On Mon, 19 Feb 2001 00:26:07 +0100, "Piotr Gasiorowski"
<
gpiotr@...> wrote:
>>> Did anything restrict their freedom to have more symbols?
>
>> Certainly: the aettir. They had to have 3 x 8 symbols.
>
>Speaking with tongue in cheek? Or do you really believe that the inventors first determined the number of runes that the futhark "had to have" and only then began to invent them? 24 runes divided into three "aettir" is the canonical Older Futhark arrangement in Scandinavia, but Frisian and Anglo-Saxon runecutters obviously ignored numerological considerations as they added new runes (there are 28 in the Thames Scramasax futhorc); the users of the Younger Futhark did not hesitate to slim it down to 16 runes.
Ogham used 4 groups of 5 signs, Runic 3 groups of 8. I seriously
believe that these arrangements into groups are significant and
important. In the case of Ogham, the original shape of the signs has
been lost, and only their numerical coding remains. Ogham-like
encoding also exists in Runic (the so-called "secret runes"). The
Anglo-Saxon additions and Scandinavian losses are secondary: the 3 x 8
arrangement of the Old Futhark is probably original ("as invented").
Of course it didn't have to be 24 a priori, but the 23 signs whose
phonetic value is secure pretty much cover the old Germanic
phonological range as accurately as possible with the inventory of
20-26 "Etruscan" symbols at hand. In such a case, numerological
considerations might prevail over strictly phonological ones. If only
one additional symbol is required to fill the empty slot, which would
it be? /iu/, /e:2/, /hw/?
=======================
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
mcv@...