Anyone seen this proposed solution yet? More Hebrew...

[geoffreycaveney]

Hmm, here is something about a disease (dated June 17, 2020):

Hannig claims that the Voynich manuscript was written in medieval Ashkenazi, the language of the European Eastern Jews. Hannig has just posted his findings on the Internet on sixty pages. An interview is not possible because the researcher fell ill at the worst possible time in his career (no, not Corona).

I do not want to speak negatively about a person with a serious illness. But at the same time, someone needs to say what I know many of us must be thinking: The timeline of events has quite coincidentally unfolded in such a way as to be potentially quite flattering to his reputation, at least among those laypeople who do not know enough about the Voynich ms to have learned to be very skeptical about proposed decipherings. Here is the narrative: "Scholar and researcher discovers a brilliant solution to a famous mysterious puzzle that no one has been able to solve for a century. But right on the eve of being about to prove it to the world, he fell seriously ill and was unable to answer all the questions to prove to everyone that his solution was correct." It is the stuff that people can spin legends about: "Alas, if only the great Herr Dr. Prof. Hannig had stayed healthy and been able to show the world his complete solution of the Hebrew Voynich manuscript. Now we'll never know..."

Again, I wish Herr Hannig well, I hope that he recovers from his illness, I wish him a speedy and complete recovery, and I hope that he enjoys good health and a long life. But that doesn't mean I think anyone should romanticize his proposed deciphering of the Voynich manuscript.