The 'Chinese' Theory: For and Against

[eggyk]

The mutual intelligibility of the written Sinitic languages is a key assumption of your entire understanding of the COT.

NO IT IS NOT.  It is absolutely irrelevant to it.

Can we hammer in on this point for a moment? It feels like you are talking across eachother when it comes to this.

If i'm correct, Jorge's theory does not rely on mutual intelligibility between different asian languages. It just relies on voynichese being the phonetic transcription of one specific spoken asian language. That language would have been any of the ones that could understand and read out loud the written chinese language, which the SBJ was written in. The fact that multiple languages could all understand the same text is surely not indicative that the spoken languages were mutually intelligible. 

For example, if I show this: 

   

someone from england would understand and say "house"
someone from netherlands would understand and say "huis"
someone from Germany would understand and say "haus"
someone from Spain would understand and say "Casa"
someone from France would understand and say "Maison"

Then ask them to say the word to eachother. Some languages might work it out as they are similar, but some would have no idea what the other was saying. All of them understood the same "written language", yet they are not mutually intelligible when spoken. (I understand written chinese is more complex than a drawing of a house but hopefully my point is clear". 

In a scenario where an english person is being dictated to by a spanish person, the english person writes down "Kahsah". The english person stays in spain for a while, learns the basic lingo, and very later on reads "Kahsah" out loud. "Ahh, House!". This scenario would have worked with any of the languages in europe, and if he one day forgot what "Kahsah" means, he would have to go back to the same spanish speaking areas and ask.

As to whether the written language was readable by multiple languages, aren't we discussing a quite concise use of language? It's not a long winding story, it's just the same format over and over again, using the same words (other than nouns, basically).