Qokechy

How to approach the enigma of the Voynich language if, like me, you have, mercifully, been spared the fate of being born a linguist? How to get a sense of this linguistic phenomenon that has all the experts stumped?

One of my first strategies was to select a word – any word – and pursue it into the text. I found and examined all instances of it, and then looked at similar words or variations upon it. I tried to answer such questions as: what might it mean? What part of speech might it be? Is it attached to certain pictures or specific to certain pages , or sections? I studied the word from every angle.

Very quickly you discover that the text is not as approachable as it may seem. The conundrums and mysteries begin to appear almost at once. The exercise will certainly disabuse you of any notion that the text is plain and readable and will dispel any foolish ideas such as: ‘This is easy. I can bust this by lunchtime!” In the end you will be wondering if your word is actually a word at all.

The word I chose was QOKECHY. There was no particular reason for this choice, except that I needed a word that was neither too common nor too rare. QOKECHY is somewhere in that range. A word like DAIIN isn’t really suitable for the purpose. But any mid-range word will take you on much the same journey through the text and teach you the same lessons in humility.

A study of QOKECHY quickly leads you to consider the similar word QOKEEDY which turns out to be one of the more interesting words of the codex. QOKECHY opens a very rich vein of words.

I think this is a very good method and recommend it: choose a word (not too common, not too rare) and then study it. Study it thoroughly. The exercise will quickly teach you much about so-called 'Voynichese'. It is, in fact, an opening strategy towards attaining a thorough familiarity with the language, akin to learning it, becoming fluent in its forms and conventions.

There is nothing much to be gained by detailing the odd behavior of this word and its related words here. It only serves to reiterate yet again what a strange and highly artificial construction is this language. This only adds to the noise (without identifying any music.)

(I don’t like the word “Voynichese” by the way. I think the language/script is a remarkable creation, regardless of what it might be and say, and deserves a higher dignity than ‘Voynichese’. I like the word QOKECHY for this purpose, but that's because it’s the word I first chose to study. On these pages and elsewhere I will sometimes refer to the Voynich language as QOKECHY, sometimes as "the Voynich language" and only as "Voynichese" if I have to.)

R. B.