Re: An interesting book.

Nathan Roy wrote:

> It looks like you know something about Anglo-Saxon, which is one of the
> four main languages I have spent time investigating. It also one of the
most
> frustratingly obscure, with regard to available information, so would you
mind
> some quick questions relating to runes and such?
Not at all! Fire away!

> Basically, there are several runes I can never find info on, and your
> transliteration of 'eoh' is very interesting. What does the '3' symbol
represent?

Well, in my transliteration scheme it represents "shit, the roman alphabet
doesn't have enough charecters"! Seriously, though, eoh is a puzzler.
Dickens represents it with 3, but we actually don't have a very certain idea
about its pronunciation. In fact, the very name of it is odd.

The rune poem clearly points to the name "eoh" meaning "yew-tree". However,
the normal OE word for "yew" is éow, not eoh (doubly confusing as éoh is an
alternative, and more common, form of eh "horse", from PGmc. *ehwaz).
Normally the name of the rune contains the sound of the rune, but eoh does
not, unless you follow Wrenn in believing that it represents "hw".

Various scholars have posited teories on the original sound of eoh, most
think it is a frint, high vowel, either e, i or variants of them, which
later merged with other sounds. By the OE period, eoh was variously used as
/i/, /G/ or /J/. If you intend on using runes to write OE, I would advise
you to steer well clear of eoh.


> From Egyptian, I usually associate it with a glottal stop, but that wasn't
actually
>  in Old English, was it? Before this post I had been guessing that 'eoh'
was
> actually 'ieg' (island) and stood for the 'ie' diphthong, while 'edhel'
represented the
> 'eo' diphthong.
Eþel originally represented long o. I normally use it to represent the /9/
sound which everyone forgets OE had, represented by <e-hook> in Wessex
manuscripts and <oe> in Mercian.

> Where can I get some good information on the values of Anglo-Saxon runes,
> and did they ever use 'jer', 'ghar' or 'khar' in the language? Is there
any place I
> can get definite info on grammar and vocabulary? So far I've been gleaning
most
> words from dictionary etymologies, and gender is hard to decide.
By "ghar" I presume you mean "gar", which looks like a diamond superimposed
on a gyfu. By "khar" do you mean calc? Both were used in Northumbria as
non-palatalised versions of gyfu and cen, respectively.

For info on runes try the eminently reliable if somewhat pedestrian R.I.
Page's "Runes and Runic Inscriptions", it's a collection of essays on runes.
For information on the language, try Henry Sweet's "Student's Dictionary of
Anglo-Saxon". It's compact, thorough and gives an outline of inflection at
the beginning. It's only OE -> English, though. For English -> OE, you might
want to try Stephen Pollington's "Wordcraft". Neither is cheap though.

When I started studying OE I used etymological dictionaries too! Mine was an
ancient Chamber's one from the 1890's (I still have it somewhere- it's very
dear to my heart). If genders are a problem, buy a German dictionary and
look up the cognate word (a decent etymological dictionary will give you
this, as well as OE, ON and Gothic) and the gender will be the same. German
dictionaries are easier to find than OE ones!

As for grammar, there's Cyril Babaev's "Historical Grammar of Old English"
on the Web. His website is at www.geocites.com/athens/parthenon/1996/, you
should be able to find it from there. Take much of it with a generous pinch
of salt. The section on phonology is almost pure bollocks, if you'll excuse
min Frencisc.

> Any help would be appreciated. Thank you...
N'is ecca!

Dan


-----------------------------------------------
Ka yokonáu iti báyan: "cas'alyá abhiyo".

Ka tso iti mantabayan: "yama zaláyá
alánekayam la s'alika, cas'alika; ka yama
yavarryekayan arannáam la vácika, labekayam
vácika, ka ali cas'alyeko vanotira."
-----------------------------------------------
Dan Jones


>is, ing, eh, eoh, rad

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