The incompatibility of Voynichese with natural human language

[-JKP-]

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The tacit assumption in almost all analyses is that one Voynich character represents one plain text character or one sound.

Yes, I agree. Most of the claimed "solutions" and the majority of computational attacks make this assumption. Unfortunately, this assumption is completely at odds with how most text was written in the later medieval period, and is also at odds with the way some ciphers were designed.

The tentative conclusion that Voynichese is incompatible with human language is based on this assumption.

I'm not sure this is always true. Many of those who make this assumption come up with "solutions" that have been somewhat "fixed" with subjective adjustments and do think the VMS is natural language.

Statistical tools are an excellent way to test the assumptions, but this is rarely done.

Agreed. Many of the statistical studies go on the one-to-one assumption of some underlying language without starting at Square 1 to see WHAT it actually is and how it is actually structured.

As far as I am concerned, Voynichese is not incompatible with human language in general. This has not been demonstrated by any test.

As it stands, I believe it is incompatible with natural language without some significant processing, and I believe I can demonstrate this, but I am having difficulty finding enough time to describe it so people can understand it. I have a paper on it, but it requires a lot of examples to show step-by-step why this is so.

Also under the assumption that one symbols is one PT character or sound, Voynichese has not been demonstrated to be incompatible with human language.
It behaves rather similarly to oriental languages that exhibit a clear syllable structure.

Again, I believe it is incompatible with natural language without some significant processing, and I believe I can demonstrate this. As far as oriental languages go, I am not fluent in them, but I know some Japanese and Korean (and very tiny bit of Chinese). At one point I could read news articles in Korean and understand simple conversation (I am quickly losing these skills due to lack of use) and I feel very strongly that as it stands (without processing) that Voynichese is more similar to these than to western languages IN SOME WAYS but... and this is a huge "but", Voychinese completely fails to exhibit the syllabic positional variety that is characteristic of Asian languages.


I think increased study of abjadic characteristics or numerical possibilities (or the possible interpretation of shape variations as different characters) might be more productive than "solutions" that assume natural language from the get-go without actually examining the characteristics of the text.