(09-09-2016, 12:07 PM)Koen Gh. wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.A relatively small community lives somewhere in central-southern Europe. Their language or dialect is different than that of those around them. This was not uncommon in the times before standardization and the eradication of "les patois". Their language is entirely unknown to us, and it was likely an isolate like Basque. Somewhere around the 13th century, they adopted the Latin script for writing in their own language, though over the centuries they made numerous alterations to express different sounds. The result was Voynichese. Since they were a small community, they only produced a small amount of manuscripts, and their language and script were wiped from the face of the earth when the renaissance desire for national unity started imposing standard language forms within national borders. Only one manuscript remains today, and nobody knows how to read it.
While this story is possible, I think it adds some unnecessary complexity. E.g. the existence of other manuscripts, the progressive deviation from the Latin alphabet, two centuries of written history completely disappearing.
Considering examples like Hildegard von Bingen and Giovanni Fontana, I would say that the alphabet was created by a single person in the XV century. The "small community" speaking an "isolated language" still fits the story of course.
If I remember correctly, both Hildergard's and Fontana's newly created alphabets are documented in more than one manuscript. Voynichese could be another example of alphabet infant mortality.