Folder: MAIL/folders-splitted/vm-folders/inbox-2003-05-22-semifiltered From VM Fri Sep 27 11:21:42 2002 Message-Id: <200209270911.g8R9BixL030595@mail2.alphalink.com.au> Reply-To: jguy@alphalink.com.au Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Date: Fri, 27 Sep 2002 19:11:43 +1000 From: Jacques Guy To: voynich@cryptogram.org (Voynich Ms. mailing list) Subject: VMs: Re: Piraha and the VMS 26/09/02 23:00:33, Jorge Stolfi wrote: > By amazing coincidence, I happen to have a book about the Pirahã > language (which had about 110 speakers left in ~1980). Here is a >sample sentence from that book: > (1) xaíti xaibogi xaigahápiso xisibáobábagaí sagía xabáobihiabá It is difficult to believe that such languages can really exist, isn't it? > Jacques suggests that those languages may show a better match to the > VMS, if each word element is written as a separate word, eg. Did I say that? I must watch my tongue. > (2) xaíti xaibogi xaig ahá p i so xisib áo b ábagaí sagía xab áo b i hiab á >Perhaps... No, it doesn't look like Voynichese at all. I do think it still would not, writing it in a syllabary. Chinese is still the best match. But the real point is: there are unbelievable languages out there, on the very verge of extinction. Only 110 people left speaking Piraha! We cannot rule out that the VMs is in a strange, now long extinct, language of Europe.