The incompatibility of Voynichese with natural human language

[-JKP-]

There are some African languages that have similarities to Japanese. I can't offhand remember exactly which ones because there are many African languages and it's difficult to trace back those that were in general use in the 15th century. Aramaic has some of these properties, as well. Old Ge'ez is abjadic (it has semitic origins, like Hebrew). There are a number of African languages that are syllabic.

Just as some middle eastern languages are still written in both Latin and Cyrillic scripts, or both Arabic and Cyrillic scripts, some north African languages were written with both Ge'ez and Latin scripts.


The Ge'ez script has a form of benching, although the benching is not the predominant feature of the script. To me, what stands out about it is its logical regularity. The benched letter sits on top of the bench (it doesn't cut through it). In both visual and mechanical terms, it is less similar to the VMS glyphs than the form of benching that occurs in Greek.

Ge'ez is used to write a number of languages (Ge'ez is one of the scripts used in Ethiopia and some of the surrounding regions). Ethiopia was on European maps long before most other parts of Africa (with pictures of little European castles that were generally not indicative of the actual architecture). I have frequently seen Ethiopia on medieval mappa mundae. It was a trade center and a Christian pilgrimage destination.