Marco correctly emphasized the need to "start from function words" in the other thread, and so I want to return to this point here, as I explore this Middle English hypothesis, to see if it really is just an amusing joke, as I first thought, or if there really is something to this idea.
As I mentioned and repeated in the other thread, I stumbled upon the Middle English scribal abbreviation "ẏ" for the definite article "ye" / "the" You are not allowed to view links.
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Login to view.. And it actually would make so much sense if EVA [ch-] as a prefix represented this Middle English dotted "y" standing for the article "ye" / "the". Then [chey] and/or [chy] could represent the article "ye" / "the" as an independent word. And it would still be consistent with [chedy] = Middle English "yes", although I must note that [chedy] could also be "yese" meaning "these" in this interpretation (as in fact I interpreted it in [chedykar] in the second line of You are not allowed to view links.
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Login to view. above, although the point of this post is to get away from the line by line interpretations for the moment).
If I mention the idea of [chedy] = "yes", then I really should also point out that [qokain] / [qokaiin] = "no" also fits very well within my Germanic reading system as it already currently stands. Both words are overwhelmingly frequent in Dialect B, and in the bathing women section and the final (so-called "Recipes") section in particular.
If [chedy] = "yes", then the ending [-dy] could simply represent the English plural ending "-s". If my Northern Middle English dialect hypothesis above is correct, the "-es" ending would also appear both on 3rd person singular and on general plural verb forms, making this ending overwhelmingly ubiquitous throughout the text.
[daiin] / [dain] would be "so" in this interpretation, as indeed I interpreted the latter form in the first word of the second line of You are not allowed to view links.
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I observe that the vord EVA [aiin] is often followed by a vord beginning with [ch-], especially in the final (so-called "Recipes") section. Consistent with the above interpretations, [aiin] = "o", and actually this could be English
o' , the abbreviation for "of" or "on", well-known in phrases such as "o'clock" or "top o' the mornin", etc. This would neatly explain the combination [aiin ch-] as "o' y" = "of the"!
I should also note here that
o' is present as well in the now-extinct "Forth and Bargy dialect", also known as "Yola", an Anglic language in County Wexford, Ireland, descended from Middle English and established in that region as early as the 12th century.
The vord EVA [ol] is the second most frequent vord in the entire Voynich ms, but it is overwhelmingly more frequent in the bathing women section than anywhere else, as far as I can tell. It is plausible that [ol] = English "us", a logical word to be used often in dialogue in the bathing women section. Furthermore, [-ol] as a suffix in general could represent the English adjective suffix "-ous".
I will stop here for now. There is much more to investigate. But the connections between the most frequent Voynich ms text vords, prefixes & suffixes, and the most common Middle English function words, appear to be very promising indeed.
Geoffrey C.