Óskar Guðlaugsson wrote:
> BTW, -R was spelled -r; the capital spelling belongs to modern
> day romanizations of rune inscriptions :)
Hi Óskar and all,
Let me comment shortly on this to clarify the point. The ending has
quite a history from Proto-Germanic to Old Norse. Let's take the word
"arm" as an example:
Proto-Germanic:
armaz
-z is pronounced as a voiced s
From about 500 on in Scandinavia it became:
armR
the -R stands for a fricative r (pronounced slightly like -rsh, but
don't overemphasize the -sh)
In Old Norse it finally became:
armr
pronounced as trilled r
So the romanized -R ending is used to indicate a linguistic point of
development in Scandinavia roughly between 500 - 800. We only have
witness for this from runic inscriptions, it was the time when the
Younger Futharc just had emerged. For Old Norse the -R ending (capital
spelling) never should be used.
Greetings and best wishes,
Kurt Oertel