VMs: Is it a human language? (was Moot points, getting long)

["Philip Neal" <philipneal_vms@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

> From: Koontz John E <John.Koontz@xxxxxxxxxxxx>

<snip> a lot of impressively knowledgeable stuff about Teton Dakotan 
<unsnip>

> I grant that I sincerely doubt that we have to deal with a Siouan language
> in the VMs - I would go so far as to say the possibility could be rejected
> a priori - but we should be careful in our assumptions about what is
> natural and not.

Interesting. I take it that you are not saying that 'Voynichese' is a North 
American language: you are saying that any spoken language has severe 
restrictions on the possible combinations of sounds and that this might be 
the reason for the apparent restrictions on the co-occurrence of 
'Voynichese' characters.

It is logically and historically possible. The theory has been floated on 
this list, notably by Jorge Stolfi, that 'Voynichese' might be Chinese. Not 
the Standard Northern Chinese of today as transcribed in books about modern 
Chinese but some different, older form of the language written in alphabetic 
script. Chinese has a phonetic personality which comes out in transcription: 
so do Turkish, Arabic and Japanese. I do not know these languages but it is 
possible to know many facts about a language which you do not understand.

The question is this. Memorise any transcription and pronunciation of 
'Voynichese' and read a page of the manuscript to yourself. Is it like 
memorising Arabic script or Japanese kana and trying to read a language 
which you do not know? Alternatively look at a descriptive grammar of some 
endangered language, written after years of hard work by a field linguist, 
and ask yourself if the structure of 'Voynichese' is really so complex.

It seems to me that the answer is no. I think that whoever some day solves 
the Voynich puzzle will be a student of well known languages and historical 
cryptography. But an identification of the manuscript as an early book in a 
little known human language would be the most interesting of all conceivable 
solutions to the puzzle and is worth keeping an open mind about.

Philip Neal

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