The Voynich Manuscript is a cipher because...?

[ThomasCoon]

I'd like to revive this thread because I haven't responded yet  

1) I don't think the fact that the VMS has remain unsolved for 600 years is problematic, and the author would not need a highly advanced cipher to accomplish this. If he used a combination of basic cipher techniques, he could also create a code that is practically impossible to solve. For example, let's say that this is the key to the VMS:

• The text operates on monograms and bigram units (ol, ar, od, ok, etc.), but also:
  
• <yk> = <ok>, but otherwise <y> is completely meaningless
  
• <e> and <i> can be written 1, 2 or 3 times with no change in meaning
  
• <Sh> = <ch> = <ee>
  
• Any word beginning <q> is meaningless
  
• Etc.
  

These mechanisms are not too advanced for the 1400s, but still incredibly difficult to figure out if you don't already know them.

2) There seem to be several obstacles to a pure linguistic solution. For me, the biggest is strings of several almost-identical vords in a row: ex. okeey.qokeedy.olkeedy or sheod.sheodaiin.shodaiin. This happens occasionally in a natural language, but never to the extent that it happens in the VMS (very frequently). Languages tend to work in the exact opposite way - words move away from each other to fill the phonetic space. But several ciphers can explain these strings.