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Isolated people in Sweden only stopped using runes 100 years ago
- Aloha 11y agoI love reading about how language evolves - I've heard of similar isolated dialects of Spanish in very rural New Mexico.
- MrJagil 11y agoCan you give us some more information?
- daemin 11y agoI know that it is not an authoritative source, but there was an episode of an Anthony Bourdain show which travelled to Mexico / MidWest kind of area where they spoke Spanish that was mostly unchanged since 400 years ago.
- contingencies 11y agoThere's a great isolate of Manchu being spoken in Xinjiang, who are descendents of some kind of military outpost that was abandoned after a dynastic change back in China proper.
- Zardoz84 11y agoAlso, you can find some speaking of Astur-Leonese and Aragonese languages on Spain : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astur-Leonese_languages https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astur-Leonese_languages https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aragonese_language https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aragonese_language This languages are romanced derivative and could you think as brother/cousins of Spanish
- dear 11y agoSomeone should invent a programming language with Runes. It would be cool.
- jakub_h 11y agoGo uses runes... ;-p
- ars 11y agoAPL uses special characters: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/APL_syntax_and_symbols https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/APL_syntax_and_symbols
- colomon 11y agoYou could get most of the way there with a straightforward module in Perl6: sub infix:<ᛈ>($ᛣ, $ᛤ) { $ᛣ + $ᛤ } my @ᚠᛁᛒ := 0, 1, * ᛈ * ... *; say @ᚠᛁᛒ[100]; Don't know that I'd particularly recommend it, though!
- steve19 11y agoso just business-as-usual for a Perl5 programmer?
- JupiterMoon 11y agoGiven that a monkey with a typewriter could create the full works of Shakespeare with infinite time, could a monkey with a Perl interpreter create a valid Perl program that does your string processing in under 1 minute?
- rspeer 11y agoHere's Python 3: from unicodedata import name as ᚾᚮᛗᚨ ᛊᛈᛚᛁᛏ = str.split def ᚢᚾᛒᛂᚺᚱᛂᚮᛊᚨᚾ(ᚥᚮᚱᛑ): ᚮᚢᛏ = [] for ᛍ in ᚥᚮᚱᛑ: if 'ᚠ' <= ᛍ <= 'ᛪ': ᚾ = ᛊᛈᛚᛁᛏ(ᚾᚮᛗᚨ(ᛍ))[-1] ᚮᚢᛏ += [ᚾ] else: ᚮᚢᛏ += [ᛍ] return ᚮᚢᛏ Apologies if my Old English is crappy, I used Wiktionary.
- nitrogen 11y agohttps://xkcd.com/356/ https://xkcd.com/356/ One would expect it to be possible to #define most of the keywords and functions one would need using the C or C++ preprocessor, though the actual #include and #define macros would still be in Latin script. Unfortunately, the C standard (Annex D of http://www.open-std.org/jtc1/sc22/wg14/www/docs/n1256.pdf http://www.open-std.org/jtc1/sc22/wg14/www/docs/n1256.pdf) does not allow runes in identifier names, but it would work for characters explicitly mentioned in the standard and supported by one's C compiler. Here's my attempt: #include <stdio.h> #define _ᚠᛟᚱ for #define _ᛁᚠ if #define _ᛖᛚᛊᛖ else #define _ᚱᛖᛏᚢᚱᚾ return #define _ᛗᚨᛁᚾ main #define _ᛈᚱᛁᚾᛏᚠ(...) printf(__VA_ARGS__) #define _ᛊᛏᚱᛚᛖᚾ(...) strlen(__VA_ARGS__) typedef int _ᛁᚾᛏ; typedef char _ᚲᚺᚨᚱ; _ᛁᚾᛏ _ᛗᚨᛁᚾ(_ᛁᚾᛏ _ᚨᚱᚷᚲ, ᚲᚺᚨᚱ *_ᚨᚱᚷᛒ) { _ᛁᚾᛏ _ᛁ; _ᚠᛟᚱ(_ᛁ = 1; _ᛁ < _ᚨᚱᚷᚲ; _ᛁ++) { _ᛁᚠ(_ᛊᛏᚱᛚᛖᚾ(_ᚨᚱᚷᛒ[ᛁ]) & 1) { _ᚱᛖᛏᚢᚱᚾ("Hello, %s\n", _ᚨᚱᚷᛒ[_ᛁ]); } _ᛖᛚᛊᛖ { _ᚱᛖᛏᚢᚱᚾ("Goodbye, %s\n", _ᚨᚱᚷᛒ[_ᛁ]); } } _ᚱᛖᛏᚢᚱᚾ 0; } Clang and gcc both give errors of this form: rune_c.c:16:2: error: non-ASCII characters are not allowed outside of literals and identifiers _ᛁᚾᛏ _ᛗᚨᛁᚾ(_ᛁᚾᛏ _ᚨᚱᚷᚲ, ᚲᚺᚨᚱ *_ᚨᚱᚷᛒ) ^ I used https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Runes#Runic_alphabets https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Runes#Runic_alphabets as a reference. For other languages, one should be able to use Ruby metaprogramming to make it possible to write Ruby using nothing but runes and punctuation. One would have to define runic methods to replace the functionality def, class, module, and related keywords, but tricks like instance_eval make that possible.
- krick 11y agoThis post makes far bigger deal of (somewhat) recent rune usage than it actually is in my opinion. It's not like this folk used hieroglyphic alphabet when the rest of the country used latin letters. Runes are basically the same thing as latin/cyrillic letters. Just one more phonetic alphabet with different shape of the letters. Well, and it's old. Nothing special about that, really. In fact, it could be more surprising that all germanic languages adopted latin alphabet so easily. Yeah, there's pretty clear explanation why this happened, but it could have happened the other way as well. And local dialects are anything but unusual, they appear even in not so isolated regions of small european countries. Which is a lot less likely place for a local dialect to survive than northern Swedish forest is.
- kryptiskt 11y agoIt's pretty funny that people were using runes 300 years after the first generation of antiquity freaks among the upper classes painstakingly learned them so they could decipher the old stones. > And local dialects are anything but unusual, they appear even in not so isolated regions of small european countries. The point is that it isn't a dialect, it's accepted by linguists as a separate language. Even though the Swedish government refuses to accept that, though in less painful ways than when they tried to beat it out of the schoolkids (which they did until the fifties).
- davidw 11y ago> The point is that it isn't a dialect, it's accepted by linguists as a separate language. The trite phrase with some truth behind it that's often written in these discussions: "a language is a dialect with an army".
- singulaire 11y ago"and a navy." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_language_is_a_dialect_with_an_army_and_navy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_language_is_a_dialect_with_a...
- bane 11y ago
- ars 11y agoBecause of Johannes Bureus people see runes as some sort of magical alphabet, but really they are no different from any alphabet like Cyrillic, Latin, Hebrew, Coptic, etc.
- Fjolsvith 11y agoOh? Then you don't really know a lot about the runes. http://www.seekthemystery.com http://www.seekthemystery.com
- ars 11y agoI'm slightly disturbed that I can't tell if that is satire or serious.
- Fjolsvith 11y agoOnly someone willing to experiment would be able to know.
- 6d0debc071 11y agoIt seems rather unlikely that if people were selling books of magic on the internet which actually worked we wouldn't know about it. People would talk about it, and they'd have the results to back up their talk when other people called them nuts.
- codezero 11y agoPoe's Law strikes again.
- fnordsensei 11y agoI don't know about the website, but the mystical side of the runes is very old. In fact, the story about how the runes came to be is that Oden hung over the Well of Mimer (Mimer was a giant well versed in magic) for nine days and nine nights. In the end, he lost one of his eyes, but received the runes instead. The runes describe the world, so the world can be altered through the runes (the idea goes). Each rune describes an aspect of the world, like the Is-rune being both the sound "i"/"ee" and the concept of "ice". I may have the details wrong. I read about it in school after all. I love the story though: http://norse-mythology.org/tales/odins-discovery-of-the-runes/ http://norse-mythology.org/tales/odins-discovery-of-the-rune... Edit: like I wrote above, this is the STORY, ie the cultural myth about how they came to be. The STORY shows how they were THOUGHT OF as more than a practical language.
- xiaoma 11y agoThis reminds me of hours I spent as a child deciphering the Norse runes Richard Garriot borrowed for his Ultima games: http://vignette3.wikia.nocookie.net/u5lazarus/images/d/dc/U4map.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20090828191806 http://vignette3.wikia.nocookie.net/u5lazarus/images/d/dc/U4... In the area right below the title: "The Lands of Britannia"
- keedot 11y agoIn college, we'ed leave messages on friends whiteboards with runes. Back in '93, there weren't a lot of 'nerd' girls, so it was usually a pretty safe way to hide in plain sight. Much better than a tie on the doorknob. Granted, it wasn't Ultima or LOTR, but Beowulf in the Olde English class that we would cite, because nerdy wasn't cool back then.
- z3t4 11y agoRune is much easier to carve into stone and tree. If you want to see rune in the wild, you should go to a public toilet or bus booth made of tree. :P
- INTPenis 11y agoFascinating but I would love to know how common christianity was in this area. I've always been more fascinated with the old norse religion than its runes. Also my personal view has always been that the catholic church actively waged a holy war to convert the nordic heathens. That any bad press the vikings received was simply propaganda from the victors who wrote the history books.
- JuriadoB 11y ago>I would love to know how common christianity was in this area. A hundred years ago it would be close to 100% christianity. The runes was simply a traditional way of writing. Norse mythology is of course a lot of fun but it's sad how little we know of it and it's traditions.
- smegel 11y agoHmm so how are runes any different to an alphabet then? Each one has a sound, and largely corresponds to the Latin alphabet. I thought runes were like pictographs, each one had a meaning, and maybe several readings or sounds.
- k8tte 11y ago> I thought runes were like pictographs, each one had a meaning, and maybe several readings or sounds. various hieroglyphic writing systems are pictographics. runes are not
- smegel 11y agoSo what are runes then? Does the Latin alphabet consist of runes?
- ars 11y agoRunes to you sound like mystical shapes, or words or something. It's not so. It is simply the name of an alphabet, much like you have Cyrillic, Latin, Hebrew, Coptic, etc. You have Runic. That's all. It's just the name for an alphabet.
- jkot 11y agoRunes are derived from Roman alphabet. 2000 years ago there was strong contact between Rome empire and 'German' tribes. Many nordict people worked in Rome army, latter they even occupied Sicily.
- legulere 11y agoMeh this article is full of inaccuracies. > because they speak an unique old Norse tongue They don't speak Old Norse, they simply didn't take part in as many changes as in Swedish. Älvdalska still sounds pretty Swedish and we have other North Germanic languages (Icelandic, Faroese) that also kept features that Swedish dropped. > The runic script was the dominant written language The runic script is a script and not a language. It's just another alphabet > flooded by [...] Germanic words It's a Germanic language in itself, maybe they mean low German loanwords.
- JupiterMoon 11y ago> we have other North Germanic languages (Icelandic, Faroese) I could well be wrong here (please correct me if I am). Wasn't Old Norse divided into Eastern and Western? With Icelandic and Faroese related to Western Old Norse whilst Swedish descends from Eastern. This would imply that Älvdalska would be related to Eastern Old Norse - hence not totally unique but still of great interest.
- Arnt 11y agoNot really, no. Nowadays we have nation states and boundaries. We have a buraucracy, publishers and broadcasters located in the capital that influence the language spoken in that country. 500, 1000, 1500 years ago it wasn't quite like that. Things were more fluid. Älvalska descends from whatever was spoken there, which was presumably closer to what was spoken in Uppsala at the time than to whatever was spoken in Hamar (in Norway some way west of Älvdalen). But there wasn't a ban on travel to Hamar, nor a state that lent prestige to the dialect spoken in the capital.
- legulere 11y agoYes it is. Old Gutnish is usually seen as an additional dialect of Old Norse. I've only had a few courses about Old Norse, that were mainly about Old West Norse, so I'm not really an expert in this topic. I think we pretty much know the differences between Old Western Norse and Old Eastern Norse through the texts of that languages that were preserved.
- deleted 11y ago
- roghummal 11y agoThis article doesn't properly projekt the magik of runes for one or more of the following reasons: 1. Runes are like magik (see my site runesaremagik.tumbler.com) 2. Who cares? Elvish. 3. Who cares? Klingon. 4. Who cares? ... everybodycares.js. It'll make your life as a front-end full-stack developer engineer designer hacker a lot easier by using stuff you already know to make new stuff with runes. 5. Heresy happens when you aren't sufficiently vigilant. Check your corners. They're coming for us.
- Svip 11y agoWhen the Nordic Council becomes the Nordic Federation, I hope they re-invent Old Norse as New Norse as the official language of the Federation. You know, like they did with Hebrew when they re-declared Israel back in the 1940s.
- arethuza 11y agoGreat example of runes on Orkney, Scotland - 1000 year old graffiti in a structure almost 5000 years old: http://www.orkneyjar.com/history/maeshowe/maeshrunes.htm http://www.orkneyjar.com/history/maeshowe/maeshrunes.htm https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maeshowe https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maeshowe