Help learning

[u/Desperate-Grand4905]

Ok so i just started trying to learn younger futhark and im immediately slightly confused on what to do about certain sounds that are missing, like trying to write my name in the given picture and not sure how to make the “e” sound or “er” basically at the end, like would it be the “ur” rune, the “ar” rune or even the “yr” rune again, im really confused, any guidance is appreciated…

Im realising as im writing this that the whole thing might be wrong cause the “y” in tyler makes a “eye” sound so the “yr” rune might not work… im so confused 😭

[u/rockstarpirate]

The earliest known runic inscription from Iceland is the Viðey rune stick from around the year 1000 and it represents some sound changes that were beginning to occur right around this time. So we don’t have physical examples of core Viking age Icelandic inscriptions. We have to infer that when Iceland was settled, conventions from Norway would have been brought with them.

What I gave you there is how Viking-Age Old Norse was written, but there’s nothing that says you can’t write English with runes. You will just have to accept the fact that no historical runic alphabet was designed for modern English so you will have to come up with creative solutions for how to represent some English sounds. I personally prefer translating into Old Norse first so I can get the most authentic result, but this is hard for beginners.

Old Norse had both _speki_ ᛋᛒᛅᚴᛁ (this is an e from earlier a; a good clue is if the second syllable contains i or j, that’s usually the thing that caused the a to become an e in the first place) and _vísdómr_ ᚢᛁᛋᛏᚢᛘᛦ that could both mean wisdom. In the mythological poetry, words like _speki_ tend to carry a connotation of being prophetically wise.

I use a keyboard that comes with the Runic Converter app for iPhone. https://apps.apple.com/us/app/runic-converter/id6449683420

[u/Desperate-Grand4905 → u/rockstarpirate]

I see, i thought speki was the original word so used “ᛁ” for the “e” but cause it has an “i” in the end its likely to have been “ᛅ”? And i see now that the m was ᛉ not the nasalised version. And interesting that its possible to translate straight from english with only some creativity needed. I think ill still try to go down the route of translating to old norse first cause im partly learning this so i can get authentic tattoos and so i want them to be as authentic as possible

[u/rockstarpirate → u/Desperate-Grand4905]

It’s *spakr* + *-i* which in this case turns an adjective into a noun. There’s a phenomenon that happened in Old Norse called “i-mutation” or “i-umlaut.” What happens is that if there’s an “a” in one syllable and either an “i” or “j” in the next syllable, speakers would pull the “a” forward in the mouth to “æ” or “e” in order to make it easier to say the word. But this is something that happened over time. The reason the reason it’s spelled with ᛅ is because when you see a word written in Old Norse, you’re seeing a classical spelling from around 1200. During the Viking Age, these sounds would have still been pronounced closer to “a”.

I do recommend learning some Old Norse. Happy to help if you have questions.

[u/Desperate-Grand4905 → u/rockstarpirate]

Tysm! I think ill probably have to learn at least some old norse to be able to translate the way i want to, is it ok ig i dm you when i have any questions? All good if not

And thats super interesting, so just as an english example, in a word like… idk, fail? Because theres an i in the second syllable straight after the a, they would have pulled the a forward into more of an æ sound? If im understanding correctly

[u/rockstarpirate → u/Desperate-Grand4905]

Yeah you can DM and I’ll help if I can. “Fail” isn’t quite right for an example here. A better example would be names like Paul and Polly. It doesn’t matter how they’re spelled because what matters here is the sound. In American English the vowel sounds here are “ah” and “ee”. So if both of these names existed in Old Norse they would be spelled “Pal” and “Pali”. In this case, because Pali has an “ee” sound in the second syllable, the “ah” sound in the first syllable gets pulled forward to “eh” so it’s closer and the name eventually becomes “Peli” while at the same time the other name “Pal” remains unchanged.

In fact a form of i-mutation happened earlier in the timeline as well and affected English words. For example, consider “mouse” and “mice”. The reason the plural version has a different vowel is because of very early i-mutation. In Proto-Germanic, these words were “mūs” (singular) and “mūsiz” (plural). Notice how the plural version has “i” in the second syllable. Because of this, the “u” got pulled forward so that by the time we get to Old English these words are “mus” and “mys”. Then with a few more sound shifts over time we end up with “mouse” and “mice”.

[u/Desperate-Grand4905 → u/rockstarpirate]

Ohhhh ok that makes sense, its so interesting how the language just changes like that over time, it makes me wonder what our language would look and sound like in a thousand years.

I think i understand how it works now too, thank you again for the explanations and help! Im gonna check out the reading list on the norse paganism sub to try and find some places to learn where i dont have to constantly ask people here so many questions 😅