Runetyper

Author
Wiktor Banaszewski
Contact
wiktor.banaszewski@protonmail.com
Project repository
https://github.com/sigrarr/runetyper
Language
EN | PL

1. General information

The purpose of this application is to provide a comfortable way of writing in historical Germanic alphabets, i.e. runic scripts and the Gothic alphabet.

The main feature of Runetyper is a text editor which converts standard keyboard input to the selected alphabet’s characters. The correspondence between typed keys and characters they produce is meant to be both practical and linguistically justified.

Next to the editor’s text area is a panel containing buttons with all characters of the selected alphabet and explanatory captions. It serves as a virtual keyboard – the letters can be entered directly by clicking their buttons. This is also the only way to use Runetyper on a touch-sreen device.

The generated output is Unicode text (UTF-8) and it may be copied to other applications for further use. Please note that copied content requires suitable fonts in order to be displayed properly in other programs or web services; such fonts might be included in those applications or be available in your system.

2. Manual

2.1. Basics

The main text area (initially marked with ᛫᛫᛫) is a place for writing in the selected alphabet (2.2.1). When the text area is active, you can start writing with your keyboard and your default key values will be converted to historical characters.

  • To check key/character associations, switch captions to key mode with [PageDown] or a menu button: [Æ]→[🄰🄴] (2.2.4).
  • Some characters are produced by a combination of two keys (shown in subtitles with no space inbetween). To type this kind of characters, press the first key and then the second one before releasing the first.
  • In the text area you should be able to use basic control and whitespace keys, as well as standard shortcuts (depending on your operating system and a browser).

You can also use the alphabet’s panel as a virtual keyboard and write by clicking the characters’ buttons.

2.2. Main options

  1. [ᚱ] Alphabet selection.
  2. [★] Letter’s variants switch. You can check which letters have got more than one graphical variation (distinguished in Unicode, cf. 3.1) and choose the forms you prefer. Use the buttons: [⮄], [⮆] or shortcuts: [Ctrl+→], [Ctrl+←] to shift all available variants of the current alphabet’s letters at once.
  3. [⚙] Settings submenu:
    • [🖮] Select the input alphabet to adjust key/character associations to a local keyboard layout. Several of Germanic languages’ alphabets are supported. The default option named UNI (for “universal”) uses only basic keys of a standard international keyboard (Basic Latin Unicode block).
    • Customize the application’s look with the following options: historical typeface [☙], theme [◐] and alphabet panel [▦].
    • [💻] Device mode selection. You can force Runetyper to run in the touchscreen mode or in the hardware keyboard mode, depending on your devices or preferences.
  4. [Æ|🄰🄴|—] Cycle the captions. Keys: [PageDown], [PageUp]
    • [Æ] In the initial state captions contain characters’ romanization (3.2.1).
    • [🄰🄴] The next state shows keyboard keys (and key-pairs) that will produce described a character when pressed.
    • [—] Captions can also be turned off.
    [🄰🗘]Toggle the buttons between historical characters and their transliteration.

2.3. Editor toolbar

  1. [🗚] [🗛] Font size regulation. Shortcuts: [Ctrl+Shift++], [Ctrl+Shift+-] and [Ctrl+Shift+0].
  2. [🗸] Save current content of the text area in the local storage of your internet browser. Shortcut: [Ctrl+s]. Overwrites the previous save (if exists).
  3. [📋] Paste the previously saved text (2.3.2) into the text area.
  4. [🖢] Select all.
  5. [⌧] Erase the selected text.

3. Representation of the alphabets

Runic writing systems were neither uniform, nor consistent. It is customary to distinguish several alphabets, each with a specific set of characters. However, intermediate states between older and newer scripts, as well as local variations were found. In fact, individual runes appeared in many shapes.

The Gothic alphabet cannot be called runic, but it was included in this project because of several traits it shares with runic scripts. All of these alphabets:

  • are valuable from the perspective of Germanic linguistics as they recorded the old Germanic languages,
  • lack distinction between capital and small letters,
  • don’t show a distinction of long or nasal vowels, even when these features were phonemic in spoken language. (*)

3.1. Unicode standard

Runetyper utilizes two Unicode blocks:

Runic Unicode block
https://www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/U16A0.pdf
Gothic Unicode block
https://www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/U10330.pdf

The Runic block is a set of abstract representations of limited paleographical value. Many characters are linked with more than one alphabet in order to avoid redundancy, which is of course reasonable.

3.2. Romanization and sections

3.2.1. Romanization

In the alphabet panel all characters are described with Latin characters, which combines:

  • transliteration – one-to-one correspondence, useful for the characters’ identification,
  • transcription – to denote possible phonetic values of the character in given language.

Romanization of a character may contain more than one value in the following cases:

  • when an alphabet was used for several languages (or dialects),
  • when the character denoted various phonemes in one language, represented by specific letters of the Latin orthography of said language,
  • when multiple conventions of romanizing the character are in use among scholars,
  • when the phonetic value of a character is uncertain.

It should be noted that in old Germanic languages vowel length was phonemic, i.e. speakers recognized long and short vowels as different sounds; the same applies to vowel nasality in Proto-Germanic and Old Norse. In Latin orthographies and linguistic conventions such features are often denoted by adding diacritical marks, but they were not distinguished in runic writing, nor in the original Gothic. For this reason, Runetyper does not regard long and nasal sound variants.

3.2.2. Sections

Each alphabet is divided into sections, separated in the alphabet panel with a thin horizontal line or a background stripe:

  • the first section consist of the main corpus of letters,
  • the middle section, if present, contains additional characters with limited or unknown scopes of use,
  • the last section contains auxiliary characters, especially punctuation marks.

3.3. The alphabets: historical description and notes about representation

3.3.1. Elder Futhark

The first runic alphabet used by Germanic peoples in many regions of Europe consisted of 24 runes. The oldest inscriptions are dated to 2nd century CE, but the script might have existed even earlier. It is certain that the Futhark descended from the archaic Greek alphabet, although most scholars believe that not directly; it was probably based on the Latin alphabet or a more archaic form of Italic script. Elder-futhark inscriptions were written in late Proto-Germanic dialects and Germanic languages in their early stages of development.

Notes
  • Division of the corpus into 3 rows of 8 runes each is attested epigraphically.
  • Unicode assigned only one character to represent the elder-futhark rune of value /s/, although this rune had occurred in various zigzag shapes that can be widely classified into the “Σ-variant” (suggested by Unicode) and the “S-variant” (omitted by Unicode). The character ‹ᛋ› is used in this application as a substitute of the latter, despite slight geometric differences and the fact that the Unicode's suggestion limits its use to newer alphabets.
  • Similarly, Unicode assigned only one character for the elder-futhark H-rune, suggesting the shape with one horizontal bar, but this rune used to be written with two or three bars as well. The two-bar character is recognized by Unicode as an exclusively Anglo-Saxon rune, but in Runetyper was also added as an elder-futhark variant.
3.3.2. Anglo-Saxon Futhorc

A close descendant of the Elder Futhark, modified and extended. It was used from 5th to ca. 11th century CE in England. In early stages identical with Anglo-Frisian runes. After the process of christianization the use of Futhorc declined in favor of the Old English Latin alphabet.

Notes
  • The letter ‹j› is given as a main transliteration of the runes ‹ᛄ› and ‹ᛡ›, although in Old English texts the sound /j/ was written with the letter ‹g›.
3.3.3. Younger Futhark

A Scandinavian runic script used by the Old Norse speakers mainly during the Viking Age, from 8th to ca. 11th century. Developed by reduction of the Elder Futhark, it contained only 16 characters, despite the fact that the set of spoken sounds had widened. As a result, the majority of the runes were overloaded with two or more phonemes and the orthography was highly inconsistent, especially with regard to vowels. Moreover, nine of the runes occurred parallelly in two graphical forms, often called “long-branch” and “short-twig”.

Notes
  • The main transliteration of the rune ‹ᚬ/ᚭ› – ‹ą› – indicates vowel nasality, because for the long time it had been the only feature distinguishing this rune phonetically from ‹ᛅ/ᛆ› (it’s an exceptional case in runic orthography).
3.3.4. Medieval runes

Scandinavian runes used alongside the Latin alphabet after the Viking Age. The motivation behind their development was to make the runes phonetically unambiguous. To achieve this, the character set had been extended, mostly by adding dotted counterparts of some runes and by including long-branch and short-twig variants as separate letters with distinct phonetic values.

3.3.5. Gothic alphabet

An alphabet created in the 4th century by Wulfila, an Arian missionary and bishop, for the purpose of writing the Gothic translation of the Bible. Most of the letters stem from the Greek and Latin alphabets, however some of them might have runic origins. Even though the Gothic alphabet was never used widely, the linguistic significance of the Gothic Bible cannot be overstated since it is the earliest literary attestation of any Germanic language.

Notes
  • Gothic Unicode block doesn’t contain any punctuation marks, therefore standard colon and interpunct are used to represent punctuations which appear in Gothic manuscripts.
  • Gothic authors used the letter ‹𐌹› with diacritical diaeresis – ‹𐌹̈› – but it is not included in Unicode.

3.4. Supplement

The Runic Unicode block contains several groups of characters which are not used by Runetyper because they are not strictly linked with any of the historical alphabets listed above or are too specific to include as a normal part of a writing system. Titles of the following subsections (except 3.4.2.) come from the Unicode block chart (3.1).

3.4.1. Cryptogrammic letters
ᛴᚩ
ᛵᛁ
ᛶᛖ
ᛷᚪ
ᛸᚫ

These runes were used only once, in Anglo-Saxon inscription on the 8th-century artifact known as the “Franks Casket”. They served as cryptogrammic equivalents of standard vowel runes.

3.4.2. Scandinavian corpus extensions
ᚥw
ᚰon/ǫ
ᚶŋ(g)
ᛀN
ᛛL

These characters were not present in any historical alphabets.

3.4.3. Golden number runes
ᛮ17.
ᛯ18.
ᛰ19.

These symbols were invented for the purpose of representing three golden numbers – 17th, 18th and 19th – in Scandinavian runic calendars, which were used from the 13th/14th century up to modern times.

3.4.4. Tolkienian extensions
ᛱk
ᛲsh
ᛳoo

These letters are included in J.R.R. Tolkien’s artistic version of Futhorc, which is an adaptation of Anglo-Saxon runes to the modern English language (or “Westron” in Middle-earth). On a side note, the shape ‹ᛳ› occurs in a number of elder-futhark inscriptions, probably standing for ᛁ + ᛜ = ing, but it hasn’t been recognized by Unicode and has a completely different value in Tolkien’s work.

4. Credits and references

4.1. Fonts

The following fonts are used for displaying historical alphabets:

Standard text is displayed with Biolinum fonts by Philipp Poll, and key hints with Courier Prime by Quote-Unquote Apps.

4.2. Furhter reading: runology and Germanic linguistics

  • E.H. Antonsen, Runes and Germanic Linguistics, 2002
  • M. Barnes
    • A New Introduction to Old Norse. Part I: Grammar, 2008, http://vsnrweb-publications.org.uk
    • The Scandinavian Languages in the Viking Age [in:] The Viking World, Ed. S. Brink, N. Price, 2008
  • Futhark: International Journal of Runic Studies, Ed. J.E. Knirk, H. Williams, http://futhark-journal.com
  • W. Harbert, The Germanic Languages, 2007
  • G. Kroonen, Etymological Dictionary of Proto-Germanic, 2013
  • T. Looijenga, Texts & Contexts of the Oldest Runic Inscriptions, 2003
  • W. Maciejewski et al., Runy, 2011 [Polish]
  • J.W. Marchand, The Sounds and Phonemes of Wulfila's Gothic, 1973
  • V. Orel, A Handbook of Germanic Etymology, 2003
  • R.I. Page
    • Runes, 1987
    • An Introduction to English Runes, 1999
    • Runes and Runic Inscriptions, Ed. David Parsons, 1999
  • H. Williams, Runes [in:] The Viking World, Ed. S. Brink, N. Price, 2008
See also:
© 2019 Wiktor Banaszewski

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