English Runes and Fairy Code

Fairy Code is a simple substitution system where a symbol is used in the place of a letter of the alphabet. It's a fun game for young children to send secret notes to their playmates.

Anglo-Saxon Runes

There are two ways of writing in runes. These systems are usually referred to as Modern English and Phonetic.

Modern English Runes are basically fairy code. Like with fairy code a symbol, this time a rune, is assigned to each letter of the English alphabet and perhaps a couple more for NG, TH and AE. Then the writer simply writes in modern English using the rune instead of the English letter.

There are numerous problems with using runes as a fairy code.

First of all, modern English letters and runes sounds, don't match. There are letters there are no runes for and runes there are no letters for.

Old English is also a phonetic language while modern English spelling is not.

However the biggest problem is runes have a whole system of diphongs and consonant clusters of their own that doesn't match modern English ones.

For example in Runes "sc" not "sh" makes the sound at the beginning of the word "shop".

A perfect example is writing these three words.

Cat, Calm and Case.

In English the 'a' vowel make three completely different sounds. In runes these words would be written

ᚳᚫᛏ ᚳᚪᛚᛗ ᚳᛖᛄᛋ

Caet, Calm and Ceys

The third word Case using a diphong as the vowel, while in modern English runes using a fairy rune substitution system, Case would be spelt.

C a s e

ᚳ ᚫ ᛋ ᛖ

ᚳ = c, ᚪ = a, ᛋ = s, ᛖ = e

If an Anglo-Saxon saw these runes, he/she would read them as Kar-seh pronoucing each letter including the final 'e' which in Old English has no effect on the vowel sound before it.

The correct way of writing runes is phonetically. This is not without problems either. One is recognising the word you are reading. For example studies have shown we read words as a whole, not letter by letter. A classic example is,

"Aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde…"

Despite the fact all but the first and last letters are scrambled the sentence can be read easily.

So a completely phonetical spelt word could be unrecognisable to us. For example,

ᛏᚩᛗᛁ

TOMEE

Which is how Tommy should be written in runes.

When reading lengthy texts, this becomes a real problem. Try and understand this sentence before looking at the answer below.

Sum kernal sed the kwier wud beri the yot in er trof

ᛋᚢᛗ ᚳᛖᚱᚾᚪᛚ ᛋᛖᛞ ᚦᛖ ᚳᚹᛁᛖᚱ ᚹᚢᛞ ᛒᛖᚱᛁ ᚦᛖ ᛁᚩᛏ ᛁᚾ ᛖᚱ ᛏᚱᚩᚠ

Some Colonel said the choir would bury the yacht in a trof.

A another problem, the Anglo-Saxon scribes faced is there were many sounds in the Latin that Old English had no letters for. For example there was no "v" in the English language, so when scibes wanted to write "v" they used ᚠ the "f" rune instead. This would make the word "five" spelt "fife" in runes. Also many modern English sounds simply do not exist in the runic alphabet, for example the hard "j", it is just impossible to write "just".

Runes are simply not designed for writing modern English. The choice is use Fairy Runes and reduce the writing system to little more than a childrens game, or too write phonetically, using a complex system of diphongs, and consonant clusters, that don't match the modern English ones, and end up with an inscription that is difficult to read.

An alternative is to use runes for what they are designed for. Which is writing the Old English Language. A job they do very well.

Game

Now a game: Try writing these words phonetically in English.

Wednesday = Wensdee

Comfortable = Cumftabaw

Tuesday

Schedule

Iron

Aaron

Genevieve

Joaquin

Your answer is most likely how they would correctly be spelt in runes.

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