12. Runic alphabet

The system of writing in Old English was changed with the introduction Christianity. Before that, the English used the runes - symbols that were very vague, that might at the same time denote a sound, a syllable or a whole word.

Runes are the 24 letters (later 16 in Scandinavia and 30 or more in Anglo-Saxon England) of an ancient Germanic alphabet used from the 2d or 3d to the 16th century. Perhaps derived ultimately from the Etruscan alphabet, the runic alphabet was used mainly for charms and inscriptions, on stone, wood, metal, or bone. Each letter had a name, which was itself a meaningful word.

They were of specific shape, designed to be cut on the wooden sticks, and only few people knew how to make them and how to interpret them. Runic inscriptions that came down from the oldest settlers on the isles are w, and the language (as it is interpreted) is not what might be called Old English - it was rather an ancient language which might be very close to the languages of other Germanic tribes. The story of runes might be very interesting in itself, yet we are not concerned with the story of the development of the English language, and what we are going to study here was written in an alphabet dating back to the 7th century; it was Latin alphabet with few specifically English additions. Some English sounds had no counterpart in Latin, so three signs developed from runes were added, plus ligature ae, now well known as a transcription symbol.

13. Latin alphabet

The Latin alphabet was carried throughout medieval Europe by the Roman Catholic church - to the Irish and Merovingians in the 6th century and the Anglo-Saxons and Germans in the 7th. The oldest surviving texts in the English language written with Latin letters date back to c.700.

The writing of Germanic tribes was created with the help of several alphabets. Latin and Runic writing which was used not only in pagan but also in Christian times (for example, signs on the stone crosses, weapon, etc.), OE manuscripts were written in the Latin alphabet, but in its Irish form. For example, the grapheme "ã":

1. In the initial position of the word before consonants and back vowels, and in the middle of the word after "n" it represented the glottal [g]: lanã, ãod, sinãan.

2. After back vowels and after consonants "r," "1" or denoted voiced consonant g (like that of the Ukrainian type "r"), e.g.: daãas, sorã, folãian.

3. In the initial position of the word before front vowels, after back vowels it sounded like palatal [j] : ãiefan, ãear, dæã.

Instead of double "ãã" the combination of graphemes "cã "was used: secãan, brycã.

The grapheme "f" was used for both voiced and voiceless fricatives. To denote the semivowel "w" the rune p was used, and for the dental fricative both graphemes ''ð" and "þ" were used.

The ligature "æ" denoted the open "æ" as in the NE fan, bag . The grapheme "y" denoted the sound corresponding to German "ü".

14. GRIMM’S LAW

Discovered by Danish scholar Rasmus Rask (1818) and popularized by German philologist Jacob Grimm (1819)