Runic writing

Runic Alphabet.

The word “rune” is translated as “ secret ” (compare old Celtic “ run ”, middle Welsh “ rown ”, modern German “ raunen ”).

The most important sources about runic history are ancient texts of Scandinavian pagan religion – Old Edda by Brynolf Swesson and Lesser Edda by Snorri Sturlusson.

German runic writing was the letter system of peculiar look, accounted by the writing technique on bone, wood and metal.

Tombstones, altars, pagan pillars called “runic stones” are found with miscellaneous writings (Gothland, Upland, Norway). The most famous is Cilwer stone, which dates from the 5-th c. So we can find a lot of writings on jewels and weapon, for barbarians believed things had to possess their own names (breakteats).

The main runic alphabet consists of 24 signs, may be more, but other ones are regarded as variants or combined runes.

The whole system is divided into 2 parts – futarks (arises from the first symbols – F, U, Th, A, R, K: Old futark (runes of Old German origin – o.f.) and Late futark (modifications of o.f. in Northumbrian, Frisian and Anglo-Saxon alphabets).

Old Futark

24 signs traditionally gradate into 3 groups of 8 symbols called atts (“part of land “ or “kin” compare Scot. "airt”, Ireland “aird).

Nowadays we have the main runic alphabet, consisting of 24 signs, may be more, but other ones are regarded as variants or combined runes.

The first six runes of the alphabet spell out the word "FUTHARK".

The origin of futark remains the matter of severe debates between historians, linguists and philologists.

There are two main theories: 1) Runic writing appeared on the basis of Latin alphabet; 2) cradles of these signs are in Transalpine and North Italian scripts. Scientists have a lot of historical facts, approving that Etruscan merchants used this system. Probably they brought it to the North (6-th c. B.C.).

However some researchers think that runes cropped up in Germanic tribes from ancient Rome Latin writing. But the construction of runic alphabet (RA) is different from others – for example, order of the first letters.

Many runic symbols were used as icons, showing various things and animals. Some runologists suppose that even in the most developed variant they are close to pictures: rune “Fehu” f symbolizes cattle, Thurisaz – thorn, Wunjo w – weathercock, Algiz z – elk, Zin s– lightning, Yr u – bow, Edhwaz m – horse.

The top of development and complete formation of RA system was in the 1-2 c. AD.

28 sings appeared in the middle of the 6-th c. In Britain where German runes penetrated in the 5-th c. with Anglo-Saxon invasion, Frisian futark was improved by some additions and changes (mostly combined runes) and numbered 29 units.

In Northumberland 33 rune system existed already, with the mixture of Celtic runes.

In the middle of the 7-th c. the tendency to simplification appeared – some runes changed in inscription, some were lost. To the middle of the 10-th c. the number of runes decreased to 16 units and late futark formed.

It was purely writing system, which wasn’t used for fortune telling. It got wide spreading not only in the territory of German Empire, but in the North too, for example in Denmark and Sweden.

The next step in development of RA took place in the middle of the 12-th c. by adding dots to 16 sign system (dotted alphabet). It was used along with Latin one till the 16-th c. We can find its variants in Slavonic manuscripts.

Вопрос 8

The Gothic alphabet was probably created by bishop Ulfilas who also translated the Bible into the "razda" (language).

Some scholars claim that it was derived from the Greek alphabet only, while others maintain that there are some Gothic letters of runic or Latin origin. There are very few references to the Gothic language in secondary sources after about 800 AD, so perhaps it was rarely used by that date.

The Gothic alphabet is an alphabetic writing system used exclusively for writing the ancient Gothic language. Before its creation, Gothic was written in Gothic runes.

Latin Alphabet

Latin was introduced into Germanic languages later in order to organise church service. First glosses appeared to render the names into Latin. The Latin alphabet of that time had only 23 letters (without J,W,V).

Historically there were the following types of Latin writing: scriptura capitalis, scriptura uncialis, and minusculis.

Вопрос 9

The most important sources about runic history are ancient texts of Scandinavian pagan religion – Old Edda by Brynolf Swesson and Lesser Edda by Snorri Sturlusson.German runic writing was the letter system of peculiar look, accounted by the writing technique on bone, wood and metal. Tombstones, altars, pagan pillars called “runic stones” are found with miscellaneous writings (Gothland, Upland, Norway). The most famous is Cilwer stone, which dates from the 5-th c. So we can find a lot of writings on jewels and weapon, for barbarians believed things had to possess their own names (breakteats).

Вопрос 10

Stress

Stress is the emphasis (shown by more forceful, louder, and higher-pitched voice) given to some syllables (usually no more than one in each word). In many languages, long words have a secondary stress a few syllables away from the primary stress. Some languages have fixed stress, i.e. stress is placed always on a given syllable, as in French (where words are always stressed in the last syllable) or Quechua (always on the penultima – the syllable before the last one). Other languages have stress placed on different syllables in a predictable way (they are said to have a regular stress rule), such as Latin.

There are also languages like English or Spanish, where stress is unpredictable and arbitrary, being lexical – it comes as part of the word and must be learned with it. In this kind of a language two words can differ only by the position of the stress, and therefore it’s possible to use stress as a derivative or inflectional device.

It is considered that in Indo-European the stress used to be musical and fixed. But in Germanic it became fixed on the root syllable and turned into the dynamic one.

The system of phonemes included consonants and vowels.

Ancient Germanic system of conso-nants was different from that of Indo-European in the number of stops and fricatives. Germanic languages had more fricatives than stops, Indo-European – v.v. Germanic consonants included labials p,b,f; dentals t,d,th; back sounds k,g,h; kw,gw,xw. These changes are explained by shifts.

Вопрос 11

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