Proto-Swedish Voynich food theory…
As far as theories of the Voynich Manuscript’s linguistic origin go, people have over the years proposed proto-Russian, proto-German, proto-Dutch, in fact proto-just-about-every-European-language-going… yet it seemed that nobody had tried Swedish as a possible match for Voynichese.
However, when I gave this a go, I found to my great surprise that the two meshed really well, particularly the unique “dinka-donka” (i.e. ‘verbose’) scansion they apparently share. After a bit of work, I managed to compile the following set of letter equivalences (EVA transcription in square brackets):-
(The full EVA key maps “abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz” → ”o–bmc–r-stxkeydnfu—-h-“, and
“ch / sh / ckh / cth” → “v / i / g / w“). This transforms the following Voynichese on f116v…
pchal larar al ckhal rain alol fchy rpchey shfy ches ar opche kan dlr
olkeey rain shey qoraiin shey ol lchedy rshey qokeedy chtain oly
soraiin ykeey rain sheeky qokain sheey qol cheds ar r arshe
qokain ar raiin shek okain yrshey qolchey okain shckhy qokam
shedy qokeey qoka qokeey lchey olkey raiin cthar shckhy qotar
…to the proto-Swedish plaintext…
yvot tonon ot got nork otet cvh nyvmh ich vmf on eyvm sok btn
etsmmh nork imh denorrk imh et tvmbh nimh desmmbh vuork eth
fenorrk hsmmh nork immsh desork immh det vmbf on n onim
desork on norrk ims esork hnimh detvmh esork igh desox
imbh desmmh deso desmmh tvmh etsmh norrk won igh deuon
I then needed to find a remote community where this (otherwise lost) proto-Swedish is still in use. After an extensive research trail, I uncovered rare video footage of the one person in the world who still talks this language: and, amazingly, I was able to link up the text in the Voynich Manuscript’s recipe section with a short section of the tape (as per the subtitles), proving without a shadow of a doubt that the eleventh starred paragraph on f116r contains the recipe for meatballs:-
You couldn’t make it up. Nor perhaps would you want to. 
January 4th, 2010 at 10:50 am
In this context, it seems important to point out that one can install a Firefox
plugin (*) which turns normal website text into this proto-swedish which is
in fact, as it seems, Voynichese.
Note (*): I have not actually done this…
January 4th, 2010 at 10:54 am
Yes, and note that you can also configure Google’s Interface Language to be “Bork, bork, bork!” (or “dain, dain, dain!” as we should now call it).
January 4th, 2010 at 12:20 pm
I feel there’s something going on here that I am just not getting due to me not being born in a native English speaking country.
…Or you could just have a genuine theory that the VMS is written in proto-Swedish.
The jury’s still out on this one.
January 4th, 2010 at 1:50 pm
German muppet fans would probably grasp this better as proto-Danish: though I’m sure I could find just as good a match for “Smørrebrød, Smørrebrød røm, pøm, pøm, pøm” with a bit of work.
January 4th, 2010 at 8:34 pm
I guess this disproves my recent pet theory– the Voynich is really a (14)70′s countercultural work containing questionable recipes for homemade drugs and explosives. It bore the Latin title “Liber Coquae Anarchiae”.
January 6th, 2010 at 6:58 am
Okay, so it’s a 1470′s Proto-Danish version of The Anarchists Cookbook.
I’m glad that’s settled. Now we can finally move on.
January 6th, 2010 at 8:53 am
Were hedgehogs already on the menu by then?
January 6th, 2010 at 9:20 am
Do anarchists eat hedgehogs?
January 6th, 2010 at 12:02 pm
Oh well done!
Any epigraphic relation here to the birchbark letter?
January 6th, 2010 at 12:54 pm
Not unless that too was written by a muppet.
January 6th, 2010 at 1:43 pm
Nick #8: of course, with garlic, bay leave and green peppers:
http://www.ci-n.com/~jcampbel/cookbook.html
As you wrote:
You couldn’t make it up. Nor perhaps would you want to.
January 6th, 2010 at 2:20 pm
By the way, the ingredients are found together in the VMs, on
fols. 99v and 100r. Garlic on f99v, third row, rightmost, and
bay leaves and green pepper on f100r top row.
January 7th, 2010 at 5:53 pm
Nick, I think you are on to something. The number of Muppet Shows is around 120, which matches quite decently the number of folios in the VMs … is it possible that the VMs is simply the encoded scripts for the Muppet Shows?
January 7th, 2010 at 7:23 pm
Numerology comes to my rescue! I knew some sound supporting evidence would come along eventually, thanks Julian!
January 7th, 2010 at 7:49 pm
Y’know, I think we should tell Fräulein Papke and Herr Doktor Weydemann about all this; I’m sure they would appreciate all the supporting evidence.
January 26th, 2010 at 2:21 am
Air qoky qo dair qoky qo te dain dain dain they are the words that appear in the photo of the cook
March 29th, 2010 at 10:03 am
re Proto-languages.
Must say that the unfinished wheel-diagram on f.67v has a feeling about it that strongly reminds me of the bit in a work – extant in a 13thC Old Norwegian copy – where the ‘pact of the winds’ is described.
The book has been translated into English, and is also on the web.
I thought I’d mention this because so many people have concluded that the language was frankish (not french), or a kind of German, or a kind of Dutch. What if we’re really looking at Old Norwegian text?
It would be a translation..whoo hoo… I wonder if it means that we can go play with the Rus again?
March 29th, 2010 at 10:13 am
Diane: a Norwegian Voynich theory would be cool, seeing as Proto-Swedish has already been had.