The 'Chinese' Theory: For and Against

[Shira_the_Mogul]

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With the exception of the Cyrillicisation of Dungan Mandarin, every phoneticisation of Chinese is derived from the Han script, either by making unique characters (Zhuang Sawndip, Tangut script, etc), or by doing extreme simplification of characters. Said simplification is normally of phonetic components of phono-semantic compounds. This is useful to remember for reference: The Han script has a ton of phonetic characters, and those phonetic components are consistent enough to be taken and used for phonetic scripts. If you see a character with 馬 in it, it will usually be pronounced /ma/, wherein you see 嗎，媽，碼, so on, so forth: All homophones. Given this, it is very easy to predict when something is Han-derived. 

If you want to look at character simplifications that would lead to phonetic scripts, Manyogana is a good place to start:
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It's the script that came before the hiragana and katakana scripts, which used Chinese characters phonetically. You can reasonably predict where simplifications come from, as they are usually high-usage characters from Confucian Classics.


Tarleton Perry Crawford's phonetic scripts, made with the help of Chinese Christians in the 19th Century, are another example of extreme simplifications if you are interested in this:
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You could also look at Hangeul, which was very similar to the above, but distances itself from the Han script a bit more. However, both Crawford's scripts and Hangeul are still made by making compound characters, they're just all phonetic. 

The problem I have, though, is that Voynichese just...doesn't look similar to any phonetic script that was made using the Han script as a base. It isn't very angular at all, and I have trouble seeing the components that would commonly be used for familiarity. If we are looking at a phoneticised Han script, I would expect to see something more angular; this book is seemingly the only case of this script existing, and it looks *very* mature considering its formalities (e.g. character variants at the top of the page). This would track with Manyogana, where you see cursive Chinese leading to more rounded shapes.



Looking at that glyph, though. It looks similar to 死, but there is such an aggressive stigma against this character that it is euphemised out of normal speech (e.g. 陟 "to ascend" is commonly used in Literary Chinese over this, as well as 卒, which is meant to euphemise 死). It remains a high enough usage character to be important, and could definitely be phoneticised, but I would consider this very odd. Assuming that glyph is 死, then you're looking at /sz/ for pronunciation. I don't know any other character that is really similar enough.

Given this book was made in the early 15th century, this is a time before the Han script was organised the way we see today; Zihui wasn't made yet, so we don't have Kangxi radicals; those would come around 200 years later. So you could be looking at a text that used Shuowen Jiezi to derive components. This is the most famous component-based organisation of characters pre-Zihui.
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I would highly doubt a phonetic dictionary like the Guangyun could help here, as it doesn't arrange by component, really...but in the interests of helping, here's a starting point:
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EDIT: 
I also see some attempts to phoneticize using Pinyin. I strongly, strongly advise against this beyond proof of concept, as Pinyin was made 600 years apart from whatever was spoken in the Voynich. Mandarin Chinese is marked for being one of the most divergent languages from Middle Chinese, losing most finals that are seen in any other Chinese topolect. This change was fairly recent by Chinese standards, happening around the turn of the Qing dynasty. Middle Mandarin was very, very different, which would fit the time period being looked at here. 

I would advise using Middle Mandarin reconstructions. Chinese linguists are obsessed with this sort of thing, so you are in good company. A reconstruction by Colbin W. South can be found here:
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Typically, these reconstructions use Hongwu Zhengyun as a basis, which was made in 1375 and would thus be a fairly good metric. This dictionary was also used to organise the Yongle Encyclopaedia!
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You could very reasonably use this to find out whether anything actually makes sense from a Middle Mandarin context.