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Futhark is occasionally said to have developed from a variant of Old Italic. Another hypothesis is that it's descended directly from Phoenician: http://www.acad

by 80386 8y ago

Futhark is occasionally said to have developed from a variant of Old Italic. Another hypothesis is that it's descended directly from Phoenician: http://www.academia.edu/20097046/Origins_of_runic_writing_A_comparison_of_theories http://www.academia.edu/20097046/Origins_of_runic_writing_A_...

tomcooks 8y ago
Etruscan being a Phoenician derivate I don't understand the difference between the two thesis
- 80386 8y ago
  Latin and Cyrillic are both descended from Greek, but Latin isn't descended from Cyrillic, nor vice versa. For descent from Phoenician, we should expect that the futhark developed relatively early, and was transmitted to the Proto-Germanic urheimat (almost certainly Denmark) by sea; for descent from Greek or Etruscan, we should expect that it developed relatively late, and may have been transmitted by land. Vennemann's argument in favor of descent of the futhark directly from Phoenician is that there are features preserved by the futhark that were lost by the Old Italic alphabets, and that there are features of the futhark that are best explained by an early date of development. For example, Vennemann considers the ansuz rune to have developed from Phoenician hē; but we'd expect a descendant of hē to represent /e/, not /a/. As it happens, Proto-Germanic ē shifted to ā in the descendant of all Germanic languages but Gothic. In a Greek or Etruscan descent theory, ansuz would likely have developed from some descendant of aleph, since by that time the shift would have already occurred. Unfortunately, hē and aleph are equally plausible as sources for the letterform. And the runes are named by appellative acrophony, like the letters in Phoenician, but unlike the letters in Greek (where the Phoenician names were borrowed as otherwise meaningless lexical units) or Latin (a, be, ce...). If the runes developed from Etruscan, where would appellative acrophony have come from? Then again, Glagolitic also uses appellative acrophony...
- deleted 8y ago
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by 80386 8y ago

tomcooks 8y ago

Etruscan being a Phoenician derivate I don't understand the difference between the two thesis

80386 8y ago
Latin and Cyrillic are both descended from Greek, but Latin isn't descended from Cyrillic, nor vice versa. For descent from Phoenician, we should expect that the futhark developed relatively early, and was transmitted to the Proto-Germanic urheimat (almost certainly Denmark) by sea; for descent from Greek or Etruscan, we should expect that it developed relatively late, and may have been transmitted by land. Vennemann's argument in favor of descent of the futhark directly from Phoenician is that there are features preserved by the futhark that were lost by the Old Italic alphabets, and that there are features of the futhark that are best explained by an early date of development. For example, Vennemann considers the ansuz rune to have developed from Phoenician hē; but we'd expect a descendant of hē to represent /e/, not /a/. As it happens, Proto-Germanic ē shifted to ā in the descendant of all Germanic languages but Gothic. In a Greek or Etruscan descent theory, ansuz would likely have developed from some descendant of aleph, since by that time the shift would have already occurred. Unfortunately, hē and aleph are equally plausible as sources for the letterform. And the runes are named by appellative acrophony, like the letters in Phoenician, but unlike the letters in Greek (where the Phoenician names were borrowed as otherwise meaningless lexical units) or Latin (a, be, ce...). If the runes developed from Etruscan, where would appellative acrophony have come from? Then again, Glagolitic also uses appellative acrophony...
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]