10-10-2025, 01:24 AM
In Koen's most recent video, he interviewed an expert in historical constructed languages. She mentioned the Lingua Ignota, Enochian, and even more recent examples up to the 18th century. Her argument was that generally those examples feature statistical patterns that are more consistent with natural languages, for example Lingua Ignota mapping directly in syntax to Latin.
But what I found lacking was the discussion of "mathematical", "philosophical" and a-priori constructed languages that gained huge popularity during the 1600s. Wilkins, Leibniz and several others all made or proposed highly structured mathematical conlangs which group all things into a hierarchy and have very well defined, and often alien grammar and semantic systems.
What is to say that the constructed language of the Voynich can't be a constructed language much more similar to these examples than Lingua Ignota?
It would be anomalous for a pre-1600s thinker to devise such a strange and structured mathematical conlang, but everything about the Voynich is already anomalous. It's not a stretch to believe the author likely had a very different thought process to most people of their era, if not most people in all of history.
I think this idea should be taken seriously as an avenue of research, and compare the Voynich Manuscript more to languages like Wilkin's ordered mathematical language, or even modern examples line Ithkuil, than historical examples of constructed languages that closely resemble natural languages, of which there are already very few to compare
But what I found lacking was the discussion of "mathematical", "philosophical" and a-priori constructed languages that gained huge popularity during the 1600s. Wilkins, Leibniz and several others all made or proposed highly structured mathematical conlangs which group all things into a hierarchy and have very well defined, and often alien grammar and semantic systems.
What is to say that the constructed language of the Voynich can't be a constructed language much more similar to these examples than Lingua Ignota?
It would be anomalous for a pre-1600s thinker to devise such a strange and structured mathematical conlang, but everything about the Voynich is already anomalous. It's not a stretch to believe the author likely had a very different thought process to most people of their era, if not most people in all of history.
I think this idea should be taken seriously as an avenue of research, and compare the Voynich Manuscript more to languages like Wilkin's ordered mathematical language, or even modern examples line Ithkuil, than historical examples of constructed languages that closely resemble natural languages, of which there are already very few to compare