Fun With Futhark

To be honest, it started with a conversation about World of Warcraft.  Some years ago, my husband consented to give the game a try, and he created a dwarf character.  I created one as well so we could run around together.  Our dwarves had great names!  My dwarf's name was Stormstone, and his dwarf was named Hammerthorn.  He played until about level 20 before he lost interest.

In any case, the other day the subject happened to come up in conversation, and he jokingly made a comment about getting a tattoo with his dwarf's name on it.  (When he said that, I heard “t-shirt” instead of “tattoo”, but that's hardly relevant.)  Immediately I thought about what sort of font or script or typeface he might use!  Carogine is too elvish-looking; but what about Futhark runes?  That would be cool!

So I looked it up and figured out how to write Stormstone and Hammerthorn in Eldar Futhark (ᛊᛏᛟᚱᛗᛊᛏᛟᚾᛖ ᚫᚾᛞ ᚺᚫᛗᛗᛖᚱᚦᛟᚱᚾ).  I also figured out how to write it in Tolkein's dwarvish script, Cirth, but I liked the Eldar Futhark better.

It's fun and quite easy; really.  You can transcribe anything just using the following guide:

By the way, there are standard Unicode characters for all these runes.  You can find the Unicode chart here.

The Futhark alphabet doesn't have letters for C, Q, V, X, or Y.  You can use the K for C and Q, and KS for X.  I've mapped V to the same character as F, since V and F are the same type of phoneme; the only difference is that V is voiced and F is unvoiced.  Consider the English word "of", for example:  the F in that word is voiced and takes on a V sound.  The character associated with Y in the chart above is used for I when it's long (IPA /i/ as in pizza).

But wait!  What if you don't want to just transcribe everything letter-for-letter, following Modern English spelling?  What if you'd prefer to write it phonetically?  ('Cause, y'know... you might!)

Fear not!  The consonants are straightforward, so you just have to map out the vowels, as I've done in the following charts:

Vowels

IPA	Futhark	Example		IPA	Futhark	Example
ɑ, ɔ	ᚫ	father, all		æ	ᚫ	at, can
eɪ	ᛖᛁ	able, eight		ɛ	ᛖ	end, ever
i	ᛁ	even, pizza		ɪ	ᛇ	if, sit
oʊ	ᛟ	own, note		ʊ	ᚢ	hook, should
u	ᚢ	flute, tube		ə, ʌ	ᚤ	up, of

Okay, so I cheated a little... I used a different rune for the schwa (/ə/).  You can use ᚢ if you like, but I thought it would be nice to make a distinction, since I'm using that for 2 other phonemes.

Diphthongs

IPA	Futhark	Example
aɪ	ᚫᛁ	eye, item
ɔɪ	ᛟᛁ	oil, joy
aʊ	ᚫᚢ	out, now

Vowel combinations with r

IPA	Futhark	Example
ɑr	ᚫᚱ	are, star
ɪr	ᛁᚱ	ear, here
ɔr	ᛟᚱ	or, soar
ʊr	ᚢᚱ	poor, tour
ær	ᚫᚱ	arrow, marriage
ɛr	ᛖᚱ	air, errand
ɜr	ᛇᚱ	earn, first

All that's well and good, of course, but you can't really appreciate it without seeing it all together in a block of text.  I was thinking of putting this somewhere near my front door, all adorned with Celtic designs.  Of course, I couldn't resist putting it in Old English-style alliterative verse!

I've been keeping my journal in Carogine for over a year now; I laughed and told my husband that now I can write in both evlish and dwarvish!

ᚫᛁ ᚫᛗ ᛊᚤᚲᚺ ᚤ ᚷᛁᚲ.  ᛏᚱᚢᛚᛁ.

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