The 'Chinese' Theory: For and Against

[Stefan Wirtz_2]

You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. is an alternative to "communist" pinyin that used to be favored in Taiwan and perhaps Hong Kong.  It encodes Mandarin phonetically, including tones, using only 24 of the the 26 Latin letters, without diacritics or numeric indices.
Pinyin, that uses Latin letters plus 4 diacritics to write Mandarin phonetically, was invented in the mid 1500s by an "European guy" who spent several decades in China[..]
And you have heard of Marco Polo, haven't you?

You don't mention here that the Gwoyeu... alternative uses Latin characters, but is very frequently doubling vowels and consonants to transport the special emphasizing details of Chinese.
And, at least modern Pinyin uses "only" 25 Latin characters, yes -- but is enhancing letters with diacritics (which is multiplying some characters by x5) and inserts apostrophs, so enhancing the used character set by far.

Nearly none of the VMS characters show anything that could be understood as diacritics or something similiar -- since Voynichese seems to be free of any interpunctation or even anything like "i dots", no wonder.

So your claim is that somebody produced his own "private pinyin" ~150 years earlier before the today known first try? (Ricci)

Marco Polo is a nice-to-have, but I did not hear about any tries of Chinese transscriptions from him, so maybe this is just name-dropping.

[..]

Chinese culture was well-developed already ~1,000 years ago — there was no simple-type chinese or other eastasian language, related to Chinese, during our 15th century anymore).

Sorry, I don't understand this comment.
[..]

My line meant that Chinese language(s) were not significantly simpler or somehow "more primitive" 600 years ago.
It was very developed, but rather different from today's versions.
You said this in your words as a reply, so there is no substantial disagreeing.

By "flawlessly" you mean "without visible corrections", right?  We can discuss that issue on the "Ink" thread. [..] glyphs are mistaken for changes of handwriting. 

ok, this would be a complete different discussion somewhere else.

Is VMS a book about Europeans? — Yes.

Well, the Starred Parags section is definitely not about European people, places, or events.

You can't say this. 
How can you "definitely" exclude any european content from any paragraphs?
Even if no Europeans are shown, this is not anyhow a proof for texts being "of non-european content". 
Only a valid translation would proove anything there.

There is no evidence that the other sections are about "European" stuff.  The illustrations were probably done by an European artist/scribe, but much of their apparent "Eurpeanness" is due to him having copied pictures from European books (often without understanding them).
Even the Zodiac diagrams are rather alien, in spite of the icons at the center.
[..]

I am holding to what I would call "regionality" or "localism". There is a scientific expression for what I mean with it, but I don't remember or care.
"Regionality" is supposed to mean the relation of motives to their painters/draftsmen and intended viewers: any figures (like Jesus, Angels, Saints, pagan Gods, Celebrities or even normal people) are nearly always presented within the "own" ethnicity in a very lot of medieval artwork.
Depicted figures look very often like their cultural environment, by hair, colour, clothing, time period, weapons & tools etc. -- it is rather rare to find artworks in a "documentation style", showing realistic or naturalistic human beings or animals or landscape.
= 500+ quite european VMS figures, whatever they are intended to show, bring a quite high probability that this manuscript was made also by and for Europeans; somewhere.
But this is just a good chance, not a 100% "proof" of course. I did not claim that.

As a funny sideshow, the Zodiac icons you mentioned could be good enough to turn it to the opposite:
some icon symbols (like the "green dragon" or saurus or whatever, instead of a scorpion) seem to be more a hint to some non-(western)european context than the "copied-looking" Gemini and Sagittarius...