The Runes and their sounds

The goal for this analysis and further spelling systems is to be true and authentic to the Anglo-Saxon Futhorc. We do not add in foreign runes or wildly change rune sounds.

The Runes

Before we can design a spelling system, we need to understand what we’re working with.

Let’s get a good look at them with some cool ASCII arrangements.

Extra runes separate:

ᚠᚢᚦᚩᚱᚳᚷᚹᚻᚾ
ᛁᛄᛇᛈᛉᛋᛏᛒᛖᛗ
ᛚᛝᛞᛟᚪᚫᚣᛠᛣᚸ

ᛡᛢᛥ

ᚠᚢᚦᚩᚱᚳᚷᚹᚻᚾᛁᛄᛇᛈᛉᛋᛏᛒᛖᛗᛚᛝᛞᛟᚪᚫᚣᛠᛣᚸ
          ᛡ   ᛥ           ᛢ 

                  ᚠ                      
   ᛢ       ᚸ             ᚢ               
       ᛣ                    ᚦ            
    ᛠ                          ᚩ         
   ᚣ                             ᚱ       
  ᚫ                               ᚳ      
 ᚪ                                 ᚷ     
ᛟ                                   ᚹ    
ᛞ                                   ᚻ    
 ᛝ                                  ᚾ     
   ᛚ                               ᛁ       
   ᛗ                             ᛄ     ᛡ  
     ᛖ                         ᛇ         
       ᛒ                     ᛈ           
           ᛏ             ᛉ               
                  ᛋ                      
            ᛥ                            

All runes together:

ᚠᚢᚦᚩᚱᚳᚷᚹ
ᚻᚾᛁᛄᛇᛈᛉᛋ
ᛏᛒᛖᛗᛚᛝᛞᛟ
ᚪᚫᚣᛡᛠᛢᛣᛥ
ᚸ

                ᛥ   ᚠ                  
           ᛣ             ᚢ             
       ᛢ                     ᚦ         
    ᛠ                           ᚩ      
   ᛡ                             ᚱ     
  ᚣ                               ᚳ    
 ᚫ                                 ᚷ   
ᚪ                                   ᚹ  
ᛟ                 ᚸ                 ᚻ  
 ᛞ                                 ᚾ   
  ᛝ                               ᛁ    
   ᛚ                             ᛄ     
    ᛗ                           ᛇ      
       ᛖ                     ᛈ         
           ᛒ             ᛉ             
                ᛏ   ᛋ                  

Assigning sounds

In order to use these runes, we need to take their original sounds and apply them to sounds that exist in modern English.

Here is a list of runes so that you can see how this system has kept them the same or changed them. The text is green if it is the same, orange if it slightly different, and red if it is a fairly large difference.

The only real changes to address are ᚠ‍ᚠ, ᚢ, ᛠ, ᛉ, and ᚷ.

ᛉ

Going back to the Elder Futhark, this rune had a clear /z/ sound. Old English didn’t have a reason to use this rune because the ᛋ rune already covered this sound. It was eventually used for /ks/ like the latin letter “x”.

However, now we are back in the same position where we don’t need a distinct /ks/ sound because other runes can already cover this. But as English has developed, our need to distinguish between /s/ and /z/ has also grown. So we can reach back to the Elder Futhark and keep that original /z/ sound.

Or from a different perspective, we can consider the evolution of the letter “x” in English which itself has come to often be pronounced as a /z/.

Also, in Old Germanic, it was common to have a /z/ (ᛉ) on the ends of words because of the case system. What is nice about going back to the original /z/ sound for this rune is that in English, it returns to being very commonly used on the ends of words because of the English genitive case and plural.

ᚢ

STRUT originally came from the “short u” sound. Because of this, it’s appropriate to think that if runes had continued in use, people would have eventually started to pronounce ᚢ as a STRUT.

ᛠ

In Old English, the word “ear” was pronounced like /ˈæ͜ɑː.re/, which would have used this rune. Over time, this word “ear” began to sound like /ɪə/. This is partially documented in the Great Vowel Shift where words with “ea” eventually began to sound like words with “ee”. There are some people today who pronounce NEAR like /ɛə̯/ which also shows a bit of a remnant that still pronounces “ear” closer to how it used to be said. So we can assign this rune to the NEAR lexical set, where the pronunciation has mostly shifted from /æːɑ/ to /iːə/.

ᚷ

The original sound of ᚷ was /j/, but when French began to influence English after the Norman invasion (~1100), /j/ started to become /dʒ/ in English, just like in French (Think of how the word Jehovah or Jesus changed in pronunciation over time). So also taking into account that ᛡ is already /j/, we can reduce historical ᚷᚷ to just ᚷ for /dʒ/.

ᚠ‍ᚠ

Double-Feoh is applying the same idea behind ᚳ and ᛣ to ᚠ. The idea for this came from Rune Revival.

ᚳ could previously be two sounds “ch” or “k”. Its doubled cousin ᛣ takes one of those sounds “k”.

Similarly ᚠ can be two sounds “f” or “v”. Its doubled cousin will take one of those sounds “v”.

What about ᚡ

Why not use ᚡ for the “v” sound and ᚧ for the sound in “the”?

The goal of Rune School is to only use the Anglo-Saxon runes. I want to be as true to those as possible. If we start adding in runes from Scandinavia and other places, the system loses its historical rootedness for the English language specifically. Thus, it loses a large part of its appeal. Because then it starts to feel a bit arbitrary like Shavian or Deseret.

I think a good comparison would be if the Latin alphabet for English died and then people wanted to revive it. But English changed since then. So they borrowed è from French or ö from German to fill in the gaps. Is it terrible? No, it’s not terrible. They’re related to letters in English and look somewhat similar. Is it authentic? No, not really.

If you wanted to use the medieval “stung” runes, this is what you could do if you didn’t mind using foreign runes:

ᚠ f   ᚡ v 
ᚦ þ   ᚧ ð 

Phonetic or Phonemic?

The runes can’t just be assigned to very specific IPA symbols. That would mean that we are mandating that everyone pronounce a rune in exactly the same way. There needs to be some flexibility in order for the runes to be useful. Because of that, we need to map out a range of valid pronunciations for each rune. That range of pronunciations is called a phoneme.

A phonemic script ensures that no matter how an accent shifts sounds around, the words will still be understandable around the world.

The consonants are pretty straightforward. There is little variation within those. So we will focus on the vowels.

IPA vowel chart

The IPA vowel chart gives us a lay of the land in terms of where phonetic sounds live. We can use this as a map of sounds to mark out locations of phonemes (ranges of valid pronunciations).

Using the above table, we can assign the vowel runes to these rough territories.

Each circle is saying “your pronunciation of this rune is somewhere in here”.

From here, we can make adjustments to the territorial boundaries in order to develop spelling systems. A map of where each vowel rune lives on the IPA vowel chart is not enough to help people use the runes to spell. Users need to understand guidelines for how to treat various lexical sets of words.

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