Saturday, October 1, 2011

Musings on the Futhark

This is my first blog post. Not the most dramatic or insightful posting, just a first musing to help me get into blogging.

The AngloSaxon Futhark:

This alphabet was in use by our ancestors in England before the adoption of the Roman alphabet. Two characters which survived long after the adoption of our modern alphabet were the thorn and the wynn. These were finally disposed of sometime between Middle and Early Modern English. Personally, I wouldn't mind if we beought thorn back into common use as a lot of English words use "th" and that is what thorn represented. Wynn is the y sound and we have a new letter which covers that . . . so no great loss. Anybody up for a 27 letter alphabet?

Failing that, why not go back to using the futhark with changes to accomodate how English has grown over the years? Despite 1500 years worth of changes as AngloSaxon changed into Old, Middle, Early Modern and finally Modern English there are plenty of commonalities betwen the shounds we use today and the sounds represented by our old alphabet. Sure, it would be an inconvenience, but think of the exclusivity it would bring us as the only people to have reverted to a runic alphabet from the imposed Roman alphabet.