- Options
- Login
- Desktop Style
Options
Voynichese is a numeric cipher?
- Voynichese is a numeric cipher?
-
RE: Voynichese is a numeric cipher?
ololololo > 09-06-2026, 10:01 PM
(08-06-2026, 11:24 PM)JoeyB Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.This is an interesting thread! You might enjoy looking at keys to diplomatic ciphers. This folio for example is a ciphered letter of Francisco Despats which features some familiar looking glyphs like 4 and the H gallows (e.g., You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.). It's a vatican archive document (A.A. Arm. I-XVIII 5026 f.105). Related writings and some keys can be found here: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. and if you spend much time looking at it you may find yourself down the rabbithole of Occitan cipher discussion over here: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view..
Thank you very much! Well, Occitan ciphers are very close to the topic of the cipher, because there is a good chance that the author or one of the early owners was a person who knew Occitan or lived in Occitania (Nick Pelling translated the notes on You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. and You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. and believed that they were written in Occitan).
![[Image: PA2IROk.jpeg]](https://i.imgur.com/PA2IROk.jpeg)
I'm not claiming, but it seems that the Voynich cipher, being based on a nomenclature, doesn't require any key. However, no one knows for sure...
In any case, it is worth comparing the Voynich manuscript with the examples you have provided. There is still a possibility that the author of the manuscript borrowed from other cryptologists of his time. -
RE: Voynichese is a numeric cipher?
DG97EEB > 09-06-2026, 11:10 PM
(09-06-2026, 10:01 PM)ololololo Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
(08-06-2026, 11:24 PM)JoeyB Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.This is an interesting thread! You might enjoy looking at keys to diplomatic ciphers. This folio for example is a ciphered letter of Francisco Despats which features some familiar looking glyphs like 4 and the H gallows (e.g., You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.). It's a vatican archive document (A.A. Arm. I-XVIII 5026 f.105). Related writings and some keys can be found here: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. and if you spend much time looking at it you may find yourself down the rabbithole of Occitan cipher discussion over here: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view..
Thank you very much! Well, Occitan ciphers are very close to the topic of the cipher, because there is a good chance that the author or one of the early owners was a person who knew Occitan or lived in Occitania (Nick Pelling translated the notes on You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. and You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. and believed that they were written in Occitan).
I'm not claiming, but it seems that the Voynich cipher, being based on a nomenclature, doesn't require any key. However, no one knows for sure...
In any case, it is worth comparing the Voynich manuscript with the examples you have provided. There is still a possibility that the author of the manuscript borrowed from other cryptologists of his time.
There is zero evidence for Occitan as far as I can see ... Every indication is it's langue d'oil, not lange d'oc -
RE: Voynichese is a numeric cipher?
Koen G > 10-06-2026, 09:56 AM
(09-06-2026, 11:10 PM)DG97EEB Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.There is zero evidence for Occitan as far as I can see ... Every indication is it's langue d'oil, not lange d'oc
Just for clarity, the month names are most likely in a northern dialect. The other marginal inscriptions are of an unclear linguistic composition that at the very least seems to contain German. I personally don't buy Nick Pelling's Occitan claims, but he is yet to produce more evidence, so who knows? -
RE: Voynichese is a numeric cipher?
ololololo > 10-06-2026, 10:35 AM
(10-06-2026, 09:56 AM)Koen G Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. - First, you'll see notes about the marginalia on f17r. I'm not making any claims, but Pelling concluded that it's Occitan. Maybe it's German too. In any case, it is most likely the author of the manuscript, as the handwriting is very similar to the inscriptions on f116v.(09-06-2026, 11:10 PM)DG97EEB Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.There is zero evidence for Occitan as far as I can see ... Every indication is it's langue d'oil, not lange d'oc
Just for clarity, the month names are most likely in a northern dialect. The other marginal inscriptions are of an unclear linguistic composition that at the very least seems to contain German. I personally don't buy Nick Pelling's Occitan claims, but he is yet to produce more evidence, so who knows? -
RE: Voynichese is a numeric cipher?
Koen G > 10-06-2026, 07:38 PM
(10-06-2026, 10:35 AM)ololololo Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. - First, you'll see notes about the marginalia on f17r. I'm not making any claims, but Pelling concluded that it's Occitan.
What Nick does there is try to turn the inscription into something that may be coherent in Occitan, while ignoring the actual shapes of the letters. Basically squinting a bit. Like I said in my early comment to his post, it would be more convincing if he provided a little bit of paleographical evidence. Just some arguments for why he disagrees with earlier readings. But the way he approached this problem, you can turn the sentence into any language or dialect you want. -
RE: Voynichese is a numeric cipher?
ololololo > 10-06-2026, 10:50 PM
(10-06-2026, 07:38 PM)Koen G Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
Still, this inscription doesn't tell us much other than the author's language (which could have been Latin) and the fact that the text makes sense and is a code (rather than a language or transcription system) - after the word identified by Pelling as "balsamina," there are two words in Voynich. However, if the author intended to write the note in a pure language, why would they include other words at the end? The only logical explanation is that they were encoded.(10-06-2026, 10:35 AM)ololololo Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. - First, you'll see notes about the marginalia on f17r. I'm not making any claims, but Pelling concluded that it's Occitan.
What Nick does there is try to turn the inscription into something that may be coherent in Occitan, while ignoring the actual shapes of the letters. Basically squinting a bit. Like I said in my early comment to his post, it would be more convincing if he provided a little bit of paleographical evidence. Just some arguments for why he disagrees with earlier readings. But the way he approached this problem, you can turn the sentence into any language or dialect you want. -
RE: Voynichese is a numeric cipher?
ololololo > 10-06-2026, 11:26 PM
(04-06-2026, 12:10 AM)ololololo Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Well, when I wrote my last post, I didn't think about sharing my opinion on this... I think it would be better if I wrote it in a separate post.
Regarding the news from me, there have been no significant advancements in decryption. However, I believe the following is important for progress:
During my independent study of the Voynich manuscript (which took about a year), I came to the conclusion that Voynich is most likely a cipher based on numbers. I am not a cryptology expert, but I will try to explain how I came to this conclusion.
Let's start with what I wrote about in the previous post, which is that the text of the Voynich manuscript (or rather, the mechanism of word formation) is very similar to classical substitution: all words consist of a fixed set of characters and bigrams arranged in a certain order. Here you might think that I am reinventing the wheel, having in mind the concepts of "prefix-midfix-suffix" or Stolfa's "crust-mantle-nucleus" model (in fact, this is what some initially thought), however, this is not quite the case. The set of supposed minimal substitution units that I have compiled demonstrates some more dependencies besides the dependencies of position in the word.
I would like to suggest that you look at this from a different angle. If we can easily decompose any word in the manuscript into such minimal units, but at the same time we clearly see that this is not a regular "symbol-symbol" substitution, then we can use regular numbers to help us.
First, I'll add a list of the "letters" I've generated:
1). Single letters: o, d, e*, y, r, l and maybe s,
2). Bigrams: oi, ai(an), or, ol, ar, al, om, am, in, iin, ee (es)*, ch/sh, ir, il, im, qo
3). All gallows and EVA x.
Pay attention to the digrams al-ar and ol-or. Their peculiarity is that in such a combination they repeatedly appear both in words and standing alone. But by swapping the letters (ol-or to lo-ro, al-ar to la-ra), these properties are immediately lost, and the structure of words becomes "more fragmented" (let's take the word for example oralar. It can be decomposed as ol-ar-ar, and as o-la-ra-R. I think you can immediately see the difference between three bigrams and two extra letters around the edges. In addition, there are no words "lara" or "rala" in the manuscript). This remarkable property of bigrams suggests that the letters of the Voynich manuscript are not Latin letters, but numbers.
But if they were Arabic numerals, swapping the digits in a number would result in a different number (for example, 41 becomes 14, 310 becomes 103, and 80 becomes 08), and the meaning would not be lost. However, in the case of digrams, the opposite effect is observed. This already suggests that Voynichese is a cipher based on Roman numerals, as they have the same property: if you take the number 41 = XLI and swap the IXL, you will not get a whole number, as it does not follow the rules of Roman numerals.
This "position effect" manifests itself both at the level of individual semantic units (as in the example with bigrams) and at the level of multiple words and the entire text (this manifests itself in the form of the "prefix-midfix-suffix" pattern). Given the historical context (specifically, the realities of the 15th century, the author's tools, and capabilities), I assume that the Voynich manuscript's cipher is a kind of nomenclature that is additionally encrypted using the letters of an artificially created alphabet (this is not entirely unusual, considering that it was a standard substitution technique for the time, similar to the Theban alphabet), which encrypts both letters and abbreviations.
Why letters and abbreviations?
I came to this conclusion because the list of "letters" I provided is quite flexible. For example, it is easy to see that ch and sh are equivalent (in the sense that words using these letters are almost identical to each other: chey - shey, cheody - sheody, char - shar, chdar - shdar, chckhy - shckhy).
It's not suitable for letters alone, or for abbreviations alone, but it's fine for both.
**
With bigrams, we can conduct a small experiment that shows features that are not typical for substitution. Let's exclude ee(es), ch/sh, and qo from the list. From the remaining list, we can select al-ar and ol-or. We can generate a pair of words by taking a pair like ol-*-in and replacing the asterisk with ai: olaiin, oraiin, and alair. These patterns are not typical for regular substitution, but they align well with the typical numerical cipher-nomenclator. Thus, we should read the words of the manuscript not as words, but as an ordered sequence of numbers, e.g. chey as 50-10-5 (this is not a translation, this just an example of how it might look).
It's inconvenient/impractical/difficult to do!
Maybe that's true, but it's possible, even for the 15th century, plus, given that the manuscript is a product of collective labor, the argument about its bulkiness loses weight, because a group of skilled people would definitely be able to encrypt the text faster than a single person.
It's inconvenient/impractical/difficult to read!
The manuscript is essentially not a work of fiction, but a reference book (all herbals are reference books), which means that the reader does not have to spend time deciphering the entire book. By knowing the key, they can apply it to the relevant pages without any problems.
Apparently, the book was not written for a wide audience (as evidenced by its design and lack of decryption), but for someone who at least knew the key. This suggests that there should have been no difficulties... if the book had fallen into the right hands
.
...And super-highly interested fact...
Let's look at the top right corner of the You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. page. In the context of the Roman numeral version, it takes on a new meaning...
Rotate the red symbols 90 degrees to the left, and you will get the Roman numeral 102. Such a bold coincidence, and on the first page... Could this be the key?
P.S. I am not an expert, and what I have written may be complete nonsense. The purpose of this post is not to prove that I am right, but rather to reach out to you, to find out your opinion, and to discuss this version together.
I hope this will help whoever deciphers the Voynich manuscript.
1). Determining the boundary between words in a single line. As we know, Voynichese is a simple nomenclature, and the words (which have been converted to numbers for convenience, but we will refer to them as words) are distorted using a specific alphabet. However, I do not believe that only one word is encoded in a single line, and I do not believe that each word in Voynichese has a decryption on its own. As it appears, after encryption, the word was also "dismembered" into several pieces with the addition of extra elements and may have undergone other manipulations (the position of the numbers was changed so that they were arranged in ascending order, etc.).
How can this be done? To begin with, let's assume that there are a certain number of whole words in one line. Next, we look at the total number of "syllables". Having received their number, we subtract the repetitions (but not all! For example, in a series of chol char chor, we can subtract a maximum of two repetitions, then we get 4 syllables; in the case of daiin daiin, we count only one word daiin, consisting of three syllables - d-ai-in. We don't need a replay).
As a result, we will get the estimated number of syllables, and from there, we can try to calculate the estimated number of words. This is a very imprecise method, and it is unlikely to provide us with any specific data in this form, but we can draw conclusions based on the patterns.
A simpler and more accurate method is to look for consistent word combinations. For example, as I mentioned earlier and as verified by another user, there are many combinations of the form ol.daiin in the botanical section. There are also many combinations of the form chol daiin, but there is also the word choldaiin. We have reason to believe that choldaiin (5 syllables) is a single word.
2). Determine the size of the numbers. We know that certain letters are always in a certain position, as combinations of the form -iin are almost always at the end. By focusing on Voynich A, which is generally easier to work with, we can try to derive approximate ratios of "letters" and "syllables." For example, I can say that ch is larger than e, because e is always followed by ch.
These tasks are not focused on precise results, but rather on identifying any patterns in the system of Voynichese and... just for the sake of research.
-
RE: Voynichese is a numeric cipher?
Bluetoes101 > 10-06-2026, 11:44 PM
Nick on one hand says this is 20 years work, on the other provides zero reasoning for his results.
The examples he provided from Marco and Rafel look much better to me, and unless Nick is willing to show why his readings are more accurate, I'm not sure they should be taken seriously.
Your other point is interesting. I know why I think Voynichese is mixed with "plain text" (we can't even read that..), but its just a guess. I made a thread on the marginalia topic, interested to see what people think. -
RE: Voynichese is a numeric cipher?
ololololo > 11-06-2026, 11:52 PM
(10-06-2026, 11:26 PM)ololololo Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
Well, it's time to take a little stock of the work I've done:(04-06-2026, 12:10 AM)ololololo Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Well, when I wrote my last post, I didn't think about sharing my opinion on this... I think it would be better if I wrote it in a separate post.
Regarding the news from me, there have been no significant advancements in decryption. However, I believe the following is important for progress:
During my independent study of the Voynich manuscript (which took about a year), I came to the conclusion that Voynich is most likely a cipher based on numbers. I am not a cryptology expert, but I will try to explain how I came to this conclusion.
Let's start with what I wrote about in the previous post, which is that the text of the Voynich manuscript (or rather, the mechanism of word formation) is very similar to classical substitution: all words consist of a fixed set of characters and bigrams arranged in a certain order. Here you might think that I am reinventing the wheel, having in mind the concepts of "prefix-midfix-suffix" or Stolfa's "crust-mantle-nucleus" model (in fact, this is what some initially thought), however, this is not quite the case. The set of supposed minimal substitution units that I have compiled demonstrates some more dependencies besides the dependencies of position in the word.
I would like to suggest that you look at this from a different angle. If we can easily decompose any word in the manuscript into such minimal units, but at the same time we clearly see that this is not a regular "symbol-symbol" substitution, then we can use regular numbers to help us.
First, I'll add a list of the "letters" I've generated:
1). Single letters: o, d, e*, y, r, l and maybe s,
2). Bigrams: oi, ai(an), or, ol, ar, al, om, am, in, iin, ee (es)*, ch/sh, ir, il, im, qo
3). All gallows and EVA x.
Pay attention to the digrams al-ar and ol-or. Their peculiarity is that in such a combination they repeatedly appear both in words and standing alone. But by swapping the letters (ol-or to lo-ro, al-ar to la-ra), these properties are immediately lost, and the structure of words becomes "more fragmented" (let's take the word for example oralar. It can be decomposed as ol-ar-ar, and as o-la-ra-R. I think you can immediately see the difference between three bigrams and two extra letters around the edges. In addition, there are no words "lara" or "rala" in the manuscript). This remarkable property of bigrams suggests that the letters of the Voynich manuscript are not Latin letters, but numbers.
But if they were Arabic numerals, swapping the digits in a number would result in a different number (for example, 41 becomes 14, 310 becomes 103, and 80 becomes 08), and the meaning would not be lost. However, in the case of digrams, the opposite effect is observed. This already suggests that Voynichese is a cipher based on Roman numerals, as they have the same property: if you take the number 41 = XLI and swap the IXL, you will not get a whole number, as it does not follow the rules of Roman numerals.
This "position effect" manifests itself both at the level of individual semantic units (as in the example with bigrams) and at the level of multiple words and the entire text (this manifests itself in the form of the "prefix-midfix-suffix" pattern). Given the historical context (specifically, the realities of the 15th century, the author's tools, and capabilities), I assume that the Voynich manuscript's cipher is a kind of nomenclature that is additionally encrypted using the letters of an artificially created alphabet (this is not entirely unusual, considering that it was a standard substitution technique for the time, similar to the Theban alphabet), which encrypts both letters and abbreviations.
Why letters and abbreviations?
I came to this conclusion because the list of "letters" I provided is quite flexible. For example, it is easy to see that ch and sh are equivalent (in the sense that words using these letters are almost identical to each other: chey - shey, cheody - sheody, char - shar, chdar - shdar, chckhy - shckhy).
It's not suitable for letters alone, or for abbreviations alone, but it's fine for both.
**
With bigrams, we can conduct a small experiment that shows features that are not typical for substitution. Let's exclude ee(es), ch/sh, and qo from the list. From the remaining list, we can select al-ar and ol-or. We can generate a pair of words by taking a pair like ol-*-in and replacing the asterisk with ai: olaiin, oraiin, and alair. These patterns are not typical for regular substitution, but they align well with the typical numerical cipher-nomenclator. Thus, we should read the words of the manuscript not as words, but as an ordered sequence of numbers, e.g. chey as 50-10-5 (this is not a translation, this just an example of how it might look).
It's inconvenient/impractical/difficult to do!
Maybe that's true, but it's possible, even for the 15th century, plus, given that the manuscript is a product of collective labor, the argument about its bulkiness loses weight, because a group of skilled people would definitely be able to encrypt the text faster than a single person.
It's inconvenient/impractical/difficult to read!
The manuscript is essentially not a work of fiction, but a reference book (all herbals are reference books), which means that the reader does not have to spend time deciphering the entire book. By knowing the key, they can apply it to the relevant pages without any problems.
Apparently, the book was not written for a wide audience (as evidenced by its design and lack of decryption), but for someone who at least knew the key. This suggests that there should have been no difficulties... if the book had fallen into the right hands .
...And super-highly interested fact...
Let's look at the top right corner of the You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. page. In the context of the Roman numeral version, it takes on a new meaning...
Rotate the red symbols 90 degrees to the left, and you will get the Roman numeral 102. Such a bold coincidence, and on the first page... Could this be the key?
P.S. I am not an expert, and what I have written may be complete nonsense. The purpose of this post is not to prove that I am right, but rather to reach out to you, to find out your opinion, and to discuss this version together.
I hope this will help whoever deciphers the Voynich manuscript.
1). Determining the boundary between words in a single line. As we know, Voynichese is a simple nomenclature, and the words (which have been converted to numbers for convenience, but we will refer to them as words) are distorted using a specific alphabet. However, I do not believe that only one word is encoded in a single line, and I do not believe that each word in Voynichese has a decryption on its own. As it appears, after encryption, the word was also "dismembered" into several pieces with the addition of extra elements and may have undergone other manipulations (the position of the numbers was changed so that they were arranged in ascending order, etc.).
How can this be done? To begin with, let's assume that there are a certain number of whole words in one line. Next, we look at the total number of "syllables". Having received their number, we subtract the repetitions (but not all! For example, in a series of chol char chor, we can subtract a maximum of two repetitions, then we get 4 syllables; in the case of daiin daiin, we count only one word daiin, consisting of three syllables - d-ai-in. We don't need a replay).
As a result, we will get the estimated number of syllables, and from there, we can try to calculate the estimated number of words. This is a very imprecise method, and it is unlikely to provide us with any specific data in this form, but we can draw conclusions based on the patterns.
A simpler and more accurate method is to look for consistent word combinations. For example, as I mentioned earlier and as verified by another user, there are many combinations of the form ol.daiin in the botanical section. There are also many combinations of the form chol daiin, but there is also the word choldaiin. We have reason to believe that choldaiin (5 syllables) is a single word.
2). Determine the size of the numbers. We know that certain letters are always in a certain position, as combinations of the form -iin are almost always at the end. By focusing on Voynich A, which is generally easier to work with, we can try to derive approximate ratios of "letters" and "syllables." For example, I can say that ch is larger than e, because e is always followed by ch.
These tasks are not focused on precise results, but rather on identifying any patterns in the system of Voynichese and... just for the sake of research.
1). As for the boundaries of words, it is quite difficult to identify them, and there is no method that is as accurate as possible. But! We can hypothetically find one of the boundaries and identify the alleged nulls. I consider the boundaries between words to be the words that go beyond the positional rules of Voynichese. For example, there is a reason to believe that cheody is part of a single word, but odchy is where one word ends (represented by od) and another begins (represented by chy). This makes sense because if the author had permuted all the numerical combinations they obtained after substitution, the result would have been a jumble of confusing anagrams. It would be clearer and easier to mark the boundary between words somehow. In another, words that begin with a typical "ending" (such as odchy) may be places where the author intentionally did not change the sequence of numbers to indicate the division between words. This means that in such sequences, we will see unchanged pieces of the original words.
As I see it, nulls are highlighted by repetitions. For example, as I have already given an example, in the sequence cha chor chol, the garbage element is most likely ch. It is also possible that the author added entire garbage words, such as kchorchor, which consist of repetitions and are unlikely to produce any meaningful translation (but this is not a certainty).
That's all I can say here. I can't estimate the average number of words per line and... I haven't made much progress overall.
2). The scales are a bit more interesting. First, according to positional analysis, the following symbols can be assigned "weights": o = 1, ch = 2, e = 3, a = 4; d, l, r = 5; in, iin, y, m = 6
The weights are assigned according to their position in the words. iin is always at the end, so it has the lowest weight, and o is most often at the beginning, so it has the highest weight. Although I have assigned a common weight to d, l, and r, this does not mean that they are interchangeable or equal to each other. d occurs 12,000 times, r - 7000, l - 9000, plus r and
can stand after units (-ir, -il, -iir), and d does not show such a property. Briefly, it is easier to assign them one weight based on common properties than to go into these nuances.
So, if these were numbers, we could say that ch is greater than e but less than o; d is greater than a but less than o;
You didn't see all the Voynichese symbols in this list? Yes, I couldn't "count" all the characters, or it would have been pointless. The letter q and the combination qo automatically have a weight of 1. The gibbets are mobile, but if we don't consider ligatures like cTh, I can assume that the gibbets are larger than ch but smaller than o. The s has different data - it's likely smaller than e, smaller than o, and larger than ch and a. There are many nuances that prevent us from assigning a weight to this letter (for example, s often appears after o but can also appear before it. In general, s behaves sufficiently mobile to give it a certain weight). Conventionally, it can be equated to 5, but this will be inaccurate.
Total: I don't think I've done anything really worthwhile. I haven't achieved any precise results, but I have made some guesses. -
RE: Voynichese is a numeric cipher?
ololololo > 13-06-2026, 06:12 PM
Well, let's conduct a small experiment. If Voynichese is a numerical substitution, it means that letters or parts of words are hidden under numbers. In general, we can take words with a more or less obvious translation and try to "decrypt" them by matching them as closely as possible with the original word.
If you don't understand, I'll try to translate it.
For example, we will take words whose translations are well-known and obvious: otol (fire, f77r) and okalo (intestine, f77v).
Let's see if we can decipher and match them in three languages: Latin, Middle High German, and Bavarian (the most common variations of the language used in the manuscript, the idea of Bavarian I borrowed from JoJo_Jost).
1). Let's start with otol. As we have already learned, this means fire. To begin deciphering, we need to break this word into "syllables." In fact, there are several ways to divide it:
ot-ol
o-t-o-l
o-t-ol
In Latin, fire is Ignis, in MHG it's viur/fieur, and in Bavarian it's faia.
If the author has encrypted Ignis, it is likely that he has encrypted it as ot-ol = i-g-nis (or i-gn-is). Of course, it looks contrived, but as it was written in the post, the author could encrypt not only letters, but also abbreviations (for example, he did not encrypt the ending -rum with three letters, but with one symbol).
But what if the author has encrypted Viur/Fieur? Well, for one thing, there are no matches between the words - word "viur" has two different vowels. We can assume that this stands for o-t-o-l = v-i-u-r or o-t-ol = v-i-ur. But then it turns out that o is ambiguous - at the beginning it means v, and at the end it means u. In fact, this is possible because u was often written as v in the past, and this is a fairly common encryption technique. Then it turns out that o-t-o-l = v-i-v-r or o-t-ol = v-i-vr. It more or less fits... I couldn't find a corresponding word for "fieur," and it doesn't seem to fit either, as it has five letters, while otol has a maximum of four.
What if the author has encrypted the Bavarian Faia? Well, first of all, I want to point out that although this word corresponds to otol (two identical vowels, two different consonants), it does not match the letter arrangement. But if we write the letters in reverse - aiaf, then we get o-t-o-l = a-i-a-f. Of course, it fits, but we had to rewrite the word.
2). The same applies to okalo. Here are the syllable breakdown options:
o-k-a-l-o
ok-al-o
o-k-al-o
In Latin, the intestines are called intestinum, in MHG it's darm/darme, and in Bavarian it's doam.
So, intestinum. Let's start by comparing the words - they have three vowels, two of which are i (which is encoded as o in the previous example). But we see a big difference in the number of letters. By trying to match, we get: o-k-al-o = i-n-testi-num. So, is the final o = num? However, this is not so straightforward. Since this is Latin, it may be a shortened version of the word - ītēstī̄ū, ītēstī̄m or intestī'. The last example is suitable for Latin, and then it turns out that o-k-al-o = i-n-test-i. The only questionable detail is the al digram. But perhaps the digrams could mean not only letters, but also abbreviations.
What about darm/darme? There is a problem - in the previous example, o is u/v, but there are no such letters here. Also, the number of letters in darm is less than in okalo. Still, if try to decipher, we'll get ok-al-o = d-ar-m or ok-al-o = da-rm-e. As we can see, no form of the word "intestine" is suitable for MHG.
Finally, doam. The number of letters in doam is less than in okalo. The word contains the letter o, which in the previous example represented a. But in doam, she's the third, and in okalo, she's the first. We can try to match the words, and okalo will become kaol or laok. Bringing it into line, we get k-a-o-l = d-o-a-m or k-a-ol = d-o-am. Considering my assumption that the order of the numbers in the word could have been intentionally changed, and that extra digits could have been added, this decryption option makes sense.
So, we were able to decipher these words somehow. The most likely candidates for the original language of the manuscript in this case were Latin (which behaves quite appropriately in our examples) and Bavarian (with some nuances, but they are perfectly explained by my assumptions about the secondary complexity of the cipher). Unfortunately, MHG is not suitable.
P.S. This is not a decryption, but an attempt to apply substitution logic to Voynichese. In general, this worked more or less well with these simple examples, but that doesn't mean you can continue translating the text - it won't work.