The 'Chinese' Theory: For and Against

[Jorge_Stolfi]

So 4 of the 8 require ignoring spaces. Do any of those "missing" spaces look uncertain? What kind of scribal error rate do we have to assume if "missing" spaces involving "daiin" are typical, and how reasonable is that?

The fact is that the relative positions of the five out of the seven occurrences of 主 in the longest SBJ recipe match closely the relative positions of the five occurrences of daiin in the longest SPS parag, either as a "word" or as a suffix.  Whether you measure the positions in words or in EVA characters. And if we include dair and laiin, the match extends to all seven 主, with one dair left unmatched. 

Why are three of the daiin suffixes, instead of isolated words?  Why does 主 sometimes match dair and sometimes laiin, but not every dair matches a 主? Those are good questions, but they cannot justify dismissing those 5 or 7 close positional matches as "mere coincidences".  

That fact implies that one Voynichese word, as transcribed, is not simply one Chinese character -- even though the number of words (73) and the number of characters (92 - 12 = 80) are quite similar, once one excludes the 4 characters of the "taste and warmth" field and the 8 characters of the last two Chinese sentences 鸡白蠹，肥猪 (which seems to be about veterinary use, and are claimed to be a late addition) and 生平泽 ("It is found in marshlands", part of the fixed SBJ formula but which makes no sense in this entry).

I have one possible explanation for dair: the n in the in ending is sometimes written with a rounded bottom and slightly above the baseline.  Then the in can be mistaken for an r with a lowered plume:

   

All the best, --stolfi