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

[Francisc Czobor]

Hi Keth,

it is true that in Norwegian and in Danish the "hv" digraph (as far as 
I know) occurs only at the beginning of the words, and it is 
pronounced [v]. There is a "hv" digraph in Icelandic too, that occurs 
also only at the beginning of the word, but is pronounced otherwise 
than in Norwegian and Danish. I have read that in Modern Icelandic the 
"hv" is pronounced almost like [kv].
As it is written in Andreas Heusler's "Altisländisches Elementarbuch" 
(Carl Winter Universitätsverlag, Heidelberg, 1967), in Old Norse "h" 
was preserved only at the beginning of accentuated initial sylables.
On the other hand, in Gothic the sounds "q" [= kw] and "hv" [= xw] 
occur also in the middle and at the end of the word.
A few examples: 
ahva "river", aihva- "horse", saihvan "to see"/saihv "saw", brahv 
"moment"
riqis "darkness", igqar "yours" (dual), sigqan "to sink"/sagq "sank"
So your explanation is not applicable to Gothic.

Francisc

--- In gothic-l at y..., keth at o... wrote:
> Hi Francisc,
> you wrote:
> >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].
> 
> Just a small remark, probably not relevant, just an idea:
> Could it have something to do with initials? I know from Norwegian 
where
> we still have this "hv" sound (h is mute) that I do not know of any 
examples
> where it occurs in the middle of a word. Maybe it was important to 
have
> different symbols for all initials that were not vowels. Maybe in 
order to
> mark in writing alliterating initials by means of unique characters?
> Keth


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