The 'Chinese' Theory: For and Against

[Jorge_Stolfi]

Interesting theory – but that would make translation nearly impossible. At that time, in china a kind of official language was just beginning to develop, and otherwise there were hundreds of dialects and languages in the region.

Indeed it would be very difficult.  It would require some knowledge of the old form of the language.  But if the books are indeed the most important books on each subject, we can hope to identify them, and then they would be a "Rosetta Stone" for Voynichese.

Foreign (unknown) languages have always been a good form of encryption

Indeed.  No encryption method is as hard to crack as a language that you don't know and is not close to any language that you do know.

See Etruscan, for example.  Until a few year ago, scholars had identified the words for numbers 1 to 10, but for two of them -- 4 and 6 --- they could not figure out which was which.  They recently cracked that puzzle thanks to a pair of Etruscan dice that had the numbers spelled out, instead or marked with dots, and a statistical analysis of the number arrangements on a couple hundred dice from the time -- which showed that the vast majority already used the current rule that opposite faces add to 7.

are there any sources or threads

All I knew (not much) when I took a long break was eventually posted to the Voynich mailing list.  The finding that got me into this theory was the word  You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. of lexemes (word types).  At first I thought that it was evidence for a You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view., but I think that is unlikely for several reasons.

If I am convinced, I can finally give up my laborious work...

And that was indeed the main reason why I lost interest in the VMS around 2004 or so.   I did not have the knowledge needed to "crack the code", and had no hope of acquiring it.

While I still believe in that theory, I am back because I think that I can still have some things I can contribute, even if that theory is correct.  And there are a thing or two that I can try that could prove it -- even without actually "deciphering" it.

All the best, --stolfi