[gothic-l] Re: Runes and Wulfila's alphabet

[Francisc Czobor]

Hello Brian,

I answered already your message today, but as my answer did not appear
on the list, maybe it went into Nirvana, so I rewrite it now.

--- In gothic-l at y..., babeck at a... wrote:
> ...
>   Yes, I agree with what you say, but it still does not explain why
> Wulfila chose single letters for /kw/ and /xw/ instead of digraphs
as
> in runic.
> ...

I don't know why used he single letters for [kw] and [xw] instead of
digraphs. Maybe Wulfila was an early genius in phonetics and realized
that [kw] is a single sound (a labiovelar stop) and not k+w, the same
for [xw] being different from x+w. This is of course a joke, but I can
not see another explanation. However, it is in contradiction with the
fact that he used the digraphs "ai" and "au" for the short [e] and
[o].

Francisc


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