My readings of the plant labels

[Anton]

Your counterarguments are based on the assumption that the VM plant sections are, and behave, like "plant books" we know.

Actually yes, but this may be generalized without detriment to my argumentation. Say, the botanical section "introduces" plants into the book (for whatever purpose), and the pharma section "makes use" of plants (whatever use).

The "pharma section", which I consider my own "area of expertise", is not a pharma section at all. It has been constructed to teach the local names for these plants to a person professionally interested in learning them. Its main purpose is linguistic.

As a sidenote, that means that the local names can be conveyed through the same script as the non-local names. Generally, no problem - you could e.g. transmit Russian with English alphabet (although not very neatly).

But we get three issues here.

First, this still leaves unexplained why the supposed local names for some plants are found in the botanical section.

Second, the pharma section also contains paragraphs of text. Which tongue are they written in - "local" or "non-local"?

Third, what does otol do as a pharma label "local" name? The most frequent "Voynich star" suddenly turns to be written the same way as some "local" plant name? Well, well

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You may have heard of the Soviet, and now Russian, "Lada" brand of cars. Actually the car series was historically named "Zhiguli", after the place on the Volga, but after they brought it to export they realized that it sounds like "gigolo" and renamed it to "Lada" for foreign consumers.

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But there are other examples - like okaiin with its 212 exact matches.

And: what jars do have to do with linguistics?