The 'Chinese' Theory: For and Against

[Jorge_Stolfi]

Would it really be quicker to design an entirely new writing system instead of simply using latin letters? Is writing daiin really quicker than zhǔ, djoo, ju, or something else?

I asked the same question, but for some reason I didn't get an answer.

Sorry for not replying to you directly, but I did answer that question, several times.

it is easier to write characters as ju, zi, guo, etc., because its 1). shortly

Is it? We do not know how 主 was pronounced in the local language by that hypothetical Dictator; "zhǔ" (note the tone) is the reading in modern Mandarin, written in pinyin.  

Gemini says that it would be zyu2 in modern Cantonese, written in jyutping, one of the two common phonetic notations; the "2" indicates the second of six possible tones. If the scenario happened today in Vietnam, the Dictator's reading would probably be written chủ in the modern Vietnamese script (that is a "hook" accent over the "u").   

But we know that all those languages changed a lot in the last 600 years.  And keep in mind that the Author would have never been exposed to a phonetic notation for that language, or to any way of encoding tones.  Pinyin, jyutping  the Vietnamese script were developed later, over many decades, by people who knew the languages very well; so those writing systems are fairly optimized in terms of compactness and writing speed. 

The matches that I have found so far indicate that, on average, Voynichese uses approximately 5 EVA letters for each Chinese character.   The following pinyin text with numeric tones (which may be the sort of encoding that the Author may have devised, if he was particularly clever) has 39 words and 169 non-blank characters

• tian1 xiong2 wei4 xin1 wen1 zhu3 da4 feng1 han2
  
• shi1 bi4 li4 jie2 tong4 jiu1 luan2 huan3 ji2 po4
  
• ji1 ju4 xie2 qi4 jin1 chuang1 qiang2 jin1 gu3
  
• qing1 shen1 jian4 xing2 yi1 ming2 bai2 mu4 sheng1
  
• shan1 gu3
  

which is 4.2 Latin+Arabic characters per Chinese character.  Would anyone care to compare the two in number of strokes? That is, how many pen strokes is 5 EVA letters versus 3.2 Latin letters plus 1 digit, on average?

The Author may have though of Voynichese more of a You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. system than a precise phonetic notation.  Thus he created a new alphabet, instead of using the Latin one, for the same reason that the inventors of shorthand systems do.

2). more understandable to the reader.

Which reader?  During the dictation, the Author would have worried only whether he could read his own notes, once he got back to Europe.

In fact, the "Voynichese script" that he used during the dictation may have been different from the one we see in the VMS.  The latter may be a "block letter" version of the "semi-cursive" script of draft.  Just similar enough that the Scribe could copy the draft on his own.

Again, let's recall the Codex Cumanicus - the missionaries were more cunning and decided to write the Polovtsian language in Latin.

Given the purpose of that book, it was important to use a phonetic notation that generic missionaries could read aloud fluently without having to learn a new alphabet.  (Even if they did not fully understand the language.)  But the book itself was produced "off-line" at a much slower pace, by priests who presumably were fluent in the language; not by a foreigner under dictation. 

People must often have invented original scripts for "obscure" languages, all through the Middle Ages.  But only a few caught on: Cyrillic, Glagolitic, Armenian, Georgian, Runic, ...  The others must have become tinder for their authors' fireplaces...

but to me, the Chinese theory seems like a very, very big speculation...

First, the dictation scenario is NOT an argument for the Chinese Theory.  In my view, the SPS≈SBJ claim was satisfactorily proved already by the numerical 主<->daiin matches in the "red rooster recipe.  Back then I showed that the the probability of the measured distances matching that well by accident was very low. The additional matches collected since then only "rained on water", as they say over here.  

So I consider the Chinese Origin theory, in the wider sense, a fact.  The dictation scenario is only my best guess for how that fact came to be.  Other scenarios are possible, but seem less likely and do not fit as well with all the features of the VMS.

So, what is in the dictation scenario that makes you say "a very, very big speculation"?  There were hundreds if not thousands of Europeans who could have satisfied the conditions assumed by the Scenario.  Marco Polo could have been the Author, except that he probably was much more interested in Chinese girls than in Chinese books...

All the best, --stolfi