Essay On The Runic Alphabet

The Runic alphabet was first brought and introduced by the Germanic invaders who arrived in Britain in the 5th century AD. The Alphabet consisted of twenty-four letters and aimed at inscribing short texts on hard surfaces. The Old English version of runic alphabet, also known as Anglo-Saxon, adjusted the form of some runes and added some new letters. The most prominent texts from that time (AD 700) are inscriptions on the Ruthwell Cross. Since the 7th century, with conversion of Anglo-Saxon to Christianity, runes were substituted by the Latin alphabet, and after the 9th century the runes were used mainly in manuscripts. Figure 1 shows Anglo-Saxon Runes and Figure 2 represents the script of the Old English Alphabet.

The Old English Alphabet (Fig. 2) differs noticeably from the Modern English spelling and namely: letter d has rounded shape, the f extends below the baseline instead of sitting on top of it, the distinctive insular g, the extending below the baseline r, three types of s (the most common are the insular s and the high s), the t that does not extend above the cross-stroke, the ƿ `wynn` that is usually transliterated as w but sometimes retains in print.

It was pronounced as [k] before a consonant or before/ after a back vowel as in clǣne meaning `clean`, saca `foe`. It was pronounced as [tʃ] next to a front vowel or dipthong as in ċēosan meaning `choose`, ċiele `chill` or if /l/, /r/, /n/ intervened, for example benċ meaning `bench`. In addition, it was [tʃ] after [i] as in misliċ `various` or when c was a medial sound between [i] and another front vowel, for example stiċe `sitch`. When the sound was pronounced as the voiceless alveolo-palatal affricate it was marked with OE letter ċ. It also should be noticed that in comparison to ME, OE c is never pronounced as [s]. The words centre and city are known to be spelling-conventions from French introduced after the Norman Conquest (Barber