From: Andrew West (andrewcwest@gmail.com)
Date: Mon Mar 16 2009 - 04:30:28 CST
2009/3/16 Jonathan Coxhead <jonathan@doves.demon.co.uk>:
>
> Futhorc, except that I can only find 1 rune (ᚳ) to stand for both C and K.
> In the edition I have, it looks like Tolkien used 2 different runes: the
> rune for K having an extra corner, like a knee, in the diagonal stroke.
That is something that I noticed as well recently. See the bottom of
this blog post:
<http://babelstone.blogspot.com/2009/01/moon-runes-and-goblin-alphabet.html>
> Are these 2 different runes encoded separately in Unicode?
No.
> Or is Tolkien exercising artistic licence?
I would say that he was trying to create a new Runic orthography for
modern English, and as is often the case when you try to adapt an old
script to a new language it does not quite fit, and so he needed to
devise a new Runic letter to distinguish C and K.
> Or is there a case for encoding a new rune for K?
It could be considered idiosyncratic usage, but given the importance
of Tolkien's writings I think that there could be a case for encoding
a new rune, especially now that people are trying (and not completely
succeeding) to represent the Runic text of The Hobbit in Unicode on
the web.
Andrew
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