devil's advocate: the case for glossolalia

[Emma May Smith]

Frustration comes from attempting to understand the text as "Coptic, Old Irish, Old Norse, Elfdalian, Gutamal, Orsamal, Old Gutnish, Finnish, Old Prussian, Middle High German, Old Albanian, Syriac/Aramaic, and Hebrew". Progress comes from approaching the text with the goal of understanding the text as itself. It isn't useful to say that the text doesn't work like Latin or German or whatever. It is useful to describe how the text works in its own terms.

Linguistic research is not about guessing what language the text might be and giving it a go. It's about observing the patterns and peculiarities and appreciating that they are the imprint of a natural system. It's not about knowing there's a language out there which might "fit" the text, but having a model on which to arrange the evidence and produce ideas for further research.

I think you should quit trying to decipher the Voynich manuscript. I also think you should start trying to understand it.