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November 25th, 2012
09:21 am - Ogham and Rune Transliterations: It Seems I'm Stumped On Things I have a project I want to work on, but I'm having difficulty with certain letters. Specifically, I want to do something with people's initials, but I can't really do that until I have all the English letters figured out.
Since Old Irish (and Ogam) just doesn't have all these letters (you know, being Q-Celtic and all, plus decidedly not Latin), I'm running into some issues with the transliterations.
Anyone with a deeper knowledge than me care to take a stab at where some English letters might fall? Here's what I've got so far:
beith - B luis - L fearn - F, V, W saille - S nuin - N úath - H, J duir - D tinne - T coll - C, K ceirt - Q muin - M gort - G gétal - NG straif - Z ruis - R ailm - A onn - O úr - U edad - E idad - I
ébad - EA, (X?) óir - OI uillenn - UI, Y iphin - IO (P?) emancholl - AE (X?)
I'm pretty comfortable with H and J being together at úath, F and V being together in fearn, and C and K being together in coll. Obviously, my biggest issues are with the letters X, W, Y, and P. Here's what I've surmised about these: - X - Apparently, ébadis occasionally used as an "X" in inscriptions, but emancholl occasionally takes the /ch/ sound that would be associated with an X. I'm leaning toward emancholl at the moment.
- W - I currently have W listed with F and V, but I'm not sure it belongs there. It may be better suited to the letter "B" given the change in the Germanic /w/ over time. Still, fearn as a letter name has its roots in the PIE *werna, so I've stuck it there.
- Y - Y can end up in uillenn easiest, I think, but McManus suggested it show up instead in úath
- P - This is perhaps the most complicated, as iphin was apparently "originally" a P-sound, pín, making it a possible candidate, but then it became a diphthong. Wikipedia also describes an ogham, peith, which is line beside the line. The question then becomes, which to use here?
I am somewhat more confident about my runic transliterations:
Fehu - F, V Uruz - U, Y Thurz - TH Ansuz - A Raido - R Kenaz - C, K, Q Gebo - G Wunjo - W Hagalaz - H Naudiz - N Isa - I Jera - J Eihwaz - EA Pertho - P Algiz - Z, X Suwilo - S Tiwaz - T Berkano - B Ehwaz - E Mannaz - M Laguz - L Ing - NG Dagaz - D Odila - O
With runes, it's much clearer. V goes with F because of the /f/ sound, Y with U because of the /u/ sound common in Germanic languages with the letter, K with C for obvious reasons, X with Z because of the Americanization of X as a /z/ for things like "xylophone" and "Xander." Q was the hardest, but I followed Thorsson on that one.
Feel free to comment and correct anything I think I have right, too ;) Current Location: Southeast of Disorder Current Mood: chipper Current Music: "Cattle Truckin'", -JB
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Germans handle the W as a V because, I think, that's what "W" means to them, phonetically. :) But V is closer to F in terms of actual usage.
Ooh, just found this in Gordon's An Introduction to Old Norse: "v in the 12th century was a voiced bilabial fricative, like german u in quelle or Spanish b in saber; during the thirteenth century v became labio-dental, like English v, the same sound as Icelandic f medial and final. Hence a word like æve was often spelled æfi. In the combination hv the sound of v was voiceless, but in the 14th century hv became kv in some dialects."
Well, that's more than either of us ever wanted to know about that, isn't it? :)
For X, I thought about doing two runes (kenaz and suwilo are Thorsson's suggestion), but that's far more complicated than I wanted to go on this. Interestingly, Gordon suggests "G" might be a good option, as it could be used as an unvoiced ch (as in "loch") at times, too. I put it as Uruz because according to Elmer Antonsen's A Concise Grammar of the Older Runic Inscriptions, he places Uruz phonetically as both /u/ and /u/ (with the long bar over the top of the second "/u/", which I can't figure out how to print on-screen). In Old and Middle English, "Y" was the tranliteration for that "/y/" sound (though it devolves into /i/ in Middle English, eventually), which is where I picked this up.
The best option, but not suited to what I'm doing, is to try and do a bindrune or more than one rune for it, like Isa/Uruz, I think.
Eihwaz might be a good choice, but so is Jera, really. I think a lot of it depends on whether it's a consonant or a vowel (Eihwaz or Uruz for vowel, Jera for consonant). On further reflection, I think Eihwaz is the better place to put "Y". In answering sleepingwolf above, I found a passage in Gordon that suggests that the /i/ is more likely to be what was eventually transliterated as "y." Thanks! ![[User Picture]](https://l-userpic.livejournal.com/31652373/3212812) | From: | uberrod |
Date: | November 26th, 2012 05:05 am (UTC) |
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Typically Eiwhaz is the final y sound (trul-y) and Jera is the initial y sound (Y-ear).
I've always seen stuff relating Uruz to U or V. But you have way more linguistics backing up F/V than I could ever do. Yeah, I've been thinking more "consonant/vowel" than "ending/beginning" for the J/Y association. I thought about putting it with J and just being done with it, but I wasn't real comfortable with that.
Linguistics: they're fun. Sorta :) ![[User Picture]](https://l-userpic.livejournal.com/7448451/1366673) | From: | anivair |
Date: | November 26th, 2012 02:23 pm (UTC) |
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I also like emancholl as X. You'll get people twitching about it either way, but I dig it.
I also think that keeping y in uillenn is easiest, only because if you line it up with uath you will confuse the hell out of the h and j association.
I usually drag p into other sounds like a B. It's a tricky one (tricky enough that people actually use peith for stuff) so maybe peith is an option as long as you're not doing any divination with it. If it's just a font, then that's fine. if you want discriminatory meaning out of peith you're pretty much diving into UPG land. Yeah, I'm not thinking much about divination, so I'm sort of leaning toward the peith option for P. I keep thinking about Irish people calling "Patrick" "Batrick," and that just doesn't do it for me :) |
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