On Sat, 17 Feb 2001 00:51:10 +0100, "Piotr Gasiorowski"
<
gpiotr@...> wrote:
>Now what's really uncanny about this conjectural reconstruction is that it looks for all the world like the problematic name of the thirteenth rune, usually glossed as "bow" or "yew", though the actual 'yew' word should not have any medial aitches (< PIE *ei-wo-) and despite being a near-homophone of the name of the rune has slightly different attested reflexes (OE i:w/e:ow [m.], OHG îwa).
>
>I think this idea is worth pursuing. It would give us Ingvar = Ivar plus a novel hypothesis about the name of Rune 13. Any guesses about *énkWos ~ *enkWós?
But the name of the 22nd rune (<N>, i.e. <ng>) is already IngwaR.
The thirteenth rune is problematical as to its pronunciation. It's
usually transcribed <ï>, and given the sound value /i/ (but sometimes
it apparently has to be read /h/, which would support the *i:hwaR
thesis). However, why would the inventor(s) of the runes have created
a sign for */ih/? It makes no sense. A sign for /i:/ makes little
sense either [none of the rune signs for vowels distinguish length],
although it at least has the precedent of the Gothic digraph <ei>
(/i:/), which in the Gothic alphabet is the only distinctive long
vowel explicitly marked as such (<e> and <o> are long, but have no
short counterparts; <a>, <u>, <ai> and <au> are used for both short
and long /a/, /u/, /E/ and /O/). The only option which makes sense to
me is that the sign <ï> as a separate element of the futhark was
originally intended to mark the diphthong /iu/ ~ /eo/ (PIE *eu). It's
name, *i:waR, "yew", with /i:w/ instead of /iu/ may have been a bit of
a misnomer, with hindsight, and probably the sign never really caught
on because of that (it was thought to stand for /i(:)/, for which a
simpler rune was already available).
=======================
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
mcv@...