Talk:Anglo-Saxon Futhorc

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

	This article falls within the scope of WikiProject Writing systems, a WikiProject interested in improving the encyclopaedic coverage and content of articles relating to writing systems on Wikipedia. If you would like to help out, you are welcome to drop by the project page and/or leave a query at the project’s talk page.
???	This article has not yet been assigned a rating on the Project’s quality scale.
???	This article has not yet been assigned a rating on the Project’s importance scale.

"Another holds that runes were introduced by Scandinavians to England where the fuþorc was modified and exported to Frisia."

I've never heard of this theory. The first Anglo-Saxon Runic incriptions are from the 5th century, and the Scandanavians didn't arrive in Britian untill the late 8th century, so I can't see how they could have introduced something that was already there before them. Also, since the Anglo-Saxons came from Frisia, it makes sense that the Anglo-Saxon Futhorc travelled with them, going from Frisia to England rather than vice versa. If noone says anything I'm going to change it.

go right ahead! dab (ᛏ) 10:12, 9 May 2005 (UTC)

I respectfully disagree. The Anglo-Saxons were a motley crew, and it is not reasonable to assume that there we no Scandinavians arriving in Britain. The source Beowulf and the archaeological site Sutton Hoo show otherwise, and the Jutes are actually thought to have came from Scandinavia.--Wiglaf 10:53, 9 May 2005 (UTC)

Should the "are" in "The Anglo-Saxon Futhorc are a runic alphabet, extended from the Elder Futhark, consisting of..." be changed to "is"? I don't know much about the field but it seems incorrect to me. If not, it should probably say something about it in the talk page. Dinosaurdarrell 08:47, 31 August 2005 (UTC)

The Special Characters link doesn't work, and if the runes don't display, the article is useless. Might I suggest we make a small image file for each rune, put it on the commons, and use it wherever needed? Adam Cuerden 12:34, 27 Feb 2006 (GMT)

Contents 1 image test 2 futhorc order 3 Cotton Domitian A.ix 4 transliteration

[edit] image test

cut from article dab (ᛏ) 14:27, 27 February 2006 (UTC)

(remember to put them in commons:Category:Runic letters)

Sorry about that - In any case, they're added to the article now. And now I get to take my best guess as to where the letrters should go int hat AWFUL bit of useless nonsense that ends the article. I THINK I can get it right, but someone should problably check it - all the runes are replaced with ?'s, which isn't actually any help whatsoever. [Ah, well. Would you believe that before this edit some of the letters could *never* be displayed, because they were put into the file as " unicode|? " ? At least they're displayed now.

However, I'm not sure how to put them into Commons.

Adam Cuerden 27 Feb 2006

thanks for the crops, I was going to do that some time but haven't gotten round to it. Categorization: Just add [[Category:Runic letters]] to the image page on commons. I don't know what you mean that the "letters could never be displayed". They display alright on my browser. You realize, of course, that it is just your browser/font configuration (persumably MSIE) that doesn't display the runes properly, while their encoding is entirely correct. dab (ᛏ) 15:25, 27 February 2006 (UTC)

the advantage of the Unicode glyphs is that they are machine-readable, copy-pastable, and scale and anti-alias properly with the text display. The advantage of the images is that we are certain everybody sees the exact same shape. A compromise could be showing both, along the lines of

• ᚠ feoh "wealth" f

but here, some people will see the same rune twice, while others see the image plus a question mark or a square. an alternative compromise could be

• feoh "wealth" f

with the unicode glyph as mouseover image caption. The image displays the same for everybody, and the glyph is still copy-pastable. dab (ᛏ) 15:59, 27 February 2006 (UTC)

Actually, I was going to put in the Unicode letters as a mouse-over.... but didn't know how... I'm afraid I'm a bit new to this type of wiki. (By the way, I'm afraid I've also been mucking with the Thames scramasax page. I do hope I'm not being too stupid....) Adam Cuerden 16:05, 27 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] futhorc order

There are some severe problems with this article. For instance:

The letter sequence, and indeed the letter inventory is not fixed. Compared to the letters of the rune poem given above,

f u þ o r c ȝ w h n i j eo p x s t b e m l ŋ œ d a æ y io ea

the Thames scramasax has 28 letters, with a slightly different order of the last nine, and edhel missing:

f u þ o r c ȝ w h n i io eo p x s t b e ŋ d l m j a æ y ea

You will note that the text doesn't quite relate to the description given. Adam Cuerden 14:47, 27 Feb 2006

what's the problem here? You mean we should add "and the positions of j and io inverted"? dab (ᛏ) 15:41, 27 February 2006 (UTC)

Aye. Little incongruities like that make one a bit worried about whether things are accurate. (though a little Wiki-browsing has convinced me that that's probably the right list, particularly the relevant image.) Adam Cuerden 17:28, 27 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Cotton Domitian A.ix

I have reluctantly moved this section out. As currently written, this is absolutely useless, and unless I'm able to find the manuscript so I can fix it, there's no point having it in.:

In the manuscript, the runes are arranged in three rows, glossed with Latin equivalents below (in the third row above) and with their names above (in the third row below). The manuscript has traces of corrections by a 16th century hand, inverting the position of m and d. Eolh is mistakenly labelled as sigel, and in place of sigel, there is a kaun like letter ᚴ, corrected to proper sigel ᛋ above it. Eoh is mis-labelled as eþel. Apart from ing and ear, all rune names are due to the later scribe, identified as Robert Talbot (died 1558).

feoh

ur

þorn

os

rað

cen

gifu

wen

hegel

neað

inc

geu{a}r

sigel

peorð

ᛋ sig

ᚠ

ᚢ

ᚦ

ᚩ

ᚱ

ᚳ

ᚷ

ᚹ

ᚻ

ᚾ

ᛁ

ᛄ

ᛇ

ᛈ

ᛉ

ᚴ

f

u

ð

o

r

c

g

uu

h

n

i

ge

eo

p

x

s

tir

berc

eþel

deg

lagu

mann

ᛙ pro

ac

ælc

yr

ᛏ

ᛒ

ᛖ

ᛗ

ᛚ

ᛝ

ᛞ

ᛟ

ᚪ

ᚫ

ᚣ

ᛡ

t

b

e

m{d}

l

ing

ð{m}

œ

a

æ

y

ear

{orent.} io

{cur.} q

{iolx} k

{z} sc{st}

{&} g

ᛠ

ᛢ

ᛣ

ᛥ

ᚸ

ᛘ

ior

cweorð

calc

stan

ear

- Adam Cuerden 27 Feb 2006

what do you mean, "useless"? It's a transcription of one of the very few manuscript sources for the futhorc order, I daresay it is extermely relevant. dab (ᛏ) 15:46, 27 February 2006 (UTC)

Sorry! Was being stupid - since in the first section all the codes were written in the form &####; , I presumed that the question marks I was seeing meant that no Unicode existed for them. Still, I'm using Firefox (admittedly on a system that crashed recently and had Windows XP installed by the Repairman possibly sans a few desirable features) and not seeing them, so it might be wise to add to the special characters link such places that an appropriate font could be acquired. Adam Cuerden 15:59, 27 February 2006 (UTC)

- I have, of course, now restored this Adam Cuerden 16:10, 27 February 2006 (UTC)

well, I admit it could do with a better explanation. And I also admit that at this point most readers will not get the runes rendered on their system. But my position is that we are not working on this article just for use in March 2006. I hope that most systems will render these characters out of the box soon enough, and then the article will already be in place. At the moment, most people will have to bother installing an extra font to see the unicode runes. But the important thing is that the unicode standard exists and our encoding is correct. The browsers will get there... dab (ᛏ) 16:18, 27 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] transliteration

Note that we are using ȝ for gyfu throughout to disambiguate it from gar g. In series that do not feature gar, it would be more natural to transcribe gyfu as g, but that would lead to a different transcription of the same rune, depending on whether gar is present, which would be more confusing than just sticking to the convention throughout. The point is that gyfu was [g] in 500, but [j] in 850, with gar re-introducing the value [g]. dab (ᛏ) 15:46, 27 February 2006 (UTC)

Should we really be using j for gar, then? Since it never had that sound? Adam Cuerden 17:31, 27 February 2006 (UTC)

what? no, gar is always [g] and should be transliterated as g. gyfu may be [g] or [j], while ger is always [j] and should be transliterated as j. dab (ᛏ) 19:16, 27 February 2006 (UTC)

Ah, yes. Sorry. was half-asleep and misread. Really shouldn't be wikiing with a cold. Adam Cuerden 02:29, 28 February 2006 (UTC)