Re: Antoine Casanova's research

[Jorge Stolfi <stolfi@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

    > [Dennis:] But the Bantu languages put inflectional morphemes at
    > the beginning. Hmmm. When concocting an African theory of the
    > VMs, I considered using Ibn Battuta as the one bringing the VMs
    > back to the Mediterranean world. However, Swahili, if written at
    > all, was written in Arabic characters, which does not agree with
    > the clear Romance basis of Voynichese characters. I don't think
    > so...

I don't see why an "exotic" language would be incompatible with an
European-looking alphabet.

Whether the author was an European living abroad, or a native living
in Europe, once he decided to write a book in some exotic language,
he would have had many good excuses for inventing a new script for
it --- even if the language already had a standard script. In either
case, it is not surprising that he chose to model his new alphabet on
European scripts, rather than on the native one.

Consider for instance the Sequoyah script: the symbol shapes and
writing direction are inspired on European letters, yet it is a
syllabary and not an alphabet, and the sounds and language could
hardly be more non-European.

So I don't think that we can exclude African (or any other) language
just because the script is European-looking. 

All the best,

--stolfi