VMs: Thanks to all -- and what about Nushu?

[Christoph Neidhart <neidhart@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hello --

1. Thanks to everybody who replied to my questions for the WELTWOCHE-story,
either on the board or directly. You're a great group of scholars and 
detectives.
You provided me with a huge amount of rich material. I really enjoyed doing 
this
research. The article is almost complete now, and of course, I will keep you
posted when it will be published. (http://www.weltwoche.ch)

2. The Chinese connection; this is particularly for Jorge Stolfi and 
Jacques Guy,
whose contributions I especially enjoyed. Have you ever looked into "Nushu,"
the secret language of Chinese women (this is actually a hint of my wife). 
Those
characters do not look similar to the Voynich-script, and they're written in a
vertical line. But, and that's crucial, as opposed to Chinese characters, 
they are
not ideographs but represent sounds (as does Korean writing and the Japanese
kanas (hiragana and katagana). Originally, around the 10th century, the 
phonetic
kanas were only used by women, while Japanese men stuck to Chinese 
characters).
Nushu has had its variations from village to village; so if you follow 
Jacques Guys
idea of a missionary -- a woman? -- getting back to Venice... Nushu could well
have turn into Voynichese... Have a look at it, at least for the fun of it; 
this must
thrill you, Jacques Guy.

I include a story from the LA-Times on Nushu, but if you google "Nushu," 
you'll
get a wealth of scholarly information.

Good luck to all of you, and thanks

Christoph Neidhart

Attachment: Nushu.doc
Description: MS-Word document