The 'Chinese' Theory: For and Against

[Jorge_Stolfi]

Aren't the justifications for removing certain sections of the SBJ based on interpretations of a Dictation Scenario? If he could discern which areas to remove on his own, he must have been able to read the chinese characters

There are other scenarios that could result in the VMS that we have, with SPS=SBJ and/or the COT.  Maybe the Dictator was a "Chinese" who visited Europe.  Maybe the Author could read Chinese characters, but decided to translate them into a phonetic script for the benefit of others (like his German-born heir) who could speak the language but did not know the characters.  Maybe Voynichese is a codebook cipher where each hanzi was mapped to a number in a funky number system, without going through the sounds.  

However, those alternative scenarios,and others I can think of, seem to be much less likely than my Dictation one, and some are not consistent with the statistics etc.  But maybe someone can think of some better alternative.

Anyway, if Voynichese is indeed a phonetic script, and the Author understood the spoken language, no matter how he got the phonetic representation he would have realized that those fields of each entry were useless -- if not before he started, then shortly into the project.  He surely knew the spoken words for "sweet", "sour", "warm", "another name", "grows", etc; and any doctor would have explained to him that those flavors and provenances are not literal ("excuse me, but how can rooster quills be sweet and warm?") but codes into Chinese medical theory -- and useless outside of it.

Even without knowing the language (written or spoken) the Author in theory could have recognized those fields because they are almost always at specific places in the recipe, and are introduced by specific characters: 味 = "flavor", 一名 = "another name", and 生 = "provenance,habitat".  To exclude those fields he would have to skip from the 味 (inclusive) to the next 主 (exclusive), and anything from the first 一名 or 生 to the end of the recipe.  Which is my case, in fact.

All the best, --stolfi