--- In cybalist@..., "Piotr Gasiorowski" <gpiotr@...> wrote:
> No, only the orthographic habits of the rune-carvers did. Practical
needs may prompt modifications in the writing system. If you mostly
compose short occasional inscriptions, a highly economic writing
system is OK. The reader is not pressed for time and can figure out
at his leasure that, say, <:kurmz:kunukz:> stands for /gormz
konungz/ 'King Gorm'. But if you have to write long passages,
moderate redundancy helps to make reading faster and easier: the
reader will not have to halt every now and then to decipher
individual words.
OK, then the question is rather, why did the Scandinavians soon after
(as You said and I agree with) 550 stop writing long passages? The
gap to the Viking Age also seems to confirm that this was the case.
Then how do you forget writing long passages?
I find this peculiar if it's given that it is the same language
before and after.
At least this is what the main stream interpeters of e. g. the
Blekinge Stones seem to assume.
Isn't it just a little possibiliy that some rune stones are written
in a different language that the one used in that area after the
change of alphabeth. The rune-people might have been expelled in a
war or subdued after a war.
E. g. Östen Dahl is not sure that the (all the)language(s) of the
elder futhark runes was germanic, so why is that such an impossible
thought.
Best wishes
Anders