11-11-2025, 04:42 PM
Jorge, you might be interested to know that the situation for written Chinese in 1400 would point to a single underlying language, namely literary Chinese. There were a few vernacular writings at this time, and a vernacular influence on the literary standard, but prior to 1900 most writers were trying to emulate the Classical model.
The supposition of a dictator throws a wrench into that, as literary Chinese could be read with any overlying correspondence to contemporary or historical pronunciations. But, rather like how there is an aYou are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view., it would not be, say, Mandarin just because the dictator used a Mandarin reading. But the flip side is that there are straightforward (if not always neat) correspondences between how characters are read in different times and places, and it may be possible to get a foothold since you have a theory of a syllable, and just about every variety has a 1-to-1 correspondence between syllables and characters.
Obviously, it might be something other than a Sinitic language, but the longer I've looked at your statistical argument the more I've thought someone should be trying to establish a character-to-Voynichese correspondence.
The supposition of a dictator throws a wrench into that, as literary Chinese could be read with any overlying correspondence to contemporary or historical pronunciations. But, rather like how there is an aYou are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view., it would not be, say, Mandarin just because the dictator used a Mandarin reading. But the flip side is that there are straightforward (if not always neat) correspondences between how characters are read in different times and places, and it may be possible to get a foothold since you have a theory of a syllable, and just about every variety has a 1-to-1 correspondence between syllables and characters.
Obviously, it might be something other than a Sinitic language, but the longer I've looked at your statistical argument the more I've thought someone should be trying to establish a character-to-Voynichese correspondence.