[split] An interview with Stephen Bax - 1 to 1 substitution discussion

[-JKP-]

English has 26 letters which represent 44 common sounds. Same as Voynichese.

It's not the same as Voynichese.

In English (and other languages) you can shuffle those letters around to create those sounds. For example, SH and HS are different sounds, based on the order of the letters. So are TH and HT. You cannot do that in Voynichese. It has severe restrictions on the position of the glyphs.


For example...

• vords like daiin... the iin part can only be preceded by "o" or "a" and with rare exceptions, it can only be at the end of a vord.
  
• ot or its variants 4ot and yot are almost always at the beginnings of words.
  
• cc is almost invariably midword.
  
• d9 (dy) is almost invariably at the ends of vords.
  

... and there are many more examples.

When you restrict the position of the glyph, you are also restricting the possible sounds that can be represented by that glyph. If you use three glyphs for one sound (as was suggested in the original video), then the available pool for remaining sounds is significantly diminished not only because they are less in number, but because their associated positional rules are restricted even further by association.

Voynichese is full of positional restrictions that are not characteristic of natural languages. Even Asian languages, which have a few of these characteristics (the ones that are syllabic) do not have anywhere near as many restrictions.