The 'Chinese' Theory: For and Against

[Jorge_Stolfi]

Regarding this, I don't know for Vietnam, but I can speak based on my experience of China. There is a distinction between speaking in dialect and reading a text in a dialect. Typically a spoken Wu dialect or Cantonese would have specific syntaxic structures and specific words which are uncommon or inexistant in the Chinese lingua franca. However, when a Wu or Cantonese speaker reads a classical text, he would read it entirely word by word using his dialect pronunciation but without the need to changing any words. If we take Wu dialect as example (and even Mandarin today) we don't say 鸡子 = to say "egg", we say 鸡蛋 = Chicken eggs as there is a specific character for eggs nowadays. However, when one reads the original text, one would still read 鸡子 (with a specific pronounciation depending on the dialect). [...] In other words, if the text say 子 in two places, the reader would typically read the 子 in the two places and would not switch to a different dialectal word in any instances.

That may be bad news, because it removes one possible explanation for why it is hard to find correspondences.  Possibly the language is not a Chinese "dialect" but some non-Chinese language like Vietnamese of Tibetan.  But then I would expect the inconsistencies would be bigger.

So far the cribs I have are 

• MAIN-USES: 主治 or just 主 in the SBJ, daiin (and variations) in the SPS
  
• QI:   气 in the SBJ, Chedy (") in the SPS
  
• MAKES:  令 in the SBJ, Ched (") in the SPS.
  
• LONG-TAKE: 久服 or 久食 in the SBJ, qokeedy or qokaiin (") in the SPS
  

These cribs seem to work in most cases, although sometimes one need to allow substantial variations.  The last one is still somewhat uncertain.

The variations may include adding or omitting i and e, in certain contexts; omitting q before o; or switching between glyphs that may have similar phonetic value (like [aoy]) or similar shapes when written in "cursive" (like [dkls], or ir <-> iin) or seem to be beautified versions of other letters (like p and f). 

For instance, in the Rooster alone, as you can see in that write-up, I must accept dair and laiin as variations of daiin. In the Flying Squirrel entry I must accept dain.  And the pairing of those two entries with f105v.32 and f112v.35 is practically certain because they are lone outliers in the respective parag length distributions. 

Conversely there are many occurrences of daiin, laiin, dain etc.  in the SPS which cannot be translations of 主治/主 . Needless to say, the more liberal I am on the allowed variations of those keywords, the more false matches I will find, and the less convincing they will become.
I am still working out what is the sweet spot between too strict and too liberal.

there is 杀, 血 also which have at least 2 occurences

I am trying to figure out the Voynichese for 血 = "blood".  In the table below, each line is an SBJ recipe that (1) I have already found a tentative match in the SPS and (2) contains that caracter.  Some of those recipes contain it two or more times. 

Code:

[/font] # 血 b1.1.014 | five_clays       | ~ | f103r.01 | CLAY | ... 血　　　 ... | ... opchedyp?olchep ... b1.4.090 | dragon_bone      | ~ | f104v.01 | DRAG | ... 血　　　 ... | ... chedaiinqoteedchockhy ... b1.4.096 | red_rooster      | + | f105v.32 | ROOS | ... 血　　　 ... | ... taiinoteeyoteeoolotaiin ... b3.3.088 | willow_blossom   | ~ | f107r.21 | WILL | ... 血　　　 ... | ... qokalraiiinokaiin... b1.1.014 | five_clays       | ~ | f103r.01 | CLAY | ... 下血　　 ... | ... arotchysallkchysarain... b1.2.061 | heavenly_essence | ~ | f114r.39 | HEAV | ... 下血　　 ... | ... dainopchedyqetcharyteedyq... b1.2.061 | heavenly_essence | ~ | f114r.39 | HEAV | ... 止血　　 ... | ... qetcharyteedyqoteyqoedaii... b1.2.061 | heavenly_essence | ~ | f114r.39 | HEAV | ~~~ 瘀血　　 ... | ~~~ daiinokarqoeedainych... b3.5.119 | peach_kernel     | ~ | f104r.30 | PCHK | ~~~ 瘀血　　 ... | ~~~ lkeodaiinqokeeolkecheyokeo ... b2.2.066 | wall_moss        | ~ | f113r.34 | WMOS | ... 血气暴热 ... | ... hkaiinqopchdyqoteedy.rchedy ... b2.3.090 | mulberry_root    | + | f105v.08 | MULB | ... 血病　　 ... | ... oeesaiiinolokaiino. .. b1.2.061 | heavenly_essence | ~ | f114r.39 | HEAV | ... 血瘕　　 ... | ... okarqoeedainychooedainop... b3.5.119 | peach_kernel     | ~ | f104r.30 | PCHK | ... 血瘕　　 ... | ... cheodainqokaralchdokchechy ... b3.5.119 | peach_kernel     | ~ | f104r.30 | PCHK | ... 血闭　　 ... | ... daiinqokeeolkecheyokeody ... b1.4.096 | red_rooster      | + | f105v.32 | ROOS | ... 血闭　　 ... | ... ockhhyysheyckhysheo ...

The last two columns are the compound or phrase from the SBJ entry that contains 血, and the section of the matched SPS parag that roughly corresponds to that 血, based on the count of EVA characters that separate it from the nearest keywords.   The lines that have just 血 are those where I guess that the character is used as a noun, as in "diarrhea with pus and blood" or "boosts blood and qi".  The others are occurrences where I guessed that it was being used as an adjective, as in 血闭 which Google translates as "amenorrhea" ("absence of menstruation")

There seem to be matches between the EVA strings, enough that I will try to add 血 to my set of cribs.  But there are also notable failures to match.  That may be because the Dictator used a different reading of the character or compound, or because I picked the wrong SPS parag. (I am reasonably confident only about the two identifications marked '+').  

All the best, --stolfi