Founding America

Old English was very different from the modern version, and so was its writing system.

If you’ve been keeping up with Liberty Nation Gen Z’s language series, you probably already know English is a Germanic language, not a true child of Latin. But did you know that speakers of Old English wrote in runes rather than the alphabet? Languages change over time – as do their writing systems. And that’s as true for English as it is for any other.

Futhark, Futhorc, for What Now?

Our alphabet comes from the old Greek one we inherited through French and Latin: The first two letters are alpha and beta, and the mashup of those is alphabet. Similarly, the Hebrew version begins with alef and bet and is called the alef-bet.

Before we get into the history of the runes that predate the alphabet for English and other Germanic languages, let’s look at those funny names. The word rune comes from the Romanized rūna, from the Old English ᚱᚢᚾᚪ. In Old Norse, this meant secret or mystery, and by the time the runic alphabets (the Futharks) developed, the word we would call rune today applied to the carved letters themselves. Literacy was rare at the time, and the carved symbols were often associated with magic, mystical properties, and fortune telling.

The oldest known is called Elder Futhark, consisting of 24 runes. The first six were: ᚠ (Fehu), which makes the “f” sound; ᚢ (Uruz), which makes the “u” sound; ᚦ (Thurisaz), which makes the “th” sound; ᚨ (Ansuz), which makes the “a” sound; ᚱ (Raidho), which makes the “r” sound, and ᚲ (Kenaz), which makes the “k” sound. Put all their sounds together, and you have what? Futhark.

Then the Anglo-Saxons adopted a modified version with different sounds and, in some cases, symbols. ᚠ went from being pronounced “Fehu” to “Feoh,” ᚢ became “Ur,” ᚦ became “Thorn,” ᚨ ended up looking more like ᚩ and was pronounced “Ōs.” ᚱ went from “Raidho” to “Rād,” and ᚲ became ᚳ, which was pronounced Cēn. Put them together phonetically and you get Futhorc.

From Runes to Letters – A Long Linguistic Journey

Let’s talk timeline. Elder Futhark – the oldest known runic script to be used by the Germanic people – consisted of 24 angular symbols designed primarily to be easily carved into wood, bone, and stone (the curvy versions came much later). It emerged around AD 150 and remained in use until around the year 800 or so. After this, it went through a period of “simplification,” when several runes were dropped, and it became the 16-rune Younger Futhark. This lasted until about the 11th century.

Elder Futhark was used for early Proto-Germanic and Proto-Norse languages. Old Norse went on to use Younger Futhark. Meanwhile, the Frisians, who spoke Old Frisian, and the Anglo-Saxons, who spoke Old English, made an Edler Futhark adaptation of their own when they migrated to Britain in the 5th century AD. Their version, Futhorc, was expanded to 28 or 29 runes, then eventually on to about 34 in its later Northumbrian form. Like Younger Futhark, Futhorc remained in use until about the 11th century. So why did both scripts fade out of use around the same time? The answer is Rome.

Following the arrival of Christian missionaries from Rome, the Anglo-Saxons started using the Latin alphabet more – though it lacked the j, u, and w that we know today. In fact, for several centuries, Futhorc and Latin were used at the same time, and the Latin alphabet was modified with runic characters to represent sounds it simply didn’t account for, such as þ (thorn) and æ (ash).

By the 1300s, Futhorc had fallen out of favor entirely, and Old English gave way to Middle English, complete with a modified Latin alphabet. But the adaptations weren’t done. By the time we transition into Early Modern English in the 1600s – the language of William Shakespeare and the King James Bible – several more changes had been made. Ƿ (Wynn) became today’s W in the 1300s, and U split from V in the 1400s. Even today in French you’d call W “double vé” (literally “double V”) and in English “double U.” Indeed, W was once written uu. In the 1630s, J split from I and became a consonant.

Perhaps the most interesting – and most widely seen, even if not recognized – change was what happened to Thorn. Throughout the 15th and 16th centuries, ᚦ (Thorn) was replaced with what looked like a stylized lowercase y. Now, the letter Y has been the letter Y since long before this shift – since about 700 BC, in fact. But the stylized lowercase y – usually with some tiny dot, tick mark, or small stroke floating directly above it, later represented in print by a tiny e above the y – came to replace ᚦ in print and on signs and such. But in this use, the pronunciation never changed – it always made the “th” sound. Do you see the little trick in the title, now? Go back and read it again, but say it correctly this time. Ye Olde doesn’t sound the way you think it does – it’s pronounced “the old.”

A final fun fact about runes? Futhorc was developed specifically for what became English – and it, like English, grew out of the older Proto-Germanic and Elder Futhark. You can, in fact, use either Futhark or Futhorc to write modern English – you just have to decide if you want to go with a letter-by-letter translation or to use the sounds. We pronounce Futhorc as it looks and could just as easily spell it ᚠᚢᚦᚩᚱᚳ. Should you take the time to learn or – using Lagu, Eoh, Ac, Rad, and Nyd in Futhorc, ᛚᛖᚪᚱᚾ – the runes, you can have your own (almost) secret code!

When next we explore a language, we’ll dig into ye – sorry, the – second most common language on the planet today, Arabic.

1. Before adopting the Latin alphabet and eventually making it their own, the Anglo-Saxons used a runic script called Futhorc.
2. You can still use Futhorc today because it was developed to represent the sounds common to the English language.
3. Before even Futhorc, there was Elder Futhark, the oldest known runic script used by ancient Germanic peoples.