VM TTR values

[Koen G]

I agree with Marco's explanation. It is very tempting to "trim the fat" off of Voynichese, and see what's left. But there are many ways to do this, and the result will be that you're still left with the same problem, only on a different level. 


It might help to compare with another language. Let's say we don't know what Latin is, we find a Latin text and suspect someone tampered with it by adding all the frequent endings. We slash aggressively, removing everything that resembles a suffix. Just a quick example with Pliny, where I removed common endings as if I didn't know the language:


"Ipsa quae nunc dicetur herbarum claritas, medicinae tantum gignente eas Tellure, in admirationem curae priscorum diligentiaeque animum agit. nihil ergo intemptatum inexpertumque illis fuit, nihil deinde occultatum quodque non prodesse posteris vellent. at nos elaborata iis abscondere ac supprimere cupimus et fraudare vitam etiam alienis bonis."


Becomes something like: 

"Ips qu nunc dic herb clar, medicin tant gigne eas Tel, in admir cur prisc dilig anim agi. nihil erg intempt inexpert il fu, nihil deind occult quod non prod post vel. at nos elabor i abscond ac supprim cup et fraud vit et ali bon."


Now it is important to understand that by doing this, I removed linguistic information from Latin, the endings are not there for show. But still, what is left might pass for a badly mangled form of some kind of Romance language. Some forms like "tant" simply become French. The full phoneme inventory is still there, we still have the word's roots.

Now if we do the same to Voynichese, the scenario will be completely different. We will reduce our phoneme inventory even further, because "iin"-clusters and "q" will need to disappear entirely. And keep in mind that the apparent phoneme inventory of Voynichese is already smaller than most people realize, because several characters are infrequent, so it operates on a relatively small core of characters. Now of course one could slash material until benched gallows etc become relatively frequent, and then recombine what is left into words.

In short, my main concern with this kind of approach is what your phoneme inventory would end up looking like, and how you're going to get around 20 characters.