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Nordic runes have a blatant filiatiation to Italic scripts, especially the Etruscan alphabet. It's rather natural that it would spread from the Alps to the Nort
by Bayart 4y ago
Nordic runes have a blatant filiatiation to Italic scripts, especially the Etruscan alphabet. It's rather natural that it would spread from the Alps to the North Sea through the Rhine River.
In that sense it's just as much descended from the Phoenician alphabet as the Latin alphabet is. But a direct descent from a Semitic script makes less sense. This being said there are cases of scripts being adopted from afar rather than from a neighbour. For example Transalpine Gaul used a Greek script before the Roman invasion, rather than an Italic one.
- moloch-hai 4y agoYet, we know it is more complicated than simple derivation from Etruscan. So the real question is what else happened.
- wolverine876 4y agoFrom TFA: > Scholars agree that runes were influenced by an older writing system, but just which one, and when, remain the subject of academic debate. One theory posits that the runic alphabet—also known as “futhark,” after its first six sounds—was derived from the alphabet of the Etruscans in northern Italy. Another is that runes were born from the Latin alphabet, following commercial and cultural exchange between Germanic peoples and the Romans.
- moloch-hai 4y agoApparently, assuming it was "influenced by" only one "older writing system". But there is no basis for any such assumption. It appears to be purely a matter of their own convenience, wholly disconnected from anything in the script.
- wolverine876 4y agoWhat is your statement based on? Your analysis of runic scripts?
- moloch-hai 4y agoThe origins of the runic script are not established. If they resembled something else strongly enough to say there was just the one, we would not be discussing this.
- wolverine876 4y ago> If they resembled something else strongly enough to say there was just the one, we would not be discussing this. That doesn't make sense to me. Maybe they did and you don't know about it.
- moloch-hai 4y agoMaybe read up just a bit? It is the biggest open question.