RE: Re: Piraha and the VMS

["Kevin Gillette" <kevingi@xxxxxxxxx>]

I have to agree with Philip in his assertion that it is extremely unlikely
to be a British Isles tongue that somehow slipped through the cracks.
However, even to this day there are fragmentary tongues (more than dialects,
but often less than full-fledged languages in their own right) that exist in
the numerous communities in the trans-Caucus region (Armenia, Georgia,
Azerbajian), some Indo-European, others Turkic, and maybe a few "who knows?"
tongues.  East-central Europe probably has a few of those in modern times as
well.  Consider languages like Breton and Frisian, which live side-by-side
with their modern successors (English/French and Dutch, respectively).
Someone once told me that the reason Hungary is so-named is that their
language (Magyar) derives from the Huns' native tongue of old, thus relating
it more closely to the Altaic and Turkic groups (it is most certainly *not*
Indo-European!).  They (the Huns) definitely made their influence known into
central Europe, so this assertion may not be that far-fetched.  Thus, the
notion that VMS may be written in a dialect of Chinese isn't too outlandish,
on the face of it.  Consider that European ecclesiasts already had a fairly
comprehensive knowledge of the Sinaic tongues due to the exploits of Marco
Polo and his family around the putative time of VMS authorship (give or take
a century or two :-)).  Maybe it's in an Altaic tongue, e.g., Mongolian, or
perhaps something more unusual like Uygur, or even one of the central Asian
tongues like Tajiki or Uzbeki.  I don't speak any of these, so I don't know
what sort of properties they possess as far as word length, syllabic
distribution, etc.  Thoughts?

Kevin

-----Original Message-----
From: owner-voynich@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:owner-voynich@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx]On Behalf Of Philip Neal
Sent: Friday, September 27, 2002 5:25 AM
To: Voynich Ms. mailing list
Subject: VMs: Re: Piraha and the VMS


Jacques Guy wrote:

>But the real point is: there are unbelievable languages out there,
>on the very verge of extinction.

This is entirely true. Recent books by David Crystal and others have
drawn attention to language death as a neglected issue amid the
current enthusiasm for diversity. But...

>Only 110 people left speaking
>Piraha! We cannot rule out that the VMs is in a strange, now
>long extinct, language of Europe.

What is the evidence for extensive language death in late mediaeval
Europe? There were two main tendencies, both irrelevant here.

1. Certain vernaculars (Castilian, Catalan, High German, Dutch)
attained the status of standard written languages with the result
that related vernaculars (Gallician, Swiss German) were stigmatised
as rustic dialects and largely failed to make the transition to
printing.

2. Minority languages within a nation state (Welsh, Prussian) lost
or failed to attain official status and ceased to attract new
speakers by immigration and intermarriage.

Neither phenomenon is relevant to the suggestion that a language
isolate such as Basque could have survived past 1348-50, unnoticed
and unrecorded, and died out at a subsequent date. I think it
could be demonstrated from records of tax and property that there
was no such language in England and probably the British Isles.
Eastern Europe may conceivably be a different matter: the main
evidence here would be the chance recording of Crimean Gothic in
the 16th century.

Philip Neal


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