Re: SVO - SOV

And in the first World War, the Germans were called Huns! Coincidence? :o)

Isn't the German verb-final word order a rather late phenomenon? I remember hearing somewhere that it developed during the baroque, because written German was heavily influenced by the elaborate word order of written Latin.

Most runic inscriptions are highly formalized or written in verse. This means that they probably do not reflect the word order of the spoken language - if we find a runic inscription with VSO, that doesn't mean that people spoke that way. The changes you mention - from VSO and SOV to SVO - should perhaps be interpreted as changes of literary style, not as changes of everyday speech. "Write like you speak" is a recent thing.

Håkan
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Torsten wrote -

Of the Germanic languages, English and the Scandinavian languages
are SVO, and German and Dutch (partially) SOV.
Hunnic, being Turkic, was probably SOV.
On the Catalaunian Fields, some Germanic tribes fought with Aëthius
and the Romans, some with Attila and the Huns.
Coincidence? Adstrate?
I read somewhere that the oldest Runic inscriptions are VSO and
SOV, later changing to SVO.

Torsten