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by Luyt 4497 days ago
There is a skeptoid episode about the Voynich manuscript: http://skeptoid.com/episodes/4252

"A famous analysis done in the 1970's by US Navy cryptographer Prescott Currier found that the Voynich manuscript is written in two distinct languages. He used the term languages, but also cautioned that they're also consistent with different subject matter, different encryption schemes, or possibly just different dialects. He called them Voynich-A and Voynich-B. Interestingly, Voynich-A and Voynich-B are in two different handwritings, though both use the same alphabet and script. Every page of the book is written entirely in either A or B. The Biology and Star sections of the book are written in Voynich-B; the others are written in Voynich-A. The exception is the first and largest section, Botanical, which contains some of each. But they're not simply interspersed. The way the book is bound uses bifolios, which are groups of pages folded together, which are then stacked on top of one another to be bound. Each bifolio in the Voynich manuscript is written entirely in one language or the other."

1 comments

Existance of Voynich-A and Voynich-B dialects supports the theory that the script was invented by a small group of people. Different languages also is consistent with the theory that the script is written in some language that didn't previously have a writing.