The 'Chinese' Theory: For and Against

[ololololo]

Like any other "language" theory about a manuscript, the Chinese theory has many assumptions and gaps. ... There are meaningful [proposed translations], but often the approach to them is subjective, and I haven't seen any general and trustworthy methodology yet

Actually, at the current stage the "Chinese" Origin theory (COT) it is rather unlike most other "language" theories.  They generally propose a language and struggle to extract the plaintext.  I know the plaintext, but still can't  guess the language...

as far as I know, it is based on statistical similarities and the fact that "word repetition" occurs in many Asian languages. However, in my opinion, this is not enough to directly claim that Voynichese is a Chinese or Vietnamese language.

That is not one of the arguments for the COT.  On the contrary, it is one of the objections that people have raised: that the way words repeat (or not) in the VMS is (allegedly) unlike what happens in natural languages.  I am writing a long response to that objection; stay tuned...

after a long time, we still haven't understood how the proposed transcription system used in the manuscript works.

We can't figure that out until we identify the language. There are more than 50 candidate languages that survived to this day, and maybe dozens more that went extinct in the last 600 years. 

And even after we identify the language, we will not know how it was pronounced 600 years ago.  We only know that all those languages changed a lot -- much more than what happened to English or other  languages that have roughly phonetic scripts (because such a script serves as an "anchor" resisting language change).

If it were based on Chinese, we would expect to find more parallels, as it's unlikely that the author didn't try to simplify a language that wasn't similar to the European languages they were familiar with (it seems strange that the author's system would be as complex or even more complex than the Chinese language itself.

I don't understand this objection, sorry.  In the main scenario of the COT, the Author did not invent the language.  The language was that of the Dictator who read the book aloud to him.  He invented the script to record its sounds.

We must remember that this is the Middle Ages, the author is a European, and for him China was more, say, "exotic" than for us now).

That last part is quite wrong.  If the Author lived for a couple of years in "China", as the COT proposes, he knew the language and other things "Chinese" vastly better than almost everyone on this forum.

In fact I am puzzled by how people seem to think that it was "impossible" for an European to have been in China in the 1400s and have learned the local language.  As if they had not heard of Marco Polo.

why is this book incomprehensible to us? Why did the author, who wanted to write a work in transcribed Chinese that would be understandable to other readers

The Shennong Bencao is a materia medica -- a list of remedies and their indications -- about as old as Dioscorides's.  Even modern Chinese scholars struggle to identify the remedies and diseases in it.

The Author surely did not [edit] know 90% of the plants listed in it; and, unless he was a very competent doctor, would not have heard of most of the diseases.

So, how would the Author have produced a version that was understandable to Europeans?  He could not read the Chinese characters.  His "Chinese" friend did not speak any European language.  He could not understand half the words.  If he had to ask the Dictator or someone else to describe the symptoms of each disease (like 贲豚 -- not making that up) so that he could maybe recognize it and write down the Latin name, it would take a month to translate a single page...

The fact that they did not use Latin can be explained by the fact that the merchants did not find a method of romanization.

You mean, the Author found the Roman alphabet unsuitable. Yes; I suppose it was partly because the  language had sounds that would have needed digraphs if written in Roman letters, partly because writing Roman letters would have been too slow for dictattion.

The latter is the reason for the existence of You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. (or "shorthand"; not to be confused with steganograpy). Indeed, I suspect that Voynichese is more a shorthand notation, rather than a real phonetic alphabet.

Have you ever seen large, detailed maps on nine pages in regular diaries?), not explain how to read it? There is the Codex Cumanicus, where the Tatar language is listed at the beginning and written in a way that European missionaries could read and understand. This is the simplest and most practical approach, which we don't see in the manuscript.

Again, I don't understand this objection.  Sure, there are many manuscripts in other languages that are quite different from the VMS.  So?

and additional information about anatomy (the so-called "balneological" section).

All I can tell for sure is that the Starred Parags section (SPS) is a transcription/translation of the Shennong Bencao.  I don't know what is the nature or source of the other sections of the VMS. (Although, since the stript and language seem to be the same throughout the whole VMS, I guess that each of the other sections, too, is the transcription of some other classic Chinese book - a Herbal, a book on anatomy or clinical medicine, a book on astronomy, etc.  But I will let these questions for others to investigate.)

The book does not contain any topic related to China.

Why do you say that? Because of the dresses and hairdos of the nymphs?  They are obviously decoration, like the human figures in any European book on astrology or astronomy.  And yes, they were drawn by an European Scribe, almost certainly in Europe, when the Author had his notes copied onto vellum.

Judging by the illustrations, the manuscript is mostly a medical reference book about plants, their medicinal properties.

Yes, that is exactly what the Shennong Bencao is.

However, there is one "but" - the f68r1 and f68r2 diagrams, which may depict the Chinese lunar month (simple and sacred, respectively). However, this coincidence alone is not enough...

This is new, I never though or heard of that idea.  But I do think that the Zodiac is based on the Chinese "solar terms" system, a division of the year in 24 equal parts.  But this is only a guess, not yet proved.

the author's motive is unclear. ... Why would the author use an obscure transcription system to write a reference book that he (or other people) would have to use constantly?... if you say that it could have been the author's personal reference book, you'll have to explain to me why the author worked so hard on it?

It was not meant to be a reference book. 

The Europeans most likely to be in "China" by that time were not doctors or scholars. I suppose we can exclude missionaries too, due to the nature of the decoration and absence of any Christian imagery (yes I know about the alleged "cross" in Bio -- I don't think it is original.)  

Therefore, I mostly agree with you:

it could have been a group of merchants who regularly visited China and had a basic understanding of the Chinese language (which was sufficient for them to negotiate and establish contact with the Chinese), and who decided to write a book for a limited number of people (perhaps their colleagues who traveled to China, or perhaps someone else). 

Indeed I imagine the Author as being most likely a somewhat educated merchant (like Marco Polo and his uncles).  Like many others before and after him, he must have been impressed by the large number or large printed books that circulated there; including multi-volume treatises on all subjects.  So his goal was just to bring some of that knowledge to Europe; and the VMS was the best he could do.

But I do not think that the Author would have been more than one person.  The VMS was a somewhat crazy project, and it is unlikely that more than one in a hundred merchants would have chosen to undertake it.

And also he definitely did not "regularly" visit China.   The trip must have taken one year or more, in each direction. Most likely he was there only once or twice, and stayed there for at least a few years.

I would like to hear why the system is like a cipher and contains its own internal features. If you try to convey Chinese as accurately as possible, but inconsistently, I don't think you will encounter any "anomalies" or peculiarities in the text.

Again, I don't understand the argument.  Here is a quite accurate phonetic transcription of four recipes from the Shennong Bencao.   In what sense this text has "no anomalies or peculiarities"?

  yù quán zhǔ wǔ zàng bǎi bìng róu jīn qiáng gǔ ān hún pò
  zhǎng jīr òu yì qì jiǔ fú nài hán shǔ bù jī kě bù lǎo shén
  xiān rén lín sǐ fú wǔ jīn sǐ sān nián sè bù biàn
  dān shā zhì shēn tǐ wǔ zàng bǎi bìng yǎng jīng shén ān hún
  pò yì qì míng mù shā jīng mèi xié è guǐ jiǔ fú tōng shén
  míng bù lǎo néng huà wéi gǒng
  shuǐ yín zhǔ jiè sào jiā yáng bǎi tū shā pí fū zhōng chóng
  shī duò tāi chú rè shā jīn yín tóng xī dú róng huà huán fù
  wèi dān jiǔ fú shén xiān bù sǐ
  kōng qīng zhǔ qīng máng ěr lóng míng mù lì jiǔ qiào tōng
  xuè mài yǎng jīng shén jiǔ fú qīng shēn yán nián bù lǎo
  néng huà tóng tiě qiān xī zuò jīn

You should explain how you differ from him. Cheshire selected roots from all European languages, deriving a meaningful result from them, but you know how correct his method is.

My claim is completely different from that.  Whatever the language will turn out to be, it will be a single language -- that (at the time) was probably spoken by an entire nation.  Not a pastiche of unattested dialects.

If the book was written not by merchants, but by hired scribes, it is possible that the merchants provided the scribes with texts in Chinese and explained how to write them, and the scribes, who did not know Chinese and did not understand what they were copying, translated the text without questioning what they were writing,

It would make no difference whether the book was written by merchants or scribes. If they were in "China", they would be just as likely to have basic fluency in the spoken language; and they would be equally unable to read Chinese characters (which is how the SBJ would have been available, even in countries that did not speak a Chinese language.

To be literate in Chinese, enough to read newspapers and other common text, one must learn several thousand hanzi (Chinese characters) and tens of thousands of compound terms that can be formed with them.  That level of literacy is normally reached by the end of high school. A few Christian missionaries apparently got to that level with a few years of intense study, because it was absolutely essential to their mission.  No way that merchants or scribes could have been taught enough hanzi to translate or transcribe a Chinese book on their own.  Especially a book so difficult to read as the SBJ.

They would not even have been able to copy the hanzi.  Imagine them trying to copy 囊, or to copy 戌 without conflating it with 戍...

and a large number of qo-

We do not know how tones were encoded, or even if they were encoded at all.  My hunch is that the "circle" characters a, o, y were used for that purpose, but not in the same way that diacritics or digits are used in modern phonetic writing.  qo may be part of the tone encoding (say, a variant of o). 

But I have a hunch that it is like our "&", a sign for "and"; and that it was added by the Author because he felt that the Chinese way of enumerating things -- without any "and" -- was too confusing.  That is, when the Dictator read the original 青石赤石黄石白石黑石 as qīng shí chì shí huáng shí bái shí hēi shí ("blue stone red stone yellow stone white stone black stone") he would write "qīng shí qochì shí qohuáng shí qobái shí qohēi shí" in Voynichese.  Which would make even more sense if he was an Arabic speaker... 

In general, one can even say that balneology was not written by a very skilled person. This is consistent with the fact that there is always more text on the pages of the balneological section than on others, not taking into account the recipes that were written by the same person, and it is logical to assume that the scribe would be looking for a way to reduce his work.

I must insist that it is very unlikely that the Scribe who put ink on the vellum was the Author himself -- for a number of reason.  Independently of the COT or any other origin theory.  This "scribing" most likely happened in Europe, by an European Scribe, copying from a draft that the Author had written on paper.  The Scribe would have been taught the Voynichese alphabet by the Author, and trained it until the Author was satisfied.  But there is evidence that the Scribe did not understand anything of the contents, and probably did not even know what each glyph sounded like.

Thus the analysis of the material, handwriting, layout, and purely decorative elements of the figures will not tell us anything about the Author, or the origin and nature of the contents.

[the theory] it still contains many inaccuracies, liberties, and assumptions.

Indeed there are many details that are just guesses, and surely many are wrong.  For instance, the Author being an "European" traveler in "China" is only what I think is the most likely scenario for the COT.  But, still within the COT, it could be that instead the Author was a "Chinese" in Europe who wanted to make his knowledge accessible to Europeans.

And the Voynichese translation of 主 may be just aiin, not daiin, but the d almost always shows up before it due to some peculiarity of the language and/or of the script.

But, regardless, I believe that the basic claim "SPS ≈ SBJ" has enough evidence to be considered proved.

All the best, --stolfi

First of all, thank you for such a detailed answer. For convenience, I'll just number your counterarguments so as not to create a huge tirade of text. I will try to explain it clearly, as well as answer your thoughts.
1). It sounds strange that you know the source text but can't guess the language, especially in the context of language theory.
2). I haven't read it, I haven't studied it, so I'd rather keep quiet
3). If this is really spoken Chinese (to be more precise, for the 15th century it is Early Modern Chinese), then you have a huge amount of materials on the phonology of that time (thanks to the comparativists). Plus, if it was some kind of southern dialect, then it's good for you - they haven't changed much since those days compared to the northern ones. Anyway, for verification, you must have a technique that allows you to analyze Voynichese as a phonological system.
4). I don't mean the language or the writing, but the way the author wrote down the sounds with this writing. My opinion on this is that if the author were writing Chinese using an invented system, then this system should be at least easy for Europeans to understand, but at the same time, he clearly sought to convey the phonetics most accurately. Adding this up, we should end up with a fairly practical, albeit exotic, transcription system (otherwise, even the author won't understand it).
5). I agree with that. But this does not mean that a person has forgotten his native language in favor of Chinese, has forgotten all the time he spent in Europe, and has become a pure Chinese. And also, if you want to write a book in Chinese (even if it is your own transcription), then I think you will try to make it understandable to read (and the Voynich manuscript, judging by its general appearance, was created not only for one author, but also for someone else).
6). I'm not saying that the book should be completely transparent. I mean, it should at least be readable and understandable (so that, say, you read the book and understand that this plant cures such and such a disease, without specifying what kind of plant and what kind of disease). If the book turns out to be incomprehensible (because, as you say, the author could be incompetent in the field of Chinese medicine), then why did he write it at all? Where can it be used in this form? And as you can see, the author has written about 270 pages in total, drawn many diagrams, charts, and plants... without understanding what he is writing about? I'm sorry, but your statements only give me this impression.
7). It may be shorthand, but that doesn't change the fact that you need to check the text itself rather than just speculating.
8). The point of this objection is that even if Voynich is readable, it would be completely incomprehensible to an ordinary European, even a merchant who had visited Asia, because it would be unclear how to read it. And if the book was intended for someone else, then at least there should be a guide on how to read it. The Codex Cumanicus, for example, demonstrates that Europeans could easily write other languages in Latin.
9). Remember that if you've discovered something for one part of the manuscript, you'll need to try to apply it to all the other parts as well (or explain why you can't do it). If you've identified that Starred Parags is similar to this text, then you can potentially say more about the similarities between Voynichese and Chinese. Otherwise, it lacks sufficient credibility. If anything, this is not a case.
10). It's not about the hairstyles, not at all. I don't know why you think I'm talking about such details of the illustrations... The book doesn't contain a topic that is clearly related to China or, at least, to Chinese culture. For example, what do Rosettes mean in the context of Chinese culture? Or the balneological section? Why, if the Rosettes are a map, do we see patterns on it that resemble European architecture?
11). By medical reference, I mean a book about medicine in general, not just about the healing properties of herbs. For example, balneology is a section about anatomy from my perspective. The diagrams contain information that is useful for medical professionals. Maybe I don't know Shennong Bencao well enough, but all the sources tell me that it's not an encyclopedia, but a book about plants and agriculture.
12). Well, there's not much to say. It's possible, although it's also possible that the order of the Zodiac pages was mixed up, but it's also hard to prove.
13). It may not be a reference book, but it is at least a book that can be used regularly. It can be used as a reference book (for example, to navigate through the Rosettes, consult the diagrams, or use the information about the plant).
14). Yes, there is no doubt that Chinese is a language. And yes, this passage is somewhat similar to Voynichese. However, I believe that Chinese has more word variations than Voynichese (I'm not an expert, but I think that Chinese does not have sentences like zhu shu ku lu uku zhu chu tlu chutlu, please forgive my poor Chinese). By anomalies, I mean the well-known features of the manuscript text that constantly raise doubts about it.
15). Well... you're right.
16). Most likely. But this doesn't explain why Voynichese is so resistant to research and why we still have difficulty understanding it. 
17). Perhaps this is true. But why did the author allow the scribe he hired to write something unclear?
18). Let me remind you that you have the opportunity to correct all these mistakes .
Thanks again for the detailed response, and I apologize if this numbering looks bad. It was faster this way.