Dictionary

In English and other languages a dictionary is arranged alphabetically, taking the initial letter of each word, with divisions of sections or chapters for each letter. Naturally, some sections of the dictionary are more voluminous than others: the entries for X are slender compared to the entries for S.

In the Voynich language we do not know the order of the letters of the alphabet, or if there is any order, but we can still group words (vords) according to the initial letter. We can compile lists of words towards creating a Voynich dictionary.

This is revealing in itself because we immediately find that some letters (glyphs) are far more productive in this respect than others. Some letters are commonly found at the beginning of words, others less so, and some hardly at all. There are lots of words beginning with some letters and fewer beginning with others. All languages are like this, obviously; the Voynich language is no exception.

This has all been thoroughly investigated before and I don’t propose to introduce anything new. I merely seek to get matters clear concerning the basic characteristics of the Voynich language from the script up.

The most common glyph to appear at the start of Voynich words is <o>. There are about 3700 different words in this chapter of the Voynich dictionary. The second most common is <ee> (about 3000 words). The visually arresting glyph <q> is third most with about 2700 words. Fourthly, there is <d> - the glyph like the number 8 – at the start of about 2300 words.

Here is the full list of the twenty-three glyphs in order, from the most words in the dictionary to the least:

1. o
2. ch
3. q
4. d
5. Sh
6. y
7. a
8. s
9. l
10. k
11. t
12.  p
13. r
14. cTh
15. cKh
16. e
17. cFh
18. f
19. cPh
20. i
21. g
22. m
23. n

There are very few entries in the dictionary under the last letter <n> : in fact, only five. The last few letters in the sequence are hardly found at the start of words at all. Indeed, they are typically found at the end of words which suggests they may be final forms of other letters, or else, like <i> they seem confined to the middle of words. <i> is a very common letter in the text, but it only occurs at the beginning of about twenty words. The first dozen letters in the sequence account for the great bulk of the Voynich dictionary.

Some observations:

*If the Voynich language is a phonological language, made to be spoken, there is a high chance the <o> letter is, indeed, pronounced "o" as in Latin and related languages. In that case, the Voynich language must sound very "o-ey" - lots of "o" sounds. (Perhaps <o> is connected to nouns?)

*The high frequency of some letters at the start of words may be the result of common prefixes, notably <qo->.

*The gallows glyph group are all low frequency. Whatever the four so-called 'bench gallows' are designed to do, it is not to start words.

*The first letter based on the backslash form \ is ninth in the list. This signals a general observation: c-curve letters tend to start words, backslash letters don't. (<a> is an exception, being made of both.)

*The frequency of <ee> is surprising, especially since the single <e> is sixteenth on the list. Whatever way we construe it, it is a double letter. A surprisingly large number of words begin with this bigram, and the form with a tick, the fifth letter in the sequence.

*The list draws attention to the peculiar nature of <g> and <m>, 21. and 22.

R. B.