I have already posted on voynichimagery some information about languages being taught in within the Latin domain in the fourteenth century. These included Syriac, Arabic, and Armenian.
I might also mention that Aramaic remained a language in use among Jewish communities.
The last speaker of Cuman in Europe died about the time that Kircher received the manuscript, but a couple of centuries before, it had been in use and understood as a trading language from the Black Sea to the borders of China.
Until the tenth century, Bactrian was still written and spoken around the region of Mashhad which, for other reasons to do with the botanical folios, is a time and place of interest to us.
I expect that because the past century has seen almost everyone begin by presuming the manuscript was European it is easy to overlook the fact that we don't actually know where it was made, nor by whom, nor for whom, nor whether the content is fifteenth century, or whether the fifteenth century version we have isn't a copy of some much older work.
So considering non-European-Latin languages and script may be a good idea.
Not even McCrone was willing to assign it to any place in Europe. When pressed, they would only say that it was "not incompatible' with the form of a European manuscript. As all the scientists here will know, that's the sort of phrasing which signals strong reservations. Perhaps someone, at some time, set out to test the usual theory but if so, I've not seen any evidence of the process.
I myself think that some small parts of of the pictorial matter were first enunciated by a Latin European; most researchers have begun from that premise; but in fact it is only a presumption, not a fact.
I might also mention that Aramaic remained a language in use among Jewish communities.
The last speaker of Cuman in Europe died about the time that Kircher received the manuscript, but a couple of centuries before, it had been in use and understood as a trading language from the Black Sea to the borders of China.
Until the tenth century, Bactrian was still written and spoken around the region of Mashhad which, for other reasons to do with the botanical folios, is a time and place of interest to us.
I expect that because the past century has seen almost everyone begin by presuming the manuscript was European it is easy to overlook the fact that we don't actually know where it was made, nor by whom, nor for whom, nor whether the content is fifteenth century, or whether the fifteenth century version we have isn't a copy of some much older work.
So considering non-European-Latin languages and script may be a good idea.
Not even McCrone was willing to assign it to any place in Europe. When pressed, they would only say that it was "not incompatible' with the form of a European manuscript. As all the scientists here will know, that's the sort of phrasing which signals strong reservations. Perhaps someone, at some time, set out to test the usual theory but if so, I've not seen any evidence of the process.
I myself think that some small parts of of the pictorial matter were first enunciated by a Latin European; most researchers have begun from that premise; but in fact it is only a presumption, not a fact.