Re: [tied] Rune-essay Mads Peder Nordbo

Why dumber? They were quite clever. It takes some sophistication to realise that p/b, t/d and k/g are natural pairs of phonologically related sounds. I suppose the scribes intended to make the spelling system more economic by abandoning those early futhark characters that seemed to be redundant. Younger futhark inscriptions are less "phonetic" but still intelligible, so there was no serious loss in terms of encoding efficiency. You could just as well wonder why Modern English speakers are so dumb -- they have so many vowels and so few vowel letters.

Piotr

----- Original Message -----
From: malmqvist52

To: cybalist@yahoogroups.com

Sent: Sunday, December 16, 2001 11:46 AM

Subject: Re: [tied] Rune-essay Mads Peder Nordbo

--- In cybalist@......, "Piotr Gasiorowski" <gpiotr@......> wrote: > In a way, yes. It _simplified_ the alphabet (the younger futhark was slimmed down to 16 letters), and simplicity is a gain> Is this really a *natural* development? Was it really that hard to keep track of the 21(-23) runes. Were iron age Scandinavians dumber that us? I suppose that those who wrote didn't write *only* on stone.

Anders