Unexpected languages

[ChenZheChina]

The list of consonants and vowels given above is the main argument for similarity between Voynich text and modern Chinese. The majority of consonants appear only at the start of syllables.
Syllables have a rigid structure, to such an extent that one can make a one-page table giving all possible patterns.

Hi René,

Yes, Mandarin Chinese has very limited syllables so that they can be written in one page. Wikipedia has this table You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view., though I have never heard the 4 syllables (diang, lün, nia, shong) with note [table 2], the rest syllables seem all valid for me.

However, I think Voynichese has much more end-of-syllable consonants: b, d, g, l, m, n, r, s, u, while Mandarin Chinese in 14th century had only three end-of-syllable consonants: m, n, ng, and Modern Standard Chinese has only one: n.

I know that these Voynichese “consonants” may not be consonants at all. For example, they might be tone marks. That would be perfect for a Chinese theory: few end-of-syllable consonants, several tone marks. However, I think we need more solid evidences to say so, while it is totally perfect to keep it as a hypothesis.

Maybe some other languages also have majority of consonants appear only at the start of syllables, and they might be better candidates.

With Voynichese, there is a strong suspicion that the units of the language (or writing) are not just the symbols we see, but are combinations of symbols.

Sorry, I don’t understand this. What do you mean by “not just the symbols we see, but are combinations of symbols”? I’m not linguist so maybe I’m missing some common knowledge here.

The number of patters is also restricted. Trying to match Voynichese to Mandarin may not be too useful, because we need to look at languages from 600 years ago.

Exactly. We need more resources, as much as possible, of that era. As I mentioned before, Romance of the Three Kingdoms (14th century) and Journey to the West (16th century) may be good resources. But, unfortunately, I have no idea where to find a long text resource from exactly 15th century.

The point I made earlier, related to the similarity between Voynichese o- and qo- to Chinese yi 一 was mainly prompted by examples such as on this page:

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There are lists of items being ordered, mainly preceded by 一个 (yi gè).
I could imagine that in recipes such frequent use of yi and a classifier word might be expected.

I see your point. I agree that it would be highly possible that we could see frequent use of yi and a classifier word in some real recipes. However, to work in this direction, we probably have to answer these questions:

1. Where are two and three? They should probably be frequent as well.
2. Classifier words are quite limited. Are unique qo- words also limited?
3. Are qo- words more found in Herbal and Recipe pages, compared to cosmological and zodiac pages?

I don’t have answers to these questions, yet I don’t know how to find an answer. I hope I could be able to examine them in details.

PS: They had a mistake. The classifier word for duck should be 只, not 支. 支 is for long, thin objects like pencil and chopsticks.