Choice of glyphs

[-JKP-]

1) Voynch "a" isn't necessarily a vowel. It could be a ligature (ci) or it could be a very slightly disguised number 7 (it was sometimes written like "a"). If you look at the first "a" on the first folio, it is stretched out and it's difficult to tell if it's "a" or a bench char. This MIGHT be because it's not an "a" at all, but was chosen to look like "a".

2) Also the assumption that "vowels" are vowels (which I've noticed is assumed in the majority of Voynich "solutions") is a very big assumption. If you swap all the glyphs that look like vowels with glyphs that look like consonants and vice-versa, the text has nearly the same properties as in its current form.

3) The glyph that looks like medieval 4 (l) was also used as an early medieval abbreviation symbol that meant the same thing as the later medieval "smoke" symbol.

4) The glyph that looks like c with a tail can be an embellished c, a c with abbreviation (e.g., ce, cer, etc.) or it can be an early medieval "and" symbol. The same is true of r with a tail, it can be embellished r, or r as abbreviation. C with tail was sometimes also used as an abbreviation for "con".

5) In Latin scripts, k is both a ligature and an abbreviation.

6) Maybe the minims are a sneaky way to represent the number one.

7) In some scripts 5 is represented by "o" and a dot is used for the letter "o", so it's even possible the "o" is a number.

8) In Latin and Greek scribal conventions, benched characters represent abbreviations and in Greek script, benched characters sometimes represent numbers.

When it comes down to it, the majority of VMS chars are similar to Latin (and some Greek) numbers and abbreviations/ligatures.