The 'Chinese' Theory: For and Against

[Jorge_Stolfi]

With the exception of the Cyrillicisation of Dungan Mandarin, every phoneticisation of Chinese is derived from the Han script

You mean phonetizations of Chinese by Chinese.  Foreigners who developed phonetic scripts for Chinese obviously did not derive them from the Han script.  Like the proto-pinyin developed by Matteo Ricci and other Jesuits around 1600. 

And that would be the case for the hypothetical traveler who developed the Voynichese script in order to record the Shennong Bencao Jing (SBJ) and presumably other Chinese books, as dictated by a native.

Hangeul, which was very similar to the above, but distances itself from the Han script a bit more.

Do you mean Hangul, the current script of Korean? As far as I can see, it owes nothing to the Han script other than the square outline and being meant to be written with a brush. 

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.

And that is precisely what was expected.   In the proposed scenario, it was developed precisely because the Author did not know the Han script.

Looking at that glyph, though. It looks similar to 死

Thanks, I see the resemblance.  Although, as you say, it would be a very odd word to put on the cover of a medical book. 

Assuming that glyph is 死, then you're looking at /sz/ for pronunciation.

I don't think that it was copied for its phonetic value; the Author had the Voynichese script for that.  My guess is that it was copied just for a sort of decoration -- like a book about Egypt could have hieroglyphs on the cover, copied from some famous monument, even if the Author or the cover designer could not read them.  

I have somewhere a book on the Maya that uses Maya numerals  to number the chapters.

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:
You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

Thanks!  However I still have no clue about the language: it could be any language from East Asia whose nation had Chinese cultural influence around 1400 CE, and where the SBJ could have been read and dictated by a local scholar or physician in a one-syllable-per-hanzi fashion.  

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. A reconstruction by Colbin W. South can be found here:
You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. Typically, these reconstructions use Hongwu Zhengyun as a basis, which was made in 1375 and would thus be a fairly good metric.  You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

I am quite aware that the spoken language must have been different from any language spoken today.  And I wonder how accurate are the linguists' reconstructions. (Linguists do not seem used to distinguish between well-founded deductions and wild guesses. Maybe because the former are very rare...) 

So I have no plans to identify the pronunciation of the Voynichese glyphs.  

I use modern Mandarin pinyin mostly as (1) an example of what a phonetic recording of an East Asian language looks like, and (2) as way to render my posts easier to follow by those readers who (like me) find it difficult to memorize hanzi or distinguish 主 from 生 etc.

All the best, --stolfi