Re: Uinlitska noises and squiggles

On 22.4.2008 Paul Bennett wrote:
 > However, my gut tells me that Old Norse was written more
 > frequently in Carolingian than Insular, which (if true)
 > would have meant that U+0067 was the natural "inherited"
 > form of 'g', with U+1D79, U+021D and U+03B3 all being
 > external versions.

Old Norse was usually written in Carolingian with a bunch of
Insularisms, notably the letters for þ ð f v, the latter
being a variant of wynn with the loop open at the top --
thus a hybrid of wynn and v -- called vent. Insular g was
frequent in older documents but then gradually gave way to
Carolingian g. Insular f stayed in use right up to the
beginning of printing.

 > Of them all, {gamma} (U+03B3) is the only one that I
 > know of with an existing use for /N/ in a language that
 > the Christians of this AU would certainly have been
 > familiar with.

Icelanders would have known little or no Greek, perhaps
only the letters of the alphabet and probably not the
gamma+velar rule!

I'd use the slashed q, or g-macron/nasal stroke, or
slashed/barred g.


 > Is there a paleographical cheat-sheet anywhere that could
 > help me pick over the huge number of variants and symbols
 > with knowledge of their phone*ic and ideographic uses in
 > Norse, Latin, and/or general use? I can find limited
 > information in the official Unicode.org documents, but
 > that's barely enough to whet my appetite.


There is, but not in English. It is in Danish/Norwegian, I
don't remember which.

/BP 8^)>
--
Benct Philip Jonsson -- melroch atte melroch dotte se
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
   "C'est en vain que nos Josués littéraires crient
   à la langue de s'arrêter; les langues ni le soleil
   ne s'arrêtent plus. Le jour où elles se *fixent*,
   c'est qu'elles meurent."           (Victor Hugo)