10-04-2019, 11:45 AM
I will keep my reply very brief in order to respect the wish to keep the thread on topic. Voynich is a strange MS. It may have strange content with unusual or atypical features, including letter distribution features. It is fair to raise the frequency of final [y] as an issue, which is useful for all researchers to keep in mind in their work. Those who propose that [y] represents a consonant, such as myself, will need to explain this issue further. I will aim to do so in due course. At the same time, any proposal will need to explain [qokeedy qokeedy qokeedy] and similar sequences anyway, which may be related to the unusual letter distribution features. Those who propose that [y] represents a vowel, will need to demonstrate how the very limited inventory of other characters can possibly represent all of the consonant phonemes of a language. In my opinion, that challenge is equally as difficult as explaining an unusually high proportion of words ending in "-s" or some other consonant.
Geoffrey
Geoffrey