VMs: Re: Paradigms Regained

[Dennis <tsalagi@xxxxxxxx>]

Jacques Guy wrote:
> 
> >A problem is that there are many
> >words that do not end in:
> >> ain aiin aiiin,
> >> ey, eey, eeey.
> >so what to do with these?
> 
> Oh, very simple. Vietnamese has six tones. But
> only two in syllables ending with an oral stop.
> Likewise Mandarin used to have five tones.
> The fifth actually being a glottal stop ending
> the syllable (and this glottal stop what the
> remnant of a final p, t, or k -- which you still
> have in Cantonese). So, at a slightly earlier
> stage, syllables ending in p, t, and k, had
> no distinctive tone. 

	All very interesting.  Over and over again 
we hear that Chinese and similar monosyllabic languages
are the only things that resemble Voynichese.  However,
so far as I can tell,  there's nothing from Chinese
culture in the manuscript, unless the astrology's
Chinese, and even then, it's done with European
symbolism.  No Chinese or Far Eastern imagery at all. 
The Chinamen who came back with Marco Polo must just
have done the writing, and a lunatic friend of Polo's
produced the pictures.  Sounds like my silly African
theory.  In short, this is a strong argument against
Chinese, etc., actually being the underlying language.  

	Which brings us back to the theme I like to harp on. 
Could 
the Voynichese 'words' be syllables of a European
language like French, Italian, German, Croatian, etc.? 
Why can't they be?  Like Rene, I'm sure that someone on
the list has an answer.  

Dennis
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