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The 'Chinese' Theory: For and Against

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• The 'Chinese' Theory: For and Against

• RE: The 'Chinese' Theory: For and Against

  Jorge_Stolfi > 18-07-2026, 04:00 AM

  (18-07-2026, 03:42 AM)rikforto Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I have not received a defintion of "meaning" that works for both positions

  (16-07-2026, 10:48 PM)Jorge_Stolfi Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.The meaning of a symbol, a hanzi, a string of written letters, a diagram etc. is whatever the person who looks at it thinks it mean. The meaning of a spoken word, alarm, clap, whistle, etc is whatever the person who hears it thinks it mean.

  ---

  [quote"rikforto" pid='88037' dateline='1784342557']Formally, you never concluded if the words could be recovered or not. [/quote]
  

  (17-07-2026, 11:24 AM)Jorge_Stolfi Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.There is no way to know what the languages spoken in 300 BCE sounded like.

• RE: The 'Chinese' Theory: For and Against

  rikforto > 18-07-2026, 04:37 AM

  I think it is both rude and harder to read to put things in red text, however:
  

  (18-07-2026, 03:42 AM)rikforto Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Obviously I think these are in logical opposition or I would not have set them up as a contradiction you need to account for. That said, I am perfectly comfortable with the resolution being a synthesis position or some other third way. But if you want me to understand how these ideas coexist, you must write down an accounting of that coexistence. I quoted you because I read your posts, so writing the same thing slightly reworded with lots of bold emphasis will not resolve the contradiction I have identified. If I could do it on my own, I would not have asked about the seemingly contradictory posts, I would just put that resolution into the write-up.

  
  To the first pull quote, the other part of my question about how to reconcile it with the other quotes about consistent meaning between languages still stands. Are you still maintaining that? Critically, how?
  
  
  To the second pull quote, you told me that I can't infer that it's only about the sounds. If that is your entire conclusion, then surely I can represent you that way. 
  
  Again, if you would like to explain these positions, preferably in black and white, I am listening.

• RE: The 'Chinese' Theory: For and Against

  Jorge_Stolfi > 18-07-2026, 04:45 AM

  (18-07-2026, 02:03 AM)J_Voy Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Personally, I don't think that a Chinese theory is likely, my main reason for this is that Chinese is a Sino-Tibetan language, and You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. to You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. contain the names of some of the months of the year in some sort of Romance language, along with You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. containing text in a corrupted form of the Latin alphabet, either way, You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. is definitely written in an Indo-European language, not a Sino-Tibetan, or to be more specific, a Sinitic one.

  
  In the most general terms, my Chinese Origin theory (COT) says that the Voynichese text is a phonetic transcription of a monosyllabic natural language, not encrypted.  
  
  Under the COT, the only plausible possibilities for the language are East Asan and Southeast Asian languages, including the Chinese languages proper, Vietnamese, Burmese, Lao, Khmer, Thai, Tibetan, Hmong, and other more obscure ones.  Thus whenever I write "China" or "Chinese" below, please understand "any one of those countries".
  
  In general, the words of those languages are not inflected for case, number, gender, tense, mood, etc.  They don't use articles and make relatively limited use of prepositions and other connectives, relying instead on word order and context to indicate the semantic roles (subject, object, verb, etc.) of the parts of a sentence.  Since each word is a single syllable, word length is sharply limited, and the words have a multiple-slot structure where each slot can be empty or filled with a limited subset of the phonemes.  All these features are seen in the Voynichese text, and are not seen in "European" languages, including Hebrew, Arabic, Turkish, Persian, Ethiopian, etc.
  
  The COT does not say that the Author (who composed the Voynichese text) and/or the Scribe (who copied it onto vellum)  were Chinese, or that the book was written and/or scribed in China.  It admits that the Scribe was European and was accustomed to write in some European language, and that the vellum was produced in Europe. 
  
  There are several possible scenarios for how the basic COT claim above could have become true.  The one which I think most likely is that the Author was a traveler who spent a few years in China, had one or more Chinese books dictated to him, and brought back those dictation notes to Europe; where he hired a local scribe to copy his notes to vellum and draw the illustrations.
  
  The COT does not say anything about non-Voynichese text -- the month names and the "marginalia".  The fact that those are written is (deformed) Latin letters and some (broken) European language does not contradict it. Besides, it seems likely that those text fragments, especially the marginalia, were added by later owners.
  
  All the best, --stolfi

• RE: The 'Chinese' Theory: For and Against

  J_Voy > 18-07-2026, 06:08 AM

  Jorge_Stolfi dateline='[url=tel:1784346340' Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.1784346340[/url]']
  

  J_Voy dateline='[url=tel:1784336595' Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.1784336595[/url]']
  Personally, I don't think that a Chinese theory is likely, my main reason for this is that Chinese is a Sino-Tibetan language, and You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. to You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. contain the names of some of the months of the year in some sort of Romance language, along with You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. containing text in a corrupted form of the Latin alphabet, either way, You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. is definitely written in an Indo-European language, not a Sino-Tibetan, or to be more specific, a Sinitic one.

  
  In the most general terms, my Chinese Origin theory (COT) says that the Voynichese text is a phonetic transcription of a monosyllabic natural language, not encrypted.  
  
  Under the COT, the only plausible possibilities for the language are East Asan and Southeast Asian languages, including the Chinese languages proper, Vietnamese, Burmese, Lao, Khmer, Thai, Tibetan, Hmong, and other more obscure ones.  Thus whenever I write "China" or "Chinese" below, please understand "any one of those countries".
  
  In general, the words of those languages are not inflected for case, number, gender, tense, mood, etc.  They don't use articles and make relatively limited use of prepositions and other connectives, relying instead on word order and context to indicate the semantic roles (subject, object, verb, etc.) of the parts of a sentence.  Since each word is a single syllable, word length is sharply limited, and the words have a multiple-slot structure where each slot can be empty or filled with a limited subset of the phonemes.  All these features are seen in the Voynichese text, and are not seen in "European" languages, including Hebrew, Arabic, Turkish, Persian, Ethiopian, etc.
  
  The COT does not say that the Author (who composed the Voynichese text) and/or the Scribe (who copied it onto vellum)  were Chinese, or that the book was written and/or scribed in China.  It admits that the Scribe was European and was accustomed to write in some European language, and that the vellum was produced in Europe. 
  
  There are several possible scenarios for how the basic COT claim above could have become true.  The one which I think most likely is that the Author was a traveler who spent a few years in China, had one or more Chinese books dictated to him, and brought back those dictation notes to Europe; where he hired a local scribe to copy his notes to vellum and draw the illustrations.
  
  The COT does not say anything about non-Voynichese text -- the month names and the "marginalia".  The fact that those are written is (deformed) Latin letters and some (broken) European language does not contradict it. Besides, it seems likely that those text fragments, especially the marginalia, were added by later owners.
  
  All the best, --stolfi

  
  
  I appreciate the criticisms of my analysis outlined in this post, however personally, I do still find it hard to believe that such a language such as Chinese, Lao, Khmer, Burmese, Thai, among others, could possibly be Voynichese, as you correctly pointed out, these languages don't inflect for case, and therefore each word is a single syllable, and while the COT states that Voynichese is a phonetic transcription of a language that mostly uses monosyllable words like these, I still find this hard to believe.
  
  If we take You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. as an example, even though we cannot read Voynichese, I can be confident that most Voynichese words are more than one syllable long. In fact, You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. contains one of, if not the longest word in the manuscript, that being ypchocPheosaiin. Keep in mind, I am not saying that because the EVA transcription of this word contains vowels, the Voynichese word must contain vowels, I am not saying that at all, however, I do say that with a word of that length, assuming the manuscript is not a hoax, there is most likely at least two vowels in there somewhere. 
  
  If the word really is a monosyllable, then that means Voynichese could possibly have extremely long consonant clusters not found in any of the languages mentioned in your post. It seems to me that based on word lengths alone, Voynichese would most likely be Indo-European, now I am also not saying that Voynichese is most definitely Indo-European. If someone managed to prove that Voynichese was one of these languages, I would welcome the solution with open arms, it is just that for the time being, I do not believe that an East Asian langauge could possibly be a solution.
  
  
  Wish you the best, Sincerely, J_Voy.

• RE: The 'Chinese' Theory: For and Against

  eggyk > 18-07-2026, 02:46 PM

  (18-07-2026, 06:08 AM)J_Voy Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.If the word really is a monosyllable, then that means Voynichese could possibly have extremely long consonant clusters not found in any of the languages mentioned in your post. It seems to me that based on word lengths alone, Voynichese would most likely be Indo-European, now I am also not saying that Voynichese is most definitely Indo-European.

  
  This is only the case if you assume voynichese glyphs represent individual letters. As far as i'm aware, this is not being claimed for this theory. 
  
  In this theory, the idea (I believe) is that voynichese glyphs could represent a variety of things, including -but not limited to- consonants, vowels and tones. Perhaps other things too, like punctuation(?). As for longer words, there are multiple plausible scenarios to explain that, such as a 2-word/syllable phrase for a single term.

• RE: The 'Chinese' Theory: For and Against

  ololololo > 18-07-2026, 07:45 PM

  (18-07-2026, 02:46 PM)eggyk Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.In this theory, the idea (I believe) is that voynichese glyphs could represent a variety of things, including -but not limited to- consonants, vowels and tones

  It seems to me that the author simply recorded the sounds without dividing them into consonants or vowels, and indicated the tones at the end. In that case, the transcription would be similar to Latin.
  In general, I think that Voynichese glyphs and bigrams are tied to hieroglyphs rather than phonetic units, which may explain words like chedaiin (which may be a two-hieroglyph word). So, some simple sounds like jiu, juo, etc. should have been used as a basis.
  We also can't say whether the author wanted to make Chinese more understandable for us. Perhaps his only goal was to convey Chinese phonetics in the most accurate and beautiful way possible, without considering any Latin alphabet.

• RE: The 'Chinese' Theory: For and Against

  J_Voy > 18-07-2026, 09:55 PM

  eggyk Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.In this theory, the idea (I believe) is that voynichese glyphs could represent a variety of things, including -but not limited to- consonants, vowels and tones. Perhaps other things too, like punctuation(?). As for longer words, there are multiple plausible scenarios to explain that, such as a 2-word/syllable phrase for a single term.

  
  While I do think that this would be a cool idea, I highly doubt that Voynichese glyphs could also represent things like punctuation and tones, this is because as is beautifully demonstarted in this video by Voynich Talk, one of the moderators on these forums, You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. assuming every Voynichese glyph represents a letter would result in about 13 actual functioning letters, if he account for things like tone and punctuation, then we would still need this in addition to a full alphabet, if Voynichese does truly have tones, then whatever technique the scribe must have used has concealed those tones pretty well.
  
  Another reason I don't believe Voynichese has tones is that we only ever have proof that the manuscript was in Europe, and most major European languages don't have tones, now granted, some European languages have tones, such as Swedish, Norwegian, Serbo-Croatian, among others, however, we have no viable proof that the manuscript was ever in a places other than Rome and Prague, and while handwriting analysis done in this video You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. locates whoever wrote the marginalia to either Scandinavia or Southern Germany, now, given the other known locations of the manuscript, I think it is most likely that the scribe who wrote the manuscript was trained in Germany. As is correctly pointed out in the video, just because most handeriting matches were found in Germany, doesn't mean the manuscript was created there, just that the scribe who wrote the marginalia was trained there.
  
  Personally, my theory is that Voynichese is either an incredibly sophisticated cipher of a Romance or Germanic language, (Likely German, Latin, French, Occitan, Italian, or Romansh), is some sort of conlang, or was created via some sort of algorithm, and therefore is gibberish. Those are just the three most likely theories that I believe.
  I do however appreciate criticisms in my work, so thank you for bringing this to my attention. It's just that for the time being, I find it hard to believe Voynichese is a tonal language either.

• RE: The 'Chinese' Theory: For and Against

  ReneZ > 18-07-2026, 11:29 PM

  I would be interested to know what earliest travellers to China reported about the tonal aspects of the language. Is there any mention of it?

• RE: The 'Chinese' Theory: For and Against

  eggyk > 18-07-2026, 11:35 PM

  (18-07-2026, 09:55 PM)J_Voy Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.While I do think that this would be a cool idea, I highly doubt that Voynichese glyphs could also represent things like punctuation and tones, this is because as is beautifully demonstarted in this video by Voynich Talk, one of the moderators on these forums, You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. assuming every Voynichese glyph represents a letter would result in about 13 actual functioning letters, if he account for things like tone and punctuation, then we would still need this in addition to a full alphabet, if Voynichese does truly have tones, then whatever technique the scribe must have used has concealed those tones pretty well.

  
  Once again, your assumption here is that each glyph is used only in one way.
  
  

  (18-07-2026, 09:55 PM)J_Voy Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Another reason I don't believe Voynichese has tones is that we only ever have proof that the manuscript was in Europe, and most major European languages don't have tones, now granted, some European languages have tones, such as Swedish, Norwegian, Serbo-Croatian, among others, however, we have no viable proof that the manuscript was ever in Rome and Prague, and while handwriting analysis done in this video You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. locates whoever wrote the marginalia to either Scandinavia or Southern Germany, now, given the other known locations of the manuscript, I think it is most likely that the scribe who wrote the manuscript was trained in Germany. As is correctly pointed out in the video, just because most handeriting matches were found in Germany, doesn't mean the manuscript was created there, just that the scribe who wrote the marginalia was trained there.

  
  1) We are discussing tones in a monosyllabic chinese, not in a european language
  2) As you say, marginalia written later is not necessarily relevant to the origin of the voynichese text
  
  

  (18-07-2026, 09:55 PM)J_Voy Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.It's just that for the time being, I find it hard to believe Voynichese is a tonal language either.

  
  So you have no idea what the text is, could be a conlang, or gibberish, or a ciphered romance language, or ciphered germanic language, but you draw the line at tones? Why is that any more or less likely than any of the others?

• RE: The 'Chinese' Theory: For and Against

  Jorge_Stolfi > 18-07-2026, 11:52 PM

  (18-07-2026, 06:08 AM)J_Voy Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.... I do still find it hard to believe that such a language such as Chinese, Lao, Khmer, Burmese, Thai, among others, could possibly be Voynichese, ... while the COT states that Voynichese is a phonetic transcription of a language that mostly uses monosyllable words ... If we take You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. as an example ... I can be confident that most Voynichese words are more than one syllable long. In fact, You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. contains one of, if not the longest word in the manuscript, that being ypchocPheosaiin. ... with a word of that length, assuming the manuscript is not a hoax, there is most likely at least two vowels in there somewhere.

  
  The vast majority of the words in the VMS are not only short, but fit You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. with restricts the number and order of occurrences of each glyph.  (I have simplified that model a bit since then.) For example, it says that there cannot be  more than one gallows { k t p k }, and most three benches { Ch Sh ee } (counting also the "platform gallows" { CTh CKh CPh CFh }) .  
  
  Those few long words generally violate those constraints, but they look like two or more valid words which were stuck together by the Scribe, for some reason.  That long word you quote does not fit the model, because it has two gallows; but it could be parsed into ypCho.CPheosaiin or yp.ChoCPheosaiin, and both are valid according to my model.  I am almost convinced that CPhe is a single phoneme or diphtong, and iin is a single phoneme, and I suspect that y a o denote pitch levels.  In that case, yp would be a syllable with a single phoneme, like wú, yì, or é in modern Mandarin, while ChoCPheosaiin would be a syllable with four or five phonemes Ch + CPhe + s + iin , like Mandarin chuāng  (IPA /⁵ʈʂʰwaŋ⁵/).
  
  Cantonese syllables seem to be a bit more complicated than Mandarin ones: they canhave six different tones, and the syllable can end in a consonant, like Sun Yat Sen, Chow Yun Fat, and Ip Man (THE man you should call if you are being abused by the internet router mafia).
  
  All the best, --stolfi
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