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The 'Chinese' Theory: For and Against
- The 'Chinese' Theory: For and Against
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RE: The 'Chinese' Theory: For and Against
eggyk > 13-02-2026, 12:33 PM
(13-02-2026, 06:15 AM)MHTamdgidi_(Behrooz) Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Your Chinese solution is based on the notion that the "author" had to transcribe it in his own way to bring it home. My question is, why was that needed? He could go to a Chinese notary, scribe house, and say, "can you transcribe this for me so I can take it home?" He did not even need to know Chinese for that, orally or written.
That is a much more reliable way of doing this and bringing a copy home, than inventing a whole new transcription system. It does not even matter whether he knew Chinese or not, orally or not.
You are just going around and avoiding answering this simple question I was asking and I am not sure why you are doing this, Jorge. You are avoiding a question that undermines why the manuscript had to be transcribed in Voynichese in the first place.
So lets say that he brings home his transcribed document in chinese script. How would he understand anything in there once he gets back home? He probably wouldn't be able to read it.
If the purpose of the document being brought back was to propagate the knowledge contained within, having something that you can read out loud is important.
Example use case: A colleague of the author plans to go to the east, and would like to know some important words/phrases of eastern medicine (perhaps he may fall ill, and would like to able to ask for medicine). That colleague has four options to do this:
1) Bring an entire transcribed book of chinese that he cannot read along with him
2) Learn the local language, and hope that he knows/discovers the medicine before he needs it
3) Read, or be told, the spoken names of the medicines from a written document before leaving
4) Be told the spoken names of the medicines from a colleague before leaving
In such a case, the best options are to be told the names somehow. It's probably easier to do that from a written document, instead of the memory of one person. Lets remember also that the author could well have also written down important words such as "water, hello, nice to meet you" in a similar way, in order to not forget how they are said.
As someone who has learnt a second language later in life, I know full well that sometimes I cannot produce a certain spoken word from memory, but as soon as I hear the word I remember and understand it straight away.
EDIT: Another point is that the author actually might have taken the chinese version back as well. In that case, the transcribed version would be useful for learning and teaching how to speak the written chinese language. Compare the texts and a student could say "This symbol is spoken like this". -
RE: The 'Chinese' Theory: For and Against
Rafal > 13-02-2026, 01:32 PM
Quote:The quire binding is European. Unless you suggest the 'Author' shipped 15 calfskins from Europe to Asia, processed them there, and shipped them back to be bound
To be honest the binding happened probably much later and wasn't done by the original author.
So it is enough that some traveller carried some parchment with him.
He could also write the first version on some different parchment or even paper and then back in Europe ask some European scribe to copy it to the parchment that we own.
These are things that we may never know. Personally I see more potential in the text analysis. -
RE: The 'Chinese' Theory: For and Against
Jorge_Stolfi > 13-02-2026, 01:54 PM
(13-02-2026, 10:17 AM)dashstofsk Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Any professional statistician is going to swat the robustness of the analysis in your report.
OK, so why don't you ask a statistician what he thinks of the match?
Quote:your hypothesis that there is a match between aiin words and 'zhu'.
The hipothesis is not about "aiin words". There is a close match between daiin specifically (alone or as a suffix) and 主.
Quote:The shape of the histograms of paragraph sizes are the shape of any random distribution.
OK, then I make the same challenge I made to @oshfdk and others: find me any old manuscript -- any language, any origin, any topic, any date before 1500 -- whose parag count and min, max, and average size are anywhere close to those of the SBJ as the SPS numbers are.
And if you find such a book, see if you can find one parag and one word whose places of occurrence in that parag match those of 主 in the Rooster recipe, even with 10% error.
I will be waiting. I am still waiting.
Quote:The long paragraph does not give enough data on which the methods of statistical hypothesis testing can be used.
Sigh. Why do I have to do all the work myself?
The relative positions of the seven occurrences of 主 in the Rooster recipe are 0.19, 0.87, 0.97, 1.11, 1.35, 1.51, 1.79.
The relative positions of the five occurrences of daiin in f105v.32 are 0.05, 0.70, 0.90, 1.20, 1.62.
So what is the probability that the second set of five numbers "matches" five of the other seven numbers by chance, if we allow an arbitrary shift C (the same for all five numbers)?
With the arbitrary shift, the second set is 0.05+C, 0.70+C, 0.90+C, 1.20+C, 1.62+C Obviously if we pick C = 0.14 the lowest numbers will match. To simplify the problem, let's instead take the differences between the first number and the other numbers
For the Rooster recipe, the six differences are 0.68, 0.78, 0.92, 1.16, 1.32. 1.60.
For the f105v.32 parag, the four differences are 0.65, 0.85, 1.15, 1.57. Note that the "C" cancelled out.
You should admit that there is a fairly good match between these last four numbers and four of the six numbers above. The discrepancies are -0.03, -0.07, -0.01, and -0.01.
But computing the probability of these matches being due to chance is complicated because the two lists are automatically sorted. So instead let's look at the differences between consecutive numbers. That is, the number of characters between successive occurrences of 主 in the SBJ and the number of EVA characters between successive occurrences of daiin in the SPS. Both divided by the respective average parag sizes.
For the SBJ, the six differences are 0.68, 0.10, 0.14, 0.24, 0.16, 0.28.
For the SPS, the four differences are 0.65, 0.20, 0.30, 0.42.
The alleged match above then becomes: the bottom four numbers match the top six, if we are allowed to add any two pairs of them, or any three.
In particular, we claim the match 065≈0.68, 0.20≈0.10+0.14, 0.30≈0.24, and 0.42≈0.16+0.28. The discrepancies are -0.03, -0.04, +0.06, and -0.02.
How good is this match? The smallest relative gap in this case is 0.10 and the largest is 0.68, so let's assume that, if we just picked at random a parag and a word such that the word occurs five times in it, each if the four successive differences would be uniformly distributed in the range [ 0.10 _ 0.68 ]. the probability that each of those four numbers fell within ±0.06 of the corresponding SBJ number would be at most 0.12/0.58 ≈ 0.184. The probability that all four fell within that range would be less than 0.184^4 ≈ .00183, or less than 2 in 1000.
But we must account for the pair sums. There are 14 ways to reduce a list of six numbers to a list of four by adding consecutive numbers. So the probability that a random (parag,word) with 5 occurrences would match the Rooster recipe with any allowed fudging (C shift and additions) and with discrepancy less than ±0.06 is 14 times .00183, that is, less than 2.8 percent.
Now you may say that there may be more than a hundred pairs (parag,word) in the SPS with at least 5 occurrences, so there is a substantial probability that some such pair would provide a match as good as the above. But my (parag,word) pair was not picked that way. Again, I picked daiin because it was the most common word in the SPS, and I picked f105v.32 because it was the longest parag (both in words and in EVA characters). And the same for 主 and b1.4.096. There was no cherry-picking there.
Besides, to match the last 主 in Rooster, at relative position 1.79, the length of the candidate SPS parag would have to be almost twice the average length. That condition drastically reduces the number of (parag,word) pairs available to cherry-pickers.
But you still need more evidence? Sigh, okay, it is coming...
All the best, --stolfi -
RE: The 'Chinese' Theory: For and Against
Yavernoxia > 13-02-2026, 02:10 PM
IMHO, the core scenario of the backstory, namely a European learning spoken Chinese and having a scribe transcribe a Chinese text orally into an invented phonetic script, is extremely far-fetched. If the author already understood spoken Chinese well enough, he could simply have translated the text into his own language instead of inventing a new script. If not, relying on oral dictation through intermediaries would have produced huge errors, yet the text shows patterns that are far too regular to be explained as random dictation artifacts.
Yes, it’s interesting (as I mentioned in a post last year) for me to explore such an uncommon hypothesis, but as the thread has continued, it has become increasingly hard to take seriously. It would need much, much more support to be convincing.
(13-02-2026, 12:30 PM)AliciaNelPresente Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
On this point, I agree with Alicia completely. Based on the evidence, if the scribe was (most likely) Northern Italian, the materials are European, and the graphic style is European, then the null hypothesis must be that the text itself is also of local (European) origin. To argue otherwise requires extraordinary evidence, which the Chinese theory fails to provide.(13-02-2026, 11:36 AM)Jorge_Stolfi Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
(13-02-2026, 09:19 AM)AliciaNelPresente Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I can't believe you're still mulling over this theory
I can't believe that people are still clinging to the "European Origin" theory -- which is supported by ABSOLUTELY ZERO evidence, and contradicted by 408 tons (metric) of evidence.
The claim that the European Origin theory is supported by 'ABSOLUTELY ZERO evidence' is scientifically untenable. It ignores the entire forensic reality of the object.
Let’s look at the '408 tons' of hard evidence that anchor this object to Europe, specifically Northern Italy:
- The radiocarbon dating (1404–1438) places the vellum in the early 15th century. The ink chemistry (Iron Gall) is consistent with European recipes of that period. The quire binding is European. Unless you suggest the 'Author' shipped 15 calfskins from Europe to Asia, processed them there, and shipped them back to be bound, the physical artifact is European.
- The Scribe, your own admission: You concede that 'The analysis of castle and dress drawings... makes it almost certain that the Scribe was from Northern Italy. If the scribe is Italian, the materials are European, and the style is Venetian/Lombardic, then the Null Hypothesis must be that the text is also of local origin. To argue otherwise requires extraordinary evidence, which the 'Chinese Theory' lacks.
- The 'bench' or 'gallows' are common in legal shorthand of the era. It is far more logical that a European scribe used familiar abbreviation symbols to write a constrained European code, rather than inventing a new phonetic script that coincidentally looks exactly like a Latin chancery ledger.
You cite low entropy as proof of a monosyllabic Asian language. This is a logical leap. Low entropy simply indicates a highly constrained system. A ledger, an index, or a technical list in Latin also exhibits low entropy and rigid structure because it is not narrative prose. We don't need to traverse the Silk Road to explain rigidity, we just need to look at a European inventory.
We are looking at a European artifact, written by a European scribe, using European symbols. The 'strangeness' comes from the method of encoding, not the continent of origin. -
RE: The 'Chinese' Theory: For and Against
dashstofsk > 13-02-2026, 02:20 PM
(13-02-2026, 01:54 PM)Jorge_Stolfi Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.why don't you ask a statistician what he thinks of the match?
I don't need to ask anyone. I was sufficiently schooled in statistics as part of my university mathematics course to know what I'm talking about. -
RE: The 'Chinese' Theory: For and Against
MHTamdgidi_(Behrooz) > 13-02-2026, 03:48 PM
(13-02-2026, 02:10 PM)Yavernoxia Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.IMHO, the core scenario of the backstory, namely a European learning spoken Chinese and having a scribe transcribe a Chinese text orally into an invented phonetic script, is extremely far-fetched. If the author already understood spoken Chinese well enough, he could simply have translated the text into his own language instead of inventing a new script. If not, relying on oral dictation through intermediaries would have produced huge errors, yet the text shows patterns that are far too regular to be explained as random dictation artifacts.
Yes, it’s interesting (as I mentioned in a post last year) for me to explore such an uncommon hypothesis, but as the thread has continued, it has become increasingly hard to take seriously. It would need much, much more support to be convincing.
(13-02-2026, 12:30 PM)AliciaNelPresente Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
On this point, I agree with Alicia completely. Based on the evidence, if the scribe was (most likely) Northern Italian, the materials are European, and the graphic style is European, then the null hypothesis must be that the text itself is also of local (European) origin. To argue otherwise requires extraordinary evidence, which the Chinese theory fails to provide.(13-02-2026, 11:36 AM)Jorge_Stolfi Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
(13-02-2026, 09:19 AM)AliciaNelPresente Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I can't believe you're still mulling over this theory
I can't believe that people are still clinging to the "European Origin" theory -- which is supported by ABSOLUTELY ZERO evidence, and contradicted by 408 tons (metric) of evidence.
The claim that the European Origin theory is supported by 'ABSOLUTELY ZERO evidence' is scientifically untenable. It ignores the entire forensic reality of the object.
Let’s look at the '408 tons' of hard evidence that anchor this object to Europe, specifically Northern Italy:
- The radiocarbon dating (1404–1438) places the vellum in the early 15th century. The ink chemistry (Iron Gall) is consistent with European recipes of that period. The quire binding is European. Unless you suggest the 'Author' shipped 15 calfskins from Europe to Asia, processed them there, and shipped them back to be bound, the physical artifact is European.
- The Scribe, your own admission: You concede that 'The analysis of castle and dress drawings... makes it almost certain that the Scribe was from Northern Italy. If the scribe is Italian, the materials are European, and the style is Venetian/Lombardic, then the Null Hypothesis must be that the text is also of local origin. To argue otherwise requires extraordinary evidence, which the 'Chinese Theory' lacks.
- The 'bench' or 'gallows' are common in legal shorthand of the era. It is far more logical that a European scribe used familiar abbreviation symbols to write a constrained European code, rather than inventing a new phonetic script that coincidentally looks exactly like a Latin chancery ledger.
You cite low entropy as proof of a monosyllabic Asian language. This is a logical leap. Low entropy simply indicates a highly constrained system. A ledger, an index, or a technical list in Latin also exhibits low entropy and rigid structure because it is not narrative prose. We don't need to traverse the Silk Road to explain rigidity, we just need to look at a European inventory.
We are looking at a European artifact, written by a European scribe, using European symbols. The 'strangeness' comes from the method of encoding, not the continent of origin.
@Jorge_Stolfi and @eggyk
In agreement with others in the thread expressing their doubts, I am also still not convinced, with all the twists and turns you are giving to make the back story plausible. Ultimately, you need a plausible backstory, and this should be evident even now, without having understood your text, because your logic depends on it, since you are saying somebody went through all that inventing to make the VM “recipe” section.
You need to show that the statistical cloud explanation can come down on plausible contextual Earthly grounds.
Your explanation does not make sense on its own logical plausibility.
He goes to China. He learns orally some Chinese. Since he can’t read it, he asks others what it is. They say, it is a great medical or whatever book. He says, “I should take this back home”. He goes to a notary and says (in oral Chinese), “sir, I want you to copy this exactly as it is, so that I can show precisely what the book contains for research and university/publishing purposes if needed, since ultimately someone has to rely on the original text to benefit from it; but since I can understand oral Chinese, if you don’t mind, as you are scribing a copy for me, please read it aloud. This way, I can, at the same time you are scribing, write my translation of it in my own language; yes, there will be some terms and names that are just Chinese, and I have to study further their equivalents in my European context, so I will transliterate them directly, but words such as “it is used for this or that” are things I can just translate in my own language.” So, I will just transliterate in my own European (or whatever) language the Chinese words I don’t have equivalents for, while most will be in my own translated language. This way, I kiss two birds at the same time; I will have my translation and the original precise copy.”
He comes back to Europe, presumably in 1400s. He is excited to share it. He can publish his own translation (with the transcriptions in his own alphabet of some of the Chinese names, if needed), but the overall text is in his own language, prefaced as ‘hey, I found this great book, here is the meanings, some words here or there I use as in the original, heard orally, but I have easily translated the common repeated words such as “this is also used for this, or for that,” …; by the way, I will go to the scholars and those who may know Chinese, and also share the exact Chinese copy I asked some scribe to make, for proper verification, for those who may need it in the future.”
The above would have made the book available in Europe in 1400s in understandable language, not in 1700s.
Jorge, are you really serious about “Absolute Zero” for European origin of the VM! I think this is just telling of your extremely statistical reductionist logic being pursued. Everything else that may challenge your theory is dismissed as AFAIK errors, ifs and whens, decorative images are just that and not relevant since sections may not be of the same book, and so on, arguments. So, you end up having abandoned every other basis in the manuscript that challenges your statistical comparison theory just for the sake of your statistical finding, which themselves are based on certain “adjustments” regarding paragraph endings, star markings, page orderings, and so on.
I think these arguments must have developed over the many years trying to support your Chinese theory, and now are showing their extremely reductionist nature, unfortunately.
But, your backstory’s plausibility is zero, in my understanding. It just does not make sense. And it is not something you can ignore and postpone until the text is read. It goes to the heart of why the VM (section) exists in your view. -
RE: The 'Chinese' Theory: For and Against
JoJo_Jost > 13-02-2026, 04:14 PM
I think we should pause here and calm down.
There are actually four groups of arguments, if I understand correctly.
Group 1: Stolfi and others who say that the statistical results are highly significant and that a Chinese text is possible to very probable.
Group 2: The statistical results are not sufficient for proof.
Group 3: There is a lack of evidence for other words in both directions: duplicate words from the Chinese passage have no correspondence in the Voynich manuscript, and duplicate words from the Voynich passage have no correspondence in the Chinese passage.
4th group: The background of the theory is questionable, i.e. is a Chinese text logical at all and consistent with the VMS?
Regarding the individual points:
4. is purely hypothetical on both sides. I think it will be difficult to find evidence for either side here – it remains a matter of conjecture – the discussion has been going on for a long time and is not getting us anywhere – because that is not what is at issue at the moment.
3. Here, of course, it would be helpful if another word with a correspondence in both texts could be found. Finding this could take some time before it can be proven or disproven.
1. / 2. Here comes the crucial question, and I think we should focus on it:
Re 1. What could be added to Stolfi's analysis to further support the evidence?
Re 2. What would be necessary to clearly refute the evidence?
I think this would be a good way to return to a reasonable discussion.
-
RE: The 'Chinese' Theory: For and Against
oshfdk > 13-02-2026, 04:38 PM
(13-02-2026, 01:54 PM)Jorge_Stolfi Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.OK, then I make the same challenge I made to @oshfdk and others: find me any old manuscript -- any language, any origin, any topic, any date before 1500 -- whose parag count and min, max, and average size are anywhere close to those of the SBJ as the SPS numbers are.
And if you find such a book, see if you can find one parag and one word whose places of occurrence in that parag match those of 主 in the Rooster recipe, even with 10% error.
I see no need for this. If after hunting for many years you managed to identify the best statistical fit for SPS, I trust that it's reasonably good compared to the competition. Especially given that you went through the trouble of inventing some custom paragraph breaking rules. I'd be surprised if an alternative match can be easily found which would surpass yours statistically.
I don't think this means much for the validity of your argument. This conversation pretty much reminds me of other solvers who would insist that they have "translated" a larger percentage of the vocabulary, so this means their "translation" is the best one and would ask to show them a "better" translation which would cover a larger portion of the manuscript. -
RE: The 'Chinese' Theory: For and Against
Aga Tentakulus > 13-02-2026, 04:40 PM
(13-02-2026, 11:36 AM)Jorge_Stolfi Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I can't believe that people are still clinging to the "European Origin" theory -- which is supported by ABSOLUTELY ZERO evidence, and contradicted by 408 tons (metric) of evidence.
You're wrong.
1. Learn to read properly.
The curse lies in the details.
2. A small detail changes the outcome.
The Templars did it.
3. Why do you accept the difference between EVA ch and sh,
but do not see the same difference in other symbols?
4. Why do I see your faults, but you don't see mine?
Until that is clarified, I have no need for Chinese. Because these references disrupt the transcriptions.
No progress for 100 years, now you know why.
And that's just the tip of the iceberg. I could go on and on. -
RE: The 'Chinese' Theory: For and Against
eggyk > 13-02-2026, 06:25 PM
(13-02-2026, 03:48 PM)MHTamdgidi_(Behrooz) Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.“sir, I want you to copy this exactly as it is, so that I can show precisely what the book contains for research and university/publishing purposes if needed, since ultimately someone has to rely on the original text to benefit from it; but since I can understand oral Chinese, if you don’t mind, as you are scribing a copy for me, please read it aloud. This way, I can, at the same time you are scribing, write my translation of it in my own language; yes, there will be some terms and names that are just Chinese, and I have to study further their equivalents in my European context, so I will transliterate them directly, but words such as “it is used for this or that” are things I can just translate in my own language.” So, I will just transliterate in my own European (or whatever) language the Chinese words I don’t have equivalents for, while most will be in my own translated language. This way, I kiss two birds at the same time; I will have my translation and the original precise copy.
When presented in that way, of course it sounds outlandish. But for it to be outlandish you have assumed that they completely understand oral chinese (they may know, say 50% of words). You also assume that there are any chinese speakers in europe at this time, is that reasonable? How many european scholars in the 1400s knew any chinese? How many people could he show a chinese manuscript to in europe that would understand it?
What is more likely (in my opinion) is that he went to any literate chinese person (while in china) and said: "I have acquired this book of medicine, could you read it for me slowly? I will write down what you say onto the page phonetically, and I can accurately translate it later"
Your assertion that you can just easily translate, on the go, as someone reads to you seems pretty unlikely to me. What about homophones? Would a foreigner be able to ascertain such context as he hears it? Sometimes the same word, with the same meaning changes forms depending on context. What about word order, too?
Imagine a foreigner wanted to transcribe english this way, and the person says "He knew that he has two of them, which is two too many". Try doing that as its being spoken. Later on it may be possible based on context. So, the text may be something like: "He new that he has to of them, which is to to many", which is quite correctable, although tedious.