I was going to do a whole study using python, but it was easy to find this statistic at You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.. The voynich is abnormal with a huge anomaly of 22% of initial vowel being only "o" of the first letter of a vord out 38,000 vords.  Some say the voynich is 37,000 words so the % could be a little bit higher.

What does this suggest to me along with other signs from the text.  You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. word before and after test show the Voynich at 100 above 20 which is random and languages at 280-300.  It is low entropy.  No one has been able to decode it from substitution that is reproducible.  I believe that the first letter of the vord being a vowel is 22-23% of the text words.  There are those that say it is meaningless, but the voynich does have structure; therefore the conlang angle.  As for a language or a cipher that will present itself reproducible the same anywhere from substitution, I would find this hard to believe.  You will always eventually output unintelligible syntax.

This suggests to me that the Voynich is an attempt at rules based conlang and a messy one maybe.  If you have a comment against the conlang angle and believe it behave more like a known language.  What evidence against this do you have to support your idea?


Here is a reference for English along with letter placements in words

You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. by Position Within Word

"t" was the highest with 15.9%. and that is not a vowel.  "a" was 11.68%

If you agree with me then you might also feel like I do that the meaning was lost with the people involved.  So we may only get subjective feelings from Voynich on its meaning from imagery.  The text may elude us.

I know you’re not really supposed to bring up your own theory in someone else’s thread, but since you specifically asked about it, I hope that’s okay, because it answers your question. 

There is a possible explanation. You cite 22% of words beginning with the vowel “o” as an anomaly. That figure is correct

I assume that the “o” represents an absorption of the article in German. However, since “o” is also a normal letter, I excluded all words consisting solely of an “o” and a single letter—that is, all words with only two or one letter. 

This brings us to approximately 19%. 

I compared this with four Middle High German medical and prescription texts from the same period and region as the VMS parchment, and counted all attested independent definite articles (der, die, das, daz, diu, di) as well as all their case forms and spellings: 

Ortloff von Baierland (47,569 words): 11.7% 
Breslauer Arzneibuch (92,848 words): 17.8% 
Admonter Bartholomaeus (29,244 words): 17.1% 
Cookbook Cod. germ. 1 (2,788 words): 15.0% 

They thus account for between 12 and 18% of all tokens. The VMS prefix “o,” at 19.6%, lies at the upper end of this range. And this fits with the fact that the VMS has very few short words overall - only 9.7% of tokens have one or two glyphs, compared to 16-20% in the MHD texts. There is simply no room left for standalone articles...

What’s really interesting here is that the distribution of these “o”s as articles fits quite well with the Bavarian / Middle High German language of the 15th century. And that’s just part of what I call the absorption cipher. (This type of cipher can also be used to explain the “qo,” and that fits the frequency pattern as well.) 

Its no proof, i know, but what I’m trying to say is: You should be careful about jumping to conclusions; there are always possibilities you haven’t considered  

It could, of course, be a coincidence, but in principle, when you also consider the other grammatical similarities, a Coland design seems rather unlikely to me.

(Today, 07:30 AM)JoJo_Jost Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I know you’re not really supposed to bring up your own theory in someone else’s thread, but since you specifically asked about it, I hope that’s okay, because it answers your question. 

There is a possible explanation. You cite 22% of words beginning with the vowel “o” as an anomaly. That figure is correct

I assume that the “o” represents an absorption of the article in German. However, since “o” is also a normal letter, I excluded all words consisting solely of an “o” and a single letter—that is, all words with only two or one letter. 

This brings us to approximately 19%. 

I compared this with four Middle High German medical and prescription texts from the same period and region as the VMS parchment, and counted all attested independent definite articles (der, die, das, daz, diu, di) as well as all their case forms and spellings: 

Ortloff von Baierland (47,569 words): 11.7% 
Breslauer Arzneibuch (92,848 words): 17.8% 
Admonter Bartholomaeus (29,244 words): 17.1% 
Cookbook Cod. germ. 1 (2,788 words): 15.0% 

They thus account for between 12 and 18% of all tokens. The VMS prefix “o,” at 19.6%, lies at the upper end of this range. And this fits with the fact that the VMS has very few short words overall - only 9.7% of tokens have one or two glyphs, compared to 16-20% in the MHD texts. There is simply no room left for standalone articles...

What’s really interesting here is that the distribution of these “o”s as articles fits quite well with the Bavarian / Middle High German language of the 15th century. And that’s just part of what I call the absorption cipher. (This type of cipher can also be used to explain the “qo,” and that fits the frequency pattern as well.) 

Its no proof, i know, but what I’m trying to say is: You should be careful about jumping to conclusions; there are always possibilities you haven’t considered  

It could, of course, be a coincidence, but in principle, when you also consider the other grammatical similarities, a Coland design seems rather unlikely to me.

I look forward to you decoding it.  I think it would put my mind at ease if I knew there was a proof of a legible read from it not just one sentence.  Would this letter also be the highest frequency letter in Bavarian / Middle High German?

I'm still not sure if I can decode it.

vowels in my MHD Texts: 
e = 40-44%
i = 20–23%
a = 15–21%
u = 6–12%
o = 7–9%

ca. 3 % Latin words....

(Today, 06:28 AM)oeesordy Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.[..]. The voynich is abnormal with a huge anomaly of 22% of initial vowel being only "o" of the first letter of a vord out 38,000 vords.  Some say the voynich is 37,000 words so the % could be a little bit higher.[..]

This is assuming „o“ as a vowel; I am ok with that, since I also assumed it being a vowel. That makes two assumptions, but they are of course not anything like a proof.

o being a vowel, for example „e“, may cover also slight variations like „ye“ or „yö“. Such variations exist in Slavic laguages, they are covered by different characters today. But not necessarily in some old language or alphabet where o may have covered such additional variants and was differentiated and understood by readers only by context.

Finally, the source language simply might have a clear tendency to e-words.

At all, the o percentage may be less scary than it seems.

My transcription into a Word document says 37.242 vords, but I erased those annoying „half-width“ blank positions, where other transcriptions set a comma, joining previous and following vord to one combined vord. 
So other counts will point to 38.000~something.