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.

(Reply) (Parent) (Thread)

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).

(Reply) (Parent) (Thread)

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!

(Reply) (Parent) (Thread)

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.

(Reply) (Parent) (Thread)

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 :)

(Reply) (Parent) (Thread)

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.

(Reply) (Thread)

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 :)

(Reply) (Parent) (Thread)