The Younger Futhark , also called Scandinavian runes , is a runic alphabet and a reduced form of the Elder Futhark , with only 16 characters, in use from about the 9th century, after a "transitional period" during the 7th and 8th centuries. The reduction, somewhat paradoxically, happened at the same time as phonetic changes that led to a greater number of different phonemes in the spoken language, when Proto-Norse evolved into Old Norse . Also, the writing custom avoided carving the same rune consecutively for the same sound, so the spoken distinction between long and short vowels was lost in writing. Thus, the language included distinct sounds and minimal pairs that were written the same.
29-688: The Younger Futhark is divided into long-branch (Danish) and short-twig (Swedish and Norwegian) runes; in the 10th century, it was further expanded by the "Hälsinge Runes" or staveless runes . The lifetime of the Younger Futhark corresponds roughly to the Viking Age . Their use declined after the Christianization of Scandinavia ; most writing in Scandinavia from the 12th century was in the Latin alphabet , but
58-514: A distinction between voiced and voiceless obstruents (stops, affricates, and fricatives). This is the case in nearly all Australian languages , and is widespread elsewhere, for example in Mandarin Chinese , Korean , Danish , Estonian and the Polynesian languages . In many such languages, obstruents are realized as voiced in voiced environments, such as between vowels or between a vowel and
87-540: A large number of variant rune-forms, and some letters, such as s, c and z, were often used interchangeably. Medieval runes were in use until the 15th century. Of the total number of Norwegian runic inscriptions preserved today, most are medieval runes. Notably, more than 600 inscriptions using these runes have been discovered in Bergen since the 1950s, mostly on wooden sticks (the so-called Bryggen inscriptions ). This indicates that runes were in common use side by side with
116-552: A nasal, and voiceless elsewhere, such as at the beginning or end of the word or next to another obstruent. That is the case in Dravidian and Australian languages and in Korean but not in Mandarin or Polynesian. Usually, the variable sounds are transcribed with the voiceless IPA letters, but for Australian languages, the letters for voiced consonants are often used. It appears that voicelessness
145-416: Is insufficient to sustain it, and if the vocal folds open, that is only from passive relaxation. Thus, Polynesian stops are reported to be held for longer than Australian stops and are seldom voiced, but Australian stops are prone to having voiced variants (L&M 1996:53), and the languages are often represented as having no phonemically voiceless consonants at all. In Southeast Asia , when stops occur at
174-914: Is less noisy than the voiceless lateral fricative /ɬ/ in Welsh ; it contrasts with a modally voiced /l/ . Welsh contrasts several voiceless sonorants: /m, m̥/ , /n, n̥/ , /ŋ, ŋ̊/ , and /r, r̥/ , the last represented by "rh". In Moksha , there is even a voiceless palatal approximant /j̊/ (written in Cyrillic as ⟨ й х ⟩ jh ) along with /l̥/ and /r̥/ (written as ⟨ л х⟩ lh and ⟨ р х⟩ rh ). The last two have palatalized counterparts /l̥ʲ/ and /r̥ʲ/ ( ⟨л ь х⟩ and ⟨рьх⟩ ). Kildin Sami has also /j̊/ ⟨ ҋ ⟩ . Contrastively voiceless vowels have been reported several times without ever being verified (L&M 1996:315). Many languages lack
203-484: Is not a single phenomenon in such languages. In some, such as the Polynesian languages, the vocal folds are required to actively open to allow an unimpeded (silent) airstream, which is sometimes called a breathed phonation (not to be confused with breathy voice ). In others, such as many Australian languages, voicing ceases during the hold of a stop (few Australian languages have any other kind of obstruent) because airflow
232-501: Is not entirely accurate, since the i rune consists of a whole stave and the f , þ , k and the s runes consist of shortened main staves. Since their discovery on runestones at Hälsingland in the 17th century, staveless runes have also been known as the Hälsinge runes . This label is, however, misleading since staveless runes also appear in Medelpad , Södermanland , and
261-546: Is suitable for transcribing modern Swedish and the local Dalecarlian language . Staveless runes Staveless runes were the climax of the simplification process in the evolution of runic alphabets that had started when the Elder Futhark was superseded by the Younger Futhark . In order to create the staveless runes, vertical marks (or staves) were dropped from individual letters (or runes). The name "staveless"
290-531: Is used for letters with a descender . Diacritics are typically used with letters for prototypically voiced sounds, such as vowels and sonorant consonants : [ḁ], [l̥], [ŋ̊] . In Russian use of the IPA, the voicing diacritic may be turned for voicelessness, e.g. ⟨ ṋ ⟩. Sonorants are sounds such as vowels and nasals that are voiced in most of the world's languages. However, in some languages sonorants may be voiceless, usually allophonically . For example,
319-742: The Great Plains , where they are present in Numic Comanche but also in Algonquian Cheyenne , and the Caddoan language Arikara . It also occurs in Woleaian , in contrast to the other Micronesian languages , which instead delete it outright. Sonorants may also be contrastively, not just environmentally, voiceless. Standard Tibetan , for example, has a voiceless /l̥/ in Lhasa , which sounds similar to but
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#1733202179407348-665: The Japanese word sukiyaki is pronounced [sɯ̥kijaki] and may sound like [skijaki] to an English speaker, but the lips can be seen to compress for the [ɯ̥] . Something similar happens in English words like p e culiar [pʰə̥ˈkj̊uːliɚ] and p o tato [pʰə̥ˈtʰeɪ̯ɾoʊ̯] . Voiceless vowels are also an areal feature in languages of the American Southwest (like Hopi and Keres ), the Great Basin (including all Numic languages ), and
377-489: The Norwegian town of Bergen . The staveless runes may appear hard to recognize at first glance, but the only difference between them and the preceding Younger Futhark is – in fact – their omission of main staves. If main staves are added, it is apparent that the a , n , t , l and s runes are identical to their staved predecessors. No ą rune has been found in inscriptions, but it has been postulated that it
406-602: The Setre Comb (N KJ40). Ög 136 in Rök, which uses Elder Futhark runes to encrypt part of the text, and Ög 43 in Ingelstad, which uses a single Elder Futhark rune as an ideogram , are also sometimes included as transitional inscriptions. By the late 8th century, the reduction from 24 to 16 runes was complete. The main change was that the difference between voiced and unvoiced consonants was no longer expressed in writing. Other changes are
435-725: The Latin alphabet for several centuries. Indeed, some of the medieval runic inscriptions are actually in the Latin language. After the 15th century, interest in rune history and their use in magical processes grew in Iceland, with various studies beginning with Third Grammatical Icelandic Treatise - Málfræðinnar grundvǫllr. Publications written in Latin and Danish in the 1600s included works by Arngrímur Jónsson, Runólfur Jónsson and Olaus Wormius . Content from these along with Icelandic and Norwegian Rune Poems appeared frequently in subsequent manuscripts written in Iceland. According to Carl-Gustav Werner, "in
464-723: The Scandinavians" in the Book of Ballymote . The names of the 16 runes of the Younger futhark are recorded in the Icelandic and Norwegian rune poems . The names are: From comparison with Anglo-Saxon and Gothic letter names, most of these names directly continue the names of the Elder Futhark runes. The exceptions to this are: The Younger Futhark is divided into long-branch (Danish) and short-twig (Swedish and Norwegian) runes. The difference between
493-484: The Younger Futhark became widespread in Scandinavia, as witnessed by the great number of Runestones (some 3,000), sometimes inscribed with almost casual notes. During a phase from about 650 to 800, some inscriptions mixed the use of Elder and Younger Futhark runes. Examples of inscriptions considered to be from this period include DR 248 from Snoldelev, DR 357 from Stentoften, DR 358 from Gummarp, DR 359 from Istaby, and DR 360 from Björketorp, and objects such as
522-598: The consequence of sound changes that separate Old Norse from Proto-Norse and Common Germanic (mostly changes to the vowel system). In tabular form: The Younger Futhark became known in Europe as the "alphabet of the Norsemen", and was studied in the interest of trade and diplomatic contacts, referred to as Abecedarium Nordmannicum in Frankish Fulda (possibly by Walahfrid Strabo ) and ogam lochlannach " Ogham of
551-487: The hieroglyph expert was too much for the mathematician, antiquarian and Hälsingland native Magnus Celsius . Celsius departed for Hälsingland in the early 1670s and made meticulous drawings of the runestones. When he was back in Stockholm, he worked hard on deciphering the runes but had to give up. Eventually he tried to add staves to the runes and suddenly deciphered some of the staveless runes. By 1674, he had deciphered all
580-465: The isolated province of Dalarna in Sweden a mix of runes and Latin letters developed". The Dalecarlian runes came into use in the early 16th century and remained in some use up to the 20th century. Some discussion remains on whether their use was an unbroken tradition throughout this period or whether people in the 19th and 20th centuries learned runes from books written on the subject. The character inventory
609-485: The larynx, but some object that the word phonation implies voicing and that voicelessness is the lack of phonation. The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) has distinct letters for many voiceless and modally voiced pairs of consonants (the obstruents ), such as [p b], [t d], [k ɡ], [q ɢ], [f v], and [s z] . Also, there are diacritics for voicelessness, U+ 0325 ◌̥ COMBINING RING BELOW and U+ 030A ◌̊ COMBINING RING ABOVE , which
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#1733202179407638-541: The long-branch runes, while the remaining seven have identical shapes: Hälsinge runes are so named because in modern times they were first noticed in the Hälsingland region of Sweden . Later, other inscriptions with the same runes were found in other parts of Sweden. They were used between the 10th and 12th centuries. The runes seem to be a simplification of the Swedish–Norwegian runes and lack certain strokes, hence
667-630: The name "staveless". They cover the same set of staves as the other Younger Futhark alphabets. This variant has no assigned Unicode range (as of Unicode 12.1). In the Middle Ages, the Younger Futhark in Scandinavia was expanded, so that it once more contained one sign for each phoneme of the old Norse language. Dotted variants of voiceless signs were introduced to denote the corresponding voiced consonants, or vice versa, voiceless variants of voiced consonants, and several new runes also appeared for vowel sounds. Inscriptions in medieval Scandinavian runes show
696-402: The runes except for the R rune, which he interpreted as a distinguishing mark. The following year, Celsius made a speech at Uppsala University , where he made his discovery public. He started the process of publishing his discovery shortly after making the speech but died suddenly before the printing was finished. However, the news of the discovery spread quickly among scholars and it
725-588: The runic scripts survived in marginal use in the form of the medieval runes (in use AD 1100–1500) and the Latinised Dalecarlian runes (AD 1500–1910). Usage of the Younger Futhark is found in Scandinavia and Viking Age settlements abroad, probably in use from the 9th century onward. During the Migration Period Elder Futhark had been an actual "secret" known to only a literate elite, with only some 350 surviving inscriptions. Literacy in
754-404: The two versions has been a matter of controversy. A general opinion is that the difference was functional, i.e. the long-branch runes were used for documentation on stone, whereas the short-twig runes were in everyday use for private or official messages on wood. The long-branch runes are the following rune signs: In the short-twig runes (or Rök runes), nine runes appear as simplified variants of
783-412: Was a mirrored form of the b rune due to pairings indicated in the staveless runes. It appears from the title page of Johannes Bureus ' runic primer that Bureus had some understanding of the staveless runes in 1611, but that this has been denied by virtually all runologists. Since Bureus had not succeeded in deciphering the runes, a large poster with the image of two runestones with staveless runes
812-480: Was published in 1624 together with the announcement of a royal reward for the one who could decipher them. It would, however, take half a century before someone found the solution. At the end of the 1660s, Athanasius Kircher , who was an interpreter of hieroglyphs , studied the runes, but he arrived at the conclusion that the staveless runes were nothing but meaningless scribbles and that the stones had been erected in order to protect against snakes. The verdict of
841-441: Was used as the basis of the claim that stenography had originated in Sweden. It would be Olof Celsius who finally published his father's discovery. The following runestones are some of those that feature staveless runes: Voiceless In linguistics , voicelessness is the property of sounds being pronounced without the larynx vibrating. Phonologically, it is a type of phonation , which contrasts with other states of
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