The rune for L is ᛚ.
The rune for P is ᛈ.
The rune for the sound in kit is ᛁ.
Read the runic text below. Think about what it might spell. Then click or tap on the text to see if you were correct!
lip
pill
The rune for K is ᛣ.
kill
The rune for T is ᛏ.
till
kit
The rune for a y sound is ᛡ.
When you combine the i sound in “kit” with a y sound, it makes “ee”.
The rune combination for a fleece sound is ᛁᛡ.
Y sounds are softer at the ends of syllables and stronger at the beginning of syllables. So it’s normal if you don’t think you really hear a y at all in this phoneme.
keep
teal
You may notice that when you say a word like “teal”, it almost sounds like “tee-yuhl”. This is because there is a subtle “y” sounds in the long ee sound. We notice the y sound more strongly before an L.
peel
The rune for R is… ᚱ.
The two vowel sounds that we’ve learned so far (“kit” and “fleece”) are often interchanged in interesting ways in English. Think of how some people say “creek” and some say “crick”.
creek
crick
pick
peak
If we want the “kit” sound to have an ᚱ at the end like in the word “near”, we need to use two ᛁ runes together.
pier
Why ᛁᛁᚱ instead of just ᛁᚱ? Because ᛁᚱ would be a different phoneme like the one at the beginning of “mirror”. So we use ᛁᛁᚱ for this sound instead.
tier
You may notice that you have a pause in between the two ᛁᛁ runes like “pee-er”. You might even hear a slight y sound in that pause! That is why we use the two runes instead of the one. It’s a lengthened sound.
What about using ᛁᛡᚱ instead? English accents pronounce this phoneme in different ways. To keep all the accents united, we group this sound under the lengthened category.
leer
These principles and patterns that you’re learning will apply in many other areas. And there will be some shortcuts later on as well.