The 'Chinese' Theory: For and Against

[Shira_the_Mogul]

Hello!

I find this theory very interesting! I think there is ample possibility of Voynichese being tonal, and it would explain myriad curiosities about it; the glyph distribution being the biggest one, but also the analytical nature (there isn't much derivational morphology, is there?).

However, Chinese is where I start to scratch my head. Given the Voynich manuscript was likely produced around 1400-1420, we would be looking at a Ming dynasty text, and thus Middle Mandarin or another topolect (Cantonese, Hokkien, Wu, etc). This makes sense, as the glyph distribution does have a Modern Chinese feel to it. China has had contact with Western Europe since the Yuan dynasty as well, so it wouldn't be insane for an overseas Chinese to be seen here. What brings me pause is the situation: The Yuan dynasty introduced Phags-pa around in 1269 and it existed well until 1660, so a Chinese traveler would likely know this script and be actively using it. Why make a new one? This is especially odd if Shennong Bencao is what is being transcribed, as it is not a Mandarin Chinese text, but Literary Chinese. Phoneticised Literary Chinese is a crazy move.

The fact Shennong Bencao is in Literary Chinese brings many logistical problems to the theory. This language is, essentially, liturgical one that mimics the Zhou-Qin dynasty's written form. The Analects, Zhuangzi, and many other cornerstone texts are written in this language. Compared to Mandarin, its morphology, grammar, vocabulary, and basically everything are significantly different. A chief consequence of this is that there is a significant amount of homophony in the language that makes it very difficult to comprehend when phoneticised.

This is a poem by Hu Mingfu and Yuen Ren Chao designed to demonstrate this, made in the early 20th Century.
施氏食獅史
石室詩士施氏，嗜獅，誓食十獅。
氏時時適市視獅。
十時，適十獅適市。
是時，適施氏適市。
氏視是十獅，恃矢勢，使是十獅逝世。
氏拾是十獅屍，適石室。
石室濕，氏使侍拭石室。
石室拭，氏始試食是十獅。
食時，始識是十獅屍，實十石獅屍。
試釋是事。
Despite being super coherent, it is all /shi/ syllables. This is argumentum ad absurdum, but it demonstrates the disconnect between Old Chinese, the spoken form of this language from the Zhou-Qin dynasties, and Modern Chinese topolects. This is also modern Mandarin and would be different in the Mandarin we're seeing here.

Here is a line from the text and its Mandarin pronunciation:
藥有君臣佐使，以相宣攝合和者，宜用一君二臣五佐，又可一君三臣九佐使也。

yao you jun chen zuo shi, yi xiang xuan she he he zhe, yi yong yi jun er chen wu zuo, you ke yi jun san chen jiu zuo shi ye.

It looks retrievable at first, but most normal Chinese speakers would struggle considerably here. More than several syllables here have a massive amount of homophones (e.g. /yi/ has 80+, we see /he/ homophony in sequence, /you/ comes up in two grammatically significant but fully homophonous instances, etc), which adds cognitive load to what I've already talked about. zhe 者 is a major topic marker function word only seen in Literary Chinese and people who aren't fluent in this language do consider it quite difficult even when reading. We also see other major words like yi 以, xiang 相, shi 使, which are all important for reconstructing a full understanding. This is not realistic to derive when phoneticised, at least not without having VERY deep context.

Comprehending spoken Literary Chinese is, in many ways, very difficult, for the reasons outlined before. Today, students need outside context to even have a hope, but homophone density is a major blocker here. Here's a few citations that can help with grasping the problem, chiefly with regards to tones, but with other bits sprinkled in here and there.
Lau, K. (2018). Language Skills in Classical Chinese Text Comprehension. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, 47(1), 139–157. You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
Schaefer, V., Sung, H.-H., & Zhang, A. (2023). Phonetic Flooding: Immersing L2 Mandarin Learners in Tone Minimal Pairs with Ambiguous Context to Force Noticing and Enhance Lexical Encoding of Tone. Proceedings of the 13th Pronunciation in Second Language Learning and Teaching Conference. Pronunciation in Second Language Learning and Teaching Proceedings. You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
Li, W., Wang, L., & Yang, Y. (2014). Chinese Tone and Vowel Processing Exhibits Distinctive Temporal Characteristics: An Electrophysiological Perspective from Classical Chinese Poem Processing. PLoS ONE, 9(1), e85683. You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
Wang, W., Li, X., Ning, N., & Zhang, J. X. (2012). The nature of the homophone density effect: An ERP study with Chinese spoken monosyllable homophones. Neuroscience Letters, 516(1), 67–71. You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

This is all interesting, but what's my point? Writing out Shennong Bencao in phoneticised Literary Chinese would be incredibly odd and probably not even be legible to the writers. If the writers know about this text, then they are already a member of the literati class, as they need to have the knowledge of characters in the first place. Either that, or they have been told about it at-length and taught Literary Chinese by a literate person. But if they were, then they must know characters. It doesn't make much sense. If they spoke an archaic version of Chinese, like, pre-Middle Chinese split, then we would be seeing major linguistic differences that would not match the glyph distribution seen in the Voynich (e.g. More diverse finals).

Another minor observation: This script being written left-to-right horizontally, rather than right-to-left vertically, is an outlier for this time period. Even Phags-pa was vertically written. Perhaps it was dictated, as I believe someone here said? Interesting, at least.

Anyway, if this theory is correct, then:
- The writers somehow did not encounter Phags-pa, ever, or they would have just used it. This could mean they were an overseas Chinese family transmitting tradition. In this case, it would need to be at least three generations or so in. Either this, or they directly chose NOT to write in Phags-pa, which could be seen as an act of protest against Mongol rule, I guess?
- The writers were not literate in characters, or they would have simply used characters.
- The writers were heavily into Traditional Chinese Medicine.
- The scribe who wrote this may have developed the script to transcribe the Chinese being spoken by the practitioners, because the left-to-right horizontal format is unusual from a Chinese perspective at this time.
- The writers probably realised the problem with what they were doing, because we have not seen this script anywhere else.

This is an incredibly odd set of qualities. TCM and Literary Chinese proficiency go hand in hand even today (in fact, it's the main domain where LC gets you a job...).

Shennong Bencao is an incredibly formulaic text, so a statistical look at the sentences should be able to reveal a formulaic sentence structure if it is the text at play here. As far as I know, this is not the case, so it could be that it is not being phoneticised literally and instead being translated. This would, however, be quite odd; you don't see "Baihua" versions being produced until significantly later. It would also still be formulaic.

I'm probably adding things that have been discussed here, but I hope my background is helpful at least. By all means ask me any questions.