problem with the VMS text (in addition to the high level of repetition) is that it is positionally inflexible in a way that is uncharacteristic of natural languages.

I'm familiar with some of the Asian languages and I can read and write a small amount of Korean (and read a bit of Japanese and Chinese), not a lot, but enough to understand their structure, and while the VMS does resemble Asian languages or Turkic languages in some ways (more than it does most other language groups), one has to account for the fact that certain glyphs occur only at the ends of words, the beginnings of words, or in the middle. And that's not even counting the line dynamics, which show a similar pattern.

It is excessively rigid. Even syllabic languages, based mainly on consonant-vowel combinations, even abjads (like old Hebrew with word stems that are used as "base" words to build related words) do not act like the VMS in terms of WHERE you can put the glyphs. They show a great deal more variety, even when applied to highly repetitive formats like prayers, poems, and lists.