For further info, if anyone is interested, Stephen Bax claimed a decade ago to partially decode the manuscript; here’s a video with his reasoning, as well as the paper he released. Sadly Bax passed away in 2017 (may he rest in peace), so the work was left incomplete.
Some believe the book is a medieval medical encyclopedia, while others argue it’s an elaborate hoax, carefully crafted to impress or deceive wealthy collectors of the time.
It’s obviously a hoax if it’s received the amount of attention the article suggests and no one can identify a language.
The text mentions three hypotheses on the linguistic content of the manuscript. I’ll split them in a different way:
- It’s all meaningless babble.
- It’s language, encoded in either a lost phonetic system (alphabet, abjad etc.) or a simple replacement cypher.
- It’s language, but encoded in a complex way.
I think #1 and #3 are implausible - because the endings are repetitive, they look a lot like suffixes in a fusional language. Like this:
That leaves us with #2. I’d also argue that the underlying system is an alphabet instead of an abjad; I’d expect the later to be a bit less repetitive.
The Voynich manuscript is such a fascinating mystery. I don’t know why but there is something almost hypnotically compelling about it. I’m personally starting to slowly believe more and more that it is in fact a hoax. Even though the text has patterns and structures consistent with natural languages, I believe some recent experiments have demonstrated that these patterns also emerge when people try to make a fake text.
However, part of me still believes that it is a real text and hopes it will one day be cracked and reveal its mysteries to us.
I also read the theory, that during the time it was likely written there were a lot of rich merchants and noble men with an interest in the occult, magic etc. So it could be a hoax to sell for a high price as a magic book. After all, there was a flourishing trade in religious relics. Not too far fetched to think that someone who maybe even had the necessary education to make and write books could make up a fake “magic book” and sell it to superstitious duke for a fortune.
That is part of the mystery for sure. If it is a modern - or at least later - hoax it’s the work of the best forger in history. All physical and historical evidence points to it being created in the first half of the 15th century. It also points to multiple people being involved in making it. And the complicated rules and structures of Voynichese involve an awful lot of effort for a medieval scam.
The Voynich manuscript is such a fascinating mystery.
Ditto - for me all the unknown behind it feels like some itch that is begging to be scratched.
I believe some recent experiments have demonstrated that these patterns also emerge when people try to make a fake text.
That’s a good point.
Ever since I learned about it many years ago I’ve been fascinated with it, and I keep checking in every couple years when the itch kicks back in to see the latest news and if anyone has made any progress.
Also, even if it is a hoax it is an old hoax, and a fascinatingly elaborate one. All evidence points to three people (at least) working on it, and the materials would have been very expensive at the time.
Still, wouldn’t it be glorious if it was in fact a lost language?
If it’s a hoax, it’s a bloody great job - they started it centuries ago, but it’s still trolling us in 2025. It’s worth to check how they did it. (@teft@lemmy.world posted a video with one way they could’ve done it.)
And if it’s a lost language, my guess is like Bax: Indo-Aryan language, either Romani or related to. That should explain why it’s so hard to decode - we’re basically looking for your typical European language when it’s something way less typical.
One of the big problems with Voynichese is the very peculiar way it behaves structurally, and especially with regards to its characters. Here is a great video about it.
This video has some great info, and it’s easier to approach than videos talking directly about the entropy issue.
Hypothetically speaking, if there’s a language encoded there, the problem of relatively few letters can be still addressed by multiple phonemes sharing the same letter.
For example, not representing VOT distinctions - so pairs like “peat” vs. “bead” are written the same, even if phonemically distinct. It seems the Southwestern Paleohispanic worked like this, so even if it’s syllabary-ish you’d see way less symbols than you’d expect for one (only ~30).
That introduces some complexity though - it’s the sort of thing you’d expect to see when a language is trying to adapt the writing system of another, and so far we didn’t attest the writing system elsewhere. Plus it makes Ockham’s Razor scream bloody murder.
It’s also notable for the repetitive strings it produces that is very unlike most (all?) known languages, such as the famous: “qokeedy qokedy shedy tchedy […] qokal otedy qokedy qokedy dal qokedy qokedy rgam.”
It’s also possible the manuscript could contain two (or more) different languages, or different encoding methods, depending on what it is. See: https://www.voynich.nu/extra/lang.html
SciShow just did a decent video on this yesterday.
If Brennan Lee Mulligan gave this to Siobhan Thompson under the guise of it being a d&d puzzle, she’d have it fully translated within the same session
interesting to know people in the past had schizo ramblings
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