Cipher or unknown language - historical perspective

[Jorge_Stolfi]

I predict that our conversations would be different if the VM had been written in a unique Albanian alphabet. Even in Wilfrid's day, someone would have noticed "this looks like an unattested form of Albanian writing".

Not so sure... Consider the difficulty we have had, all these years, in identifying the language and reading of the "michiton" marginalia.  And yet we know (don't we?) that it must be some Romance or Germanic language. 

Voynichese is not just an original alphabet for the underlying language.  It must be also a new spelling system for it, plus possibly some simple encryption of it.  If the language was some now-lost dialect of Albanian (whether the one in the Caucasus, or the one in the Balkans)  or Iberian (whether the one in the Caucasus, or the one in Western Europe), would someone have recognized it under those layers of obfuscation?  Would someone have even tried? 

All the best, --jorge

PS. I wonder how the movie Inside Man would have worked out if the message from the bank robbers had been in Caucasian Albanian instead of in ordinary hey-my-wife-speaks-that Balkanian Albanian.