- Options
- Login
- Desktop Style
Options
The 'Chinese' Theory: For and Against
- The 'Chinese' Theory: For and Against
-
RE: The 'Chinese' Theory: For and Against
Jorge_Stolfi > 19-07-2026, 12:20 AM
(18-07-2026, 07:45 PM)ololololo Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.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.
I have not figured out yet what was the phonetics of the language or how the Vounichese encoding works. I suspect that each of the "elements" in the current version of my old "crust-mantle-core" model is a phoneme, and the single e that can be appended to a gallows or bench could turn it into a related sound -- like turning IPA [ p t k f s ] into [ b d g v z ] etc. Except that I suspect that q is a non-phonetic symbol like our &, and the "circles" { a o y } encode pitch levels. But I cannot offer any real evdence for these hunches...
Quote: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.
The assumption implied by my proposed "dictation" scenario is that the Author's primary goal was to record the spoken text in real time, but in such a way that he could read it back later.
But he may have modified his scheme, at any later time, to make it easier or more accurate for others. Then he would have re-transcribed his notes into this "Voynichese 2.0" before giving it to the Scribe to produce the vellum "edition".
All the best, --stolfi[/b] -
RE: The 'Chinese' Theory: For and Against
J_Voy > 19-07-2026, 01:27 AM
Jorge_Stolfi Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.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/).
If this is the case, then I am quite confused as to why, for example, o seems to be it's own thing, on f7r, we see it word initially on Line 3, Word 1, oeeees, it seems to me by your logic, this would change the tone of e, however, we also see o as the second letter of a word on Line 4, Word 1, qokCho, and because it is also the last letter of this word, what exactly is it modifying? By the logic you presented where 'yp' a single phoneme, and how you stated y denoted pitch much like a and o, it seems to me that it should modify the letter after it, but because it is the last letter of the word, what letter is it modifying? And this word also presents another problem, what exactly is q, and why does it almost always follow o in the manuscript? I'm not sure about the other langauges, but I speak Mandarin on a conversational level, and actively study it. I don't know of any initial that must follow a certain final. I just don't understand, saying it's a zero-onset phoneme would have no sense, because in Mandarin, both 'i' and 'u' can be zero-onset, written as 'yi' and 'wu' in Pinyin respectively, so q would need to follow two different symbols, but it only follows o, but as you said, o is a pitch marker, so what is q at all? This just seems confusing to me, and I don't quite understand how all of this would fit together. -
RE: The 'Chinese' Theory: For and Against
J_Voy > 19-07-2026, 01:48 AM
eggyk Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.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?
I reached my conclusion because the Ming Dynasty, the Chinese empire at the time the Voynich Manuscript was written, had a policy of isolation called Haijin, this policy aimed to restrict foreign access, so I feel like a theory like the COT must explain this, and plus, exposure to East Asian Languages in 15th Century Europe was limited, and wouldn't it be easier for a European scribe to encipher a made-up, or even European language? Or even easier, to just, make it up completely? This is why I draw the line at tones, because the average European scribe would most probably not have known about them, and theories like European ones have less question marks to explain, making them more likely in my eyes.
In general, I just feel like tones are less probable because a European scribe would have an easier time making a cipher out of a European language than an East Asian one, especially when China at the time put restrictions on foreign trade.
Of course, if more evidence appears that shows signs for a Chinese theory, like the COT, I would accept it with open arms, as I have said previously. I do appreciate criticism, in my opinion, without criticism, people wouldn't engage with other's ideas, and without that engagement, we wouldn't be where we are now, so really, I thank you for this, and if more evidence shows up, I may change my mind, but for now, I remain unconvinced. -
RE: The 'Chinese' Theory: For and Against
Jorge_Stolfi > 19-07-2026, 02:06 AM
(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, ... 13 actual functioning letters ... if Voynichese does truly have tones, then whatever technique the scribe must have used has concealed those tones pretty well.
Vounichese must have used digraphs to represent some phonemes, like almost all "European" language do. My model has potentially 21 "letters"
{ d l r s } (4)
{ Ch Sh ee Che She eee } (6)
{ k t ke te } (4)
{ CHh CTh CKhe CThe } (4)
{ n in iin } (3)
even assuming that { p f } are ornamental versions of other letters, that { m } s an abbreviation, that { q x v } are non-phonetic symbols, that { a o y } are pitch or tone marks, and that everything else is an error.
Quote:we only ever have proof that the manuscript was in Europe
The Chinese Origin theory in fact assumes that the vellum copy was made in Europe.
Quote:most major European languages don't have tones, now granted, some European languages have tones, such as Swedish
The primary claim of the COT is that the text is a natural language in the plain, and the "words" of Voynichese are words of that language. In that case, the length and structure of the words implies that each word of that language is a syllable. The COT does not directly claim that the language has tones or that the script specifies tones. However, the plausible languages with single-syllable words are all in East and Southeast Asia (including Tibet) , and AFAIK they all have lexical tones (that is, the tone affects the root meaning of the word).
Quote:we have no viable proof that the manuscript was ever in Rome and Prague
Maybe you meant outside of Rome and Prague?
The first mention of the VMS is in a letter from a Bohemian (Czech) person in Prague, Jiŕi Bareš (Georg Baresch, Georgius Barschius). The last mention before Voynich bought it is a letter by Marci, decades later, saying that he was sending the book to Kircher in Rome. Where it presumably sat until 1911 or so.
Moreover, in that letter Barchius says that he had studied at the Sapienza in Rome. Maybe he got the book there, or on his way back to Prague...
Quote:the marginalia to either Scandinavia or Southern Germany
It seems very likely that the marginalia are much later than the main text of the VMS, and there is no reason to believe that whoever wrote them could read that text (any more than Barschius and everybody after him could).
So, even if we could identify the language of the marginalia, that would not tell us anything about the language and origin of the main text.
All the best, --stolfi -
RE: The 'Chinese' Theory: For and Against
J_Voy > 19-07-2026, 02:43 AM
Jorge_Stolfi Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Vounichese must have used digraphs to represent some phonemes, like almost all "European" language do. My model has potentially 21 "letters"
I actually agree with most of this, especially the fact that in and iin may be digraphs/trigraphs, and if those are digraphs, then there are almost certainly others.
{ d l r s } (4)
{ Ch Sh ee Che She eee } (6)
{ k t ke te } (4)
{ CHh CTh CKhe CThe } (4)
{ n in iin } (3)
even assuming that { p f } are ornamental versions of other letters, that { m } s an abbreviation, that { q x v } are non-phonetic symbols, that { a o y } are pitch or tone marks, and that everything else is an error.
Quote:The Chinese Origin theory in fact assumes that the vellum copy was made in Europe.
The Ming Dynasty at the time had a policy called Haijin that aimed to restrict forms of foreign contact, granted people could definitely get through this, however, I don't really see how it would be likely that whoever wrote the manuscript went to China to transcribe it's sounds into a script no one could read, and besides, if we take a look at the whole Herbal section of the manuscript as an example, Herbals were common in medieval Europe, and so, i don't see how a Chinese language would fit into that, with all of this evidence, I don't really think that a language like Chinese could be a solution.
Quote:The primary claim of the COT is that the text is a natural language in the plain, and the "words" of Voynichese are words of that language.
Personally, I see the possibility that Voynichese is a natural language, I just don't see the possibility that the language in particular is an East Asian language.
Quote:Maybe you meant outside of Rome and Prague?
yeah.. i meant that, it was a typo.
Quote:It seems very likely that the marginalia are much later than the main text of the VMS, and there is no reason to believe that whoever wrote them could read that text (any more than Barschius and everybody after him could).
Handwriting analysis of the marginalia suggests otherwise, the closest handwriting matches of the marginalia found all date between 1400 and 1425. Source: 32 Minutes into You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
Quote:So, even if we could identify the language of the marginalia, that would not tell us anything about the language and origin of the main text.
I believe that because the marginalia is most likely in a European language, than it is not far fetched to say that the manuscript is in a European language.
Sincerely, J_Voy. -
RE: The 'Chinese' Theory: For and Against
ololololo > 19-07-2026, 01:40 PM
For some reason, the first character in this word reminded me of EVA f. Maybe the author wanted to create a "mini-hieroglyphic" writing system?
-
RE: The 'Chinese' Theory: For and Against
Jorge_Stolfi > 20-07-2026, 08:19 PM
(19-07-2026, 02:43 AM)J_Voy Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.The Ming Dynasty at the time had a policy called Haijin that aimed to restrict forms of foreign contact, granted people could definitely get through this
Indeed they could.
In particular, the Ming Dynasty was well-disposed towards Muslims. For example, You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. was a Persian (some say a painter) who went to China in 1419 as part of a diplomatic mission and stayed for 5 months at the Beijng court. Back home he published a diary of his trip. A report of another trip was published in 1519 by an You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view., but it is believed that it was actually a pastiche of the above Persian book and some other source.
Quote:I don't really see how it would be likely that whoever wrote the manuscript went to China to transcribe it's sounds into a script no one could read
I don't think that the Author went to "China" just for that (although that was the theory of Georg Baresch, the first documented owner of the book). I think that he was there for other reasons (like the Persian diplomat above, or the Venetian merchant who lived for years in Burma buying gemstones for the European market), but was impressed by the Chinese medical books and decided to bring some back.
But buying a printed copy or copying the Chinese characters would be pointless, since he would not have been able to read anything. To get a translation he would need a local doctor who spoke Latin or his language, which would be practically impossible. The proposed scenario is that he asked a local doctor to read the book aloud in the local language while he wrote it down. If he lived there for a few years, he should have been able to understand at least the common words, but surely he could not recognize the medical terms and plant names. Thus translating what the Dictator was reading would be impossible. The only viable option would be to write what he was saying in a phonetic notation. Then he could at least read aloud his notes when he god back home.
At the time, the only intended reader would be himself. So he devised a phonetic notation that he though would be accurate enough but allowed him to write the dictation at a decent speed.
Quote:Herbals were common in medieval Europe
But they were common in China too. Anyway, the Shennong Bencao is not a herbal: it does not describe the plants, only lists their uses.
Quote:Handwriting analysis of the marginalia suggests [that they are contemporaneous with the scribing of the VMS], the closest handwriting matches of the marginalia found all date between 1400 and 1425. Source: 32 Minutes into You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
I knew that video. Koen and Marco did a very good and massive work, and I think it will help a lot with tracking the history of the manuscript and identifying the autor of the marginalia.
However, their conclusion about the dates is not convincing, because it is based on a wrong assumption. They assumed that the text on You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. was a meaningful message written by someone in his native language, with contemporaneous letter style and his own normal handwriting.
But it is almost certain that the text on that page was a three-line parag entirely in Voynichese, which got erased almost entirely by a You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. and the wiping thereof. What was left was only the two Voynichese words aror sheey at the lower left corner, that must have been spared by the spill, and a fey faint bits of glyphs here and there.
So what we see now on You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. is the pathetic attempt at restoring the lost text by the clod who wiped off the spill or by the owner. This Restorer of 116v carefully and faithfully retraced the aror sheey. But for the rest, he struggled to expand the faint surviving smudges. Apparently he did not even know the Voynichese alphabet, so his guesses were mostly Latin letters.
At some point he may have seen what looked like the remains of a cross, maybe from a q or a gallows, and guessed that the lost text must have been a Christian charm, as is sometimes found in such a place on other manuscripts; and thus he "restored" any smudge that could be a cross as a cross too.
The evidence supporting this claim includes the "ketchup" stain on f103r, that proves that the text ink is not waterproof at all. If the current "michiton" text on You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. was original, it should have been at least blurred by the spill. From its sharpness we must conclude that it was written after the spill. But then we must conclude also that whatever text was there before the spill, Voynichese or not, was almost completely erased by it.
Other evidence in support of this view is the fact that the second line of that parag ends before the margin, that the same letter appears in several very different and distorted shapes, that some "letters" are unrecognizable (like the "o" with "bowtie" of "multod") while look more like Voynichese glyphs than Latin letters (like "ct" that look just like Ch, or "ch" that look like platform gallows, and a "po" that may have been a qo), and fact that most of the words do not make sense in any language.
But then one cannot assume that the shapes of those "Latin" letters are representative of the Restorer's normal handwriting. If the restoration happened in the 1500s or later, the owner must have known that the manuscript was at least 100 years old. If he had any sense, he would not try to restore the smudges with letter shapes that were fashionable in his own time; he would look for what he thought could be 100-year-old shapes.
This claim also implies that the identification of the letters, as used in Koen and Marco's analyses, may be incorrect. When the Restorer wrote first "d" of "oladabad", he may not have been trying to write a "d", but only to restore what was left of a d. Maybe he himself was not sure whether it would have been a "d" or an "s". And the "long s" is "gas" was assumed to be an "s" rather than an "f" only because "gas" could be a Germanish word, whereas "gafmich" could not be -- but maybe the Restorer did intend it to be an "f".
Thus, while the analysis of the You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. letter shapes may provide useful information, the conclusion about the dates is not as significant as it is stated. personally, I still believe that the marginalia are much later than the rest of the text: at least late enough for the Author of the book be no longer available.
All the best, --stolfi -
RE: The 'Chinese' Theory: For and Against
ololololo > 20-07-2026, 08:25 PM
(20-07-2026, 08:19 PM)Jorge_Stolfi Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view."ch" that look like platform gallows
The gallows spelling of h does not mean that it is a copy of a gallows. On f17r, this letter is written in the same way. It's the same with the letter l.
I write the Latin letter l with a curl. This is most likely a feature of author's handwriting. -
RE: The 'Chinese' Theory: For and Against
Jorge_Stolfi > 20-07-2026, 09:06 PM
(19-07-2026, 01:27 AM)J_Voy Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
Well, I am still confused too. If I knew exactly what each glyph stands for, I would have posted it. Those that I offered (including the list of 21 "letters") are just hunches.Jorge_Stolfi Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.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/).
If this is the case, then I am quite confused
Quote:o seems to be it's own thing, on f7r, we see it word initially on Line 3, Word 1, oeeees, it seems to me by your logic, this would change the tone of e
The hunch is that the "circle" glyphs { o a y } indicate pitch levels; say, low, mid, and high. Then the tone of a syllable can be encoded by a sequence of pitch levels.
For example, the IPA representation of pinyin zhǔ can be [ʈʂu˨˩˦], using a Mandarin-specific tone mark "˨˩˦", or ʈʂu²¹⁴], using more language-independent pitch codes "²¹⁴". This second method is used, for example, when comparing languages with different tone sets.
The tone is a feature of the syllable as a whole, not of a specific vowel. Thus, when a syllable has two or more vowels, the placement of the tone diacritic in pinyin is rather arbitrary; the pinyin standard must explicitly say which vowel gets it. The same is true for the pitch-based encoding, except that there is no standard. Thus one could write the IPA of zhǔ also as [²¹⁴ʈʂu], [²¹ʈʂu⁴], [²ʈʂ¹u⁴], etc; all these would mean the same sound.
So oeeees could mean the phonemes ee + ee, starting with a (say) low pitch. Maybe that would mean that the entire syllable is in a flat low-pitch tone; or, if the next word starts with y, it could implicitly mean a rising tone, from low to high.
Or it may be something else entirely.
One interesting bit is that,by my statistics, there are practically no words that have more than three "circle" glyphs.
Quote:we also see o as the second letter of a word on Line 4, Word 1, qokCho ... q only follows o, but as you said, o is a pitch marker, so what is q at all?
By "follows" you mean "precedes". Yes, qo essentially behaves like a unit. I have some vague clues that qo is a non-phonetic symbol that means "and". It would be like our "&" but with a grammar more like that of Arabic "wa-". That, in order to say "water, fire, earth, and beer" one would write "water qofire qoearth qobeer".
But, again, this is still only a hunch. I would not bet a pizza and a beer on it. Yet.
All the best, --stolfi
(20-07-2026, 08:25 PM)ololololo Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
I was not referring to the EVA encoding. I meant that a partially erased Voynichese CTh can look like a partly erased Latin "ch" in that hypothetical old handwriting.(20-07-2026, 08:19 PM)Jorge_Stolfi Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view."ch" that look like platform gallows
The gallows spelling of h does not mean that it is a copy of a gallows.
All the best,--stolfi -
RE: The 'Chinese' Theory: For and Against
ololololo > 20-07-2026, 09:29 PM
(20-07-2026, 09:06 PM)Jorge_Stolfi Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I was not referring to the EVA encoding. I meant that a partially erased Voynichese CTh can look like a partly erased Latin "ch" in that hypothetical old handwriting.
By this logic, cfh or ckh is more appropriate. I don't think the left curl of t is intentionally erased.