Calgary engineer believes he's cracked the mysterious Voynich Manuscript

[Emma May Smith]

Thank you for the heads-up.

Since Turkic/Persian is one of the few language groups that has really caught my interest in terms of structure, I will be following this story with interest.

Well, Turkic and Persian are two totally different language groups. Persian is actually rather like English (and not so hard to learn once you get past the defective script), but unlikely to be the underlying language of the Voynich manuscript. Turkic is more likely. As Diane points out, one of the most widely used Turkic languages of the time was Cuman, spoken in the area roughly north of the Black Sea. Genoa had trading colonies there around 1400, giving a perfect environment in which to create a European-looking document in a Turkic language. We know from other surviving manuscripts that Europeans were interested in the Cuman language.