Lesson 10 - ᚠ and bindrunes
The rune for F is ᚠ.
This is the very first rune in the Anglo-Saxon Futhorc. I think it is fitting that we end our journey on this one.
ᚠᛇᛚ
feel
ᚠᛚᚫᛡ
fly
ᚠᚪᚦᛟᚱ
father
Interestingly, this rune is also how you make the V sound. This is because historically F and V were what we call an allophone. The two sounds were not meaningfully distinguished in native germanic words.
ᛚᛇᚠ
leaf / leave
Now I know what you’re thinking. “F and V are no longer treated as the same sound. They are distinct sounds now!”
That is true. Just stick with me on this. Go through these exercises and think about them.
ᛒᚱᛇᚠ
brief
ᛒᚱᛖᚠᛁᛏᛄ
brevity
ᚸᚱᛇᚠ
grief (noun) / grieve (verb)
ᛚᛇᚠᛉ
leaves
ᛚᚫᛡᚠ
life (noun) / live (adjective)
ᛚᛁᚠ
live (verb)
ᛚᛁᚠᛏ
lift
ᛚᛁᚠᛞ
lived
Take your time with this one :P
ᛗᛖᛡᛣ᛫ᛚᚫᛡᛣ᛫ᛟ᛫ᛏᚱᛇ᛫ᚫᚾᛞ᛫ᛚᛇᚠ᛫᛬
Make like a tree and leaf/leave.
Now in normal every day talk, the likelihood that you will be misunderstood because of this is small. So currently, I recommend just using ᚠ as-is for both the F and V sound.
But what is the ideal way to handle “v”? What is the way that should be used in books, non-casual text, etc?
Bindrunes
The ideal way to indicate the V sound is to use what is called a bindrune. A bindrune is when you combine two runes together to form a single rune.
The logic behind doing this is set by the Anglo-Saxon runic tradition before us.
ᚳ was originally the rune for two sounds “ch” and “k”. Eventually, this rune was doubled to create a separate rune just for the “k” sound. That is how we got ᛣ (notice how it looks like ᚳ+ᚳ).
Similarly, since ᚠ is used for both the F and V sounds, we would double it to create a rune just for the “v” sound which looks like ᚠᚠ.
Personally, I like to write this letter to look more like a traditional arrow.
Why use Bindrunes?
Bindrunes would be useful for more than just V however.
If you remember back to lesson 7, we gave many examples where the British accent differs from the American. Particularly, they don’t pronounce the R in many words. This is called a non-rhotic accent (American accent is called “rhotic” because it pronounces the R).
There is a future possibility that both rhotic and non-rhotic accents can both write in the same way. This would be achieved with bindrunes.
If we use bindrunes for ᚪᚱ, ᚩᚱ, and ᛖᛖᚱ, then both rhotic and non-rhotic speakers could be satisfied. British speakers would read them as “aah”, “ooh”, and “eeh”, while American speakers would read them as “ar”, “or”, and “er”.
This could also be done with some other common combination runes such as ᚩᚹ, ᛖᛡ, ᚫᛡ, ᚩᛡ, and ᚩᚩ.
The end result of using bindrunes for all of these is that each individual English accent could see the one unique rune and think of them as “that sound” instead of “this rune plus that rune”. Psychologically, it could be more satisfying and unifying for the whole English world.
How to type bindrunes
To write bindrunes by hand, all you need is creativity. Go ahead and have fun!
To type bindrunes today, you need two things:
- A zero-width-joiner key on a keyboard
- A font that will correctly render the bindrune
If you use the Keyman app and Rune Revival’s keyboard for it, you will have the “ZWJ” key. You press one rune, then “ZWJ”, then the other rune.
Currently there are not many fonts that support bindrunes, however; so that is why you won’t often see it work.
Babelstone Runic and Catrinity support some bindrunes
On this website, we are using the Catrinity font.
What now?
Well, you’ve completed the lessons. At this point, you should have a basic ability to read runes for modern English. So I suggest that you get the keyman keyboard, join the Discord server, and start trying to write runes. Or just join and read what others write. Latin letters are welcome as well. I’ll see you there!
You can also check out the blog posts on this website to read more about the spelling system and more.
Here is a little guide for reference:
