The English Runes

Runes:

The Anglo-Saxon rune poem (Cotton Otho B.x.165) has
the following runes, listed with their Unicode glyphs, their names, their
transliteration and their approximate phonetic value in IPA
notation where different from the transliteration:

 

In Britain, runes seem to have been a northern phenomenon confined to the
Angles and Frisians (and later the Vikings). There is no evidence that
the Saxons used them before converting to Christianity. However, three runic
letters, ’thorn’, ‘wyn’, and ‘ash’, along with the Greek letter ‘theta”, known
to the Saxons as “thaet”, were added to the Roman alphabet to represent sounds
which were found in Anglo-Saxon, but did not occur in Latin, namely [th], [w],
[ae] – a sound between [a] and [e], as in American “man” and “bad”. Thaet and
thorn represented exactly the same [th] sound and were used indiscriminately,
according to the whim of the scribe.

 

Paradoxically, the Engle (Angles) only used runes for inscriptions during the
early Christian period, but not in manuscripts, probably because they were
converted by the Irish and not by the Romans, Greeks and Goths who converted the
Saxons, the Greeks and Goths already being familiar with mixing runes with the
Greek and Roman alphabets to represent sounds found in the Germanic languages
such as Gothic and Anglo-Saxon, but not in Latin.

 

In the North, the Engle expanded the English runic alphabet to thirty two
letters before abandoning runes altogether. In the South, the Saxons continued
to use thorn and wyn in their writing long after the Norman Conquest. In fact,
thorn , representing the sound of th, was used up until comparatively recent
times as in ‘Ye Olde Shakespeare  Inn’ and ‘Ye Olde Tea Shoppe’, where Y is
stands for the runic letter ‘thorn’.

Runes:

 

The Anglo-Saxon rune poem (Cotton Otho B.x.165) has
the following runes, listed with their Unicode glyphs, their names, their
transliteration and their approximate phonetic value in IPA
notation where different from the transliteration:

 

In Britain, runes seem to have been a northern phenomenon confined to the
Angles and Frisians (and later the Vikings). There is no evidence that
the Saxons used them before converting to Christianity. However, three runic
letters, ’thorn’, ‘wyn’, and ‘ash’, along with the Greek letter ‘theta”, known
to the Saxons as “thaet”, were added to the Roman alphabet to represent sounds
which were found in Anglo-Saxon, but did not occur in Latin, namely [th], [w],
[ae] – a sound between [a] and [e], as in American “man” and “bad”. Thaet and
thorn represented exactly the same [th] sound and were used indiscriminately,
according to the whim of the scribe.

 

Paradoxically, the Engle (Angles) only used runes for inscriptions during the
early Christian period, but not in manuscripts, probably because they were
converted by the Irish and not by the Romans, Greeks and Goths who converted the
Saxons, the Greeks and Goths already being familiar with mixing runes with the
Greek and Roman alphabets to represent sounds found in the Germanic languages
such as Gothic and Anglo-Saxon, but not in Latin.

 

In the North, the Engle expanded the English runic alphabet to thirty two
letters before abandoning runes altogether. In the South, the Saxons continued
to use thorn and wyn in their writing long after the Norman Conquest. In fact,
thorn , representing the sound of th, was used up until comparatively recent
times as in ‘Ye Olde Shakespeare  Inn’ and ‘Ye Olde Tea Shoppe’, where Y is
stands for the runic letter ‘thorn’.

 

 

 

Rune Image	UCS	Old English name	Name meaning	Transliteration	IPA
	ᚠ	feoh	“wealth”	f	[f], [v]
	ᚢ	ur	“aurochs“	u
	ᚦ	þorn	“thorn”	þ, ð	[θ], [ð]
	ᚩ	ós	“[a] god”	ó
	ᚱ	rad	“ride”	r
	ᚳ	cen	“torch”	c	[k]
	ᚷ	gyfu	“gift”	ȝ	[ɡ], [j]
	ᚹ	wynn	“joy”	w, ƿ	[w]
	ᚻ	hægl	“hail (precipitation)”	h
	ᚾ	nyd	“need, distress”	n
	ᛁ	is	“ice”	i
	ᛄ	ger	“year, harvest”	j
	ᛇ	eoh	“yew”	eo
	ᛈ	peorð	(Unknown)	p
	ᛉ	eolh	“elk-sedge”	x
	ᛋ	sigel	“Sun”	s	[s], [z]
	ᛏ	Tiw	“Tiw”	t
	ᛒ	beorc	“birch”	b
	ᛖ	eh	“horse”	e
	ᛗ	mann	“man”	m
	ᛚ	lagu	“lake”	l
	ᛝ	ing	“Ing (a hero)”	ŋ
	ᛟ	éðel	“estate”	œ
	ᛞ	dæg	“day”	d
	ᚪ	ac	“oak”	a
	ᚫ	æsc	“ash-tree”	æ
	ᚣ	yr	“bow”	y
	ᛡ	ior	“eel”	ia, io
	ᛠ	ear	“grave”	ea

 

The first 24 of these directly continue the Elder Futhark letters, extended
by five additional runes, representing long vowels and diphthongs (á, æ, ý,
ia, ea), comparable to the five forfeda of the Ogham alphabet.

 

Rune Image	UCS	Old English name	Name meaning	Transliteration	IPA
	ᚠ	feoh	“wealth”	f	[f], [v]
	ᚢ	ur	“aurochs“	u
	ᚦ	þorn	“thorn”	þ, ð	[θ], [ð]
	ᚩ	ós	“[a] god”	ó
	ᚱ	rad	“ride”	r
	ᚳ	cen	“torch”	c	[k]
	ᚷ	gyfu	“gift”	ȝ	[ɡ], [j]
	ᚹ	wynn	“joy”	w, ƿ	[w]
	ᚻ	hægl	“hail (precipitation)”	h
	ᚾ	nyd	“need, distress”	n
	ᛁ	is	“ice”	i
	ᛄ	ger	“year, harvest”	j
	ᛇ	eoh	“yew”	eo
	ᛈ	peorð	(Unknown)	p
	ᛉ	eolh	“elk-sedge”	x
	ᛋ	sigel	“Sun”	s	[s], [z]
	ᛏ	Tiw	“Tiw”	t
	ᛒ	beorc	“birch”	b
	ᛖ	eh	“horse”	e
	ᛗ	mann	“man”	m
	ᛚ	lagu	“lake”	l
	ᛝ	ing	“Ing (a hero)”	ŋ
	ᛟ	éðel	“estate”	œ
	ᛞ	dæg	“day”	d
	ᚪ	ac	“oak”	a
	ᚫ	æsc	“ash-tree”	æ
	ᚣ	yr	“bow”	y
	ᛡ	ior	“eel”	ia, io
	ᛠ	ear	“grave”