Re: Old Norse orthography

From: Andrew West (andrewcwest@gmail.com)
Date: Sat Sep 10 2005 - 07:25:52 CDT

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    On 09/09/05, Michael Everson <everson@evertype.com> wrote:
    >
    > At 13:24 +0100 2005-09-09, Andrew West wrote:
    >
    > >I'd say this is a glyph variant of "D" used to emphasise the origin of
    > >the rune thorn.
    >
    > The Rune Thorn doesn't derive from the Latin D.

    Not directly from Latin D, but thorn probably derives from a North
    Italic letter corresponding to Latin D; so I would say that thorn is
    cognate with Latin D. Anyway, my statement was just an interpretation
    of what I thought Cleasby and Vigfusson meant, namely that as the
    angular D letter-form in the ancestral script to Runic had evolved
    into the Runic letter thorn, a completely new letter had to be devised
    to represent [d] in Runic, and this Runic letter was created by
    mirroring two angular D letter-forms (or two thorns). I don't know
    whether this theory is correct or not, but it seems reasonable to me.

    Andrew



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