Phonology of Voynichese

[geoffreycaveney]

Question
So is there enough regularity in the glyph distribution to permit its phonetic structure to shine through? Well, I think there is. I'm starting to suspect that the glyphs work on both a bigram and digram level -some represent simple sounds, others represent more complicated or regular speech patterns. This is why we see regularity in the tokens, we could be talking about a proto-Italian dialect with the traditional "sing-song" vocal endings of words, etc. Certainly more research into this area is required.
[...]
So, people, ideas please.

David, you mention the idea of the glyphs working on both a bigram and digram level. Even though this is not the idea of the theory that I currently hold, as you know, I think this is quite a logical and reasonable and plausible idea as well. I have even posted about the bigram theory idea on this forum.

Since you raise the idea of bigrams and you ask for ideas, I would like to share the following material with you. This is from the files of my own material on prior hypotheses of mine that I now consider obsolete and incorrect. I had a tentative working hypothesis about Voynich bigrams and Hebrew letters / phones. The facts and the data did not match the hypothesis, so in the end I rejected the hypothesis. In particular, the hypothesis required the changing of too many spellings of basic Hebrew words in a way that simply would not happen in the medieval period, since anyone then who knew Hebrew at all, would know its traditional standard written form.

But it may be of interest to you and others to see the kind of tentative correspondences that the hypothesis proposed between Voynich bigrams and Hebrew letters / phones. I attach to this post two files: One with the encryption from Hebrew letters / phones to Voynich bigrams, and the other with the decryption from Voynich bigrams to Hebrew letters / phones.

Even though I now believe this hypothesis was wrong, I do think that if any bigram theory could possibly work, it would probably end up with a correspondence table that looks rather like the two files that I attach here. I just want you and other researchers to be prepared for the messiness that is likely to ensue if and when you resolve to proceed down this path. I wish you better luck with the idea than I had with it!

Geoffrey