From: Andreas Zautner
Message: 2753
Date: 2003-03-03
> Message: 2______________________________________________________________________________
> Date: Sun, 02 Mar 2003 11:09:38 -0000
> From: "konrad_oddsson <konrad_oddsson@...>" <konrad_oddsson@...>
> Subject: Re: Konrad's Runes - about 'rýniska'
>
> Sæll Jón!
>
> --- In norse_course@yahoogroups.com, "jonaegilsen
> <jonaegilsen@...>" <jonaegilsen@...> wrote:
> > Greetings Konrad! I think the runes are very exellent. Briliant.
> It is I think very much better than the latin letters. You should
> have some award from Scandinavia for this. I am waiting to buy books
> from your name. But I do not see your Ord Hervarar in runes so far?
> >
> > Jon
>
> Thank you for your interest. 'Rýniska' is just strait Viking Age Old
> Norse punctuated to very Old Icelandic. The 16 runes are not new. We
> can thank our ancestors for them. The idea of punctuation is not new
> either. The 'rýniska' characters for natural E and Y from U are also
> old developments from the later Viking Age. 'Rýniska' is not 'new' -
> it is simply a way of punctuating which is consistent with modern
> linguistic knowledge about the origins and character of Old Norse.
> The different spellings for short and long O (and their mutations),
> for instance, can be seen on old runestones. The only thing 'new'
> in 'rýniska' is that we employ one set of historic O-spellings (åu)
> when the sounds descend from Proto-Norse Ó and another (u) when the
> sounds descend from Proto-Norse U/Ú. My goal is not to be original,
> but rather to write Old Norse like Old Norse - as the Norse of the
> Viking Age did, but with phonetic and etymological precision. Think
> of it this way: King Gormr, as well as any other Norse-speaker who
> understood runes 100 years before or after his time, would be able
> to read and understand 'rýniska' without any instruction. We could
> simply hand him a book and say 'read' - after a few chapters, the
> punctuation would explain itself. While it is true that King Gormr
> might not always be sure as to WHY we spell certain words the way we
> do, he would nevertheless understand them. Gormr spoke better Norse
> than we do today, but we possess the modern linguistic understanding
> required to write his language correctly and to make it 'sing' from
> the printed page. Our modern linguistics is also far in advance of
> what any Catholic-educated scribe from the middle ages would be able
> to understand. We have no need of preparing hides or picking berries
> to write. We have no need for a foreign alphabet. What we have is a
> refined modern linguistics combined with superior technology - thus
> it has fallen to the folk of our time to write Norse the right way.
> In doing so, we honour those from whom we inherited both the tongue
> and the characters it is written in. If you consider how superb our
> ancestors´ technology was for its time and how fine their craftsman-
> ship was, then it is not difficult to see that they would understand
> and approve of a refined way of writing their own language. What is
> most important is that they would be able to read it for themselves.
> I would call 'rýniska' a tool for allowing our ancestors to speak
> for themselves through their own letters. I would also call it an
> educational tool for modern speakers and readers of Norse - like the
> Latin, it is easy to read; unlike the Latin, it displays the true
> history of the language, enabling the 'man in the street' to under-
> stand his tongue better without the benefit of a formal education. I
> suspect that King Gormr would agree with this approach. The langskip
> was not only elegant and attractive, it was also superior technology
> at sea - so should a system of writing be. Today we have the tools
> to do justice to our ancestral tongue and make our ancestors smile.
>
> Regards,
> Konrad.
>