![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Rune transcription
Feb. 27th, 2005 03:37 pmSo when you (speaking to you who do this, obviously :)) are writing in runes (in English, but in runes), do you do it phonetically or do you go letter by letter (apart from thurisaz for "th" and inguz for "ng", of course)?
If I'm doing it for myself, I'd totally go the phonetic way--but if it's something I need other people to be able to read?
Would you do it differently depending on situation? If so, which situations call for which usage?
I asked Dan, because he's been doing it for years (albeit in a SCA setting rather than a heathen one) and he says he's done it both ways. When he does it phonetically, he tries to consider the etymology of the word. For example, if he's transcribing the "wh" sound in "which", he uses hagalaz-wunjo rather than wunjo-hagalaz. Because that's what it was originally. (And it's what it sounds like.) Presumably if he's writing the "wh" sound in "who" he uses hagalaz alone.
But that can be confusing to a modern reader, even one with a little linguistic background. I asked him how he'd go about trancribing "weave," because regardless of whether you do it phonetically or letter-by letter, you've got wunjo in there twice, for two letter sounds ("w" and "v"). He said he'd (phonetically) spell it wunjo-isa-fehu. Because that's the etymology of the word. The problem there is that a modern person looking at that would read it as "wife" rather than "weave". Perhaps it would be clear from context, but you can't count on that. And yeah, it does reflect the original context of the root, which isn't a bad thing, but I'm thinking of clarity. Maybe that's my tech-writing background coming in, maybe it's not clarity that's the important thing?
If I'm doing it for myself, I'd totally go the phonetic way--but if it's something I need other people to be able to read?
Would you do it differently depending on situation? If so, which situations call for which usage?
I asked Dan, because he's been doing it for years (albeit in a SCA setting rather than a heathen one) and he says he's done it both ways. When he does it phonetically, he tries to consider the etymology of the word. For example, if he's transcribing the "wh" sound in "which", he uses hagalaz-wunjo rather than wunjo-hagalaz. Because that's what it was originally. (And it's what it sounds like.) Presumably if he's writing the "wh" sound in "who" he uses hagalaz alone.
But that can be confusing to a modern reader, even one with a little linguistic background. I asked him how he'd go about trancribing "weave," because regardless of whether you do it phonetically or letter-by letter, you've got wunjo in there twice, for two letter sounds ("w" and "v"). He said he'd (phonetically) spell it wunjo-isa-fehu. Because that's the etymology of the word. The problem there is that a modern person looking at that would read it as "wife" rather than "weave". Perhaps it would be clear from context, but you can't count on that. And yeah, it does reflect the original context of the root, which isn't a bad thing, but I'm thinking of clarity. Maybe that's my tech-writing background coming in, maybe it's not clarity that's the important thing?
