Runes are pretty well integrated into unicode at this point. I think many people would enjoy the opportunity to easily type with them.
Has anyone looked into making a simple QWERTY style keyboard with them yet?
Runes are pretty well integrated into unicode at this point. I think many people would enjoy the opportunity to easily type with them.
Has anyone looked into making a simple QWERTY style keyboard with them yet?
I did something a long time ago, would need to dig up out of my archives and update it.
This keyboard, based on the Windows layout, is available:
https://keyman.com/keyboards/basic_kbdfthrk
I had a conversation with another keyboard developer just a few days ago, who is intending to contribute a Runic keyboard soon.
Thatâs awesome. I was actually inspired by this video that lays out a nice scheme for writing English with runes
Maybe the person that you spoke to saw the same thing
While useful for typing Old Norse, Keymanâs current Futhark Basic keyboard does not include all of the Anglo-Saxon (aka Anglo-Frisian) runes. Consequently, it is at best an incomplete runic keyboard in a similar way to how a Latin keyboard without letters such as j, y, and w would be incomplete but still useful for typing in Latin.
I have seen Hurlebatteâs video before. He does a much better job than many others of designing a system for typing Modern English in runes that is both true to history and adapted to the language as it currently stands. Indeed, he has come to many of the same conclusions as I have, probably in a much shorter period of time than I took to examine the wide diversity of contemporary English accents. However, his system is flawed for a number of reasons:
This, coupled with his visible uncertainty about how to spell certain words, demonstrates that he has given insufficient thought to the complexities of this matter.
It is not correct to say that the Anglo-Saxons used á to represent the sound of our letter X. In Elder Futhark, that rune originally made the [z] sound. But because the Anglo-Saxons considered [z] and [s] to be allophones, they used á for both. Consequently, although they retained that rune in the Futhorc, á does not appear anywhere in Anglo-Saxon inscriptions. That rune was only later repurposed by the Church to represent the Latin letter X which writing in runes. This was a substitution of a grapheme only, not a phoneme.
I initially did the same thing when developing my system of Modern English Futhorc however, after several months of practice, I came to realise that there are simply too many frequently used words in Modern English that become conflated as a result. Consequently, I was behoved to appeal to the principle of Justifiable Development to restrict the use of á to [s] while reverting á to its older [z] sound. Such repurposing causes no problem as there is no need to have a rune of the letter X because there are already multiple ways of representing its sounds, e.g. áŁáá«á«ážá. While Hurlebatte is correct that this may cause some confusions in regards to words such as âtaxâ and âtacksâ, such instances are far fewer than the problems caused by failing to distinguish [z] from [s], and when they do occur it is much more likely that context will help the reader to correctly grasp which word is intended.
This might be called a non-critical error and he justifies himself by saying that one is just the manuscript form of the other. Itâs not a huge problem. There is a good case to be argued that they were different forms of the same rune even though the Rune Poem treats them as distinct characters with different names. But as Unicode includes both, it would seem remiss to exclude one. However, the main reason Iâm mentioning this has to do with my next point.
In regards to the first, he overlooks the historic continuity of the English language itself in a few ways:
i) Itâs well known that when the Authorised Bible (KJV) was translated âJehovahâ was pronounced with the sound of todayâs letter Y at the start of it (which in IPA is of course [j]).
ii) Historically, the rune á· also made the [ÉŁ] sound which fall out of use in Middle English. This shows that it was used to represent a range of what might be called âG-soundsâ.
iii) The name of the rune á· is often translated as âgiftâ but it also means âgenerosityâ. Note how âgiftâ begins with a hard G (as in âgutâ) whereas âgenerosityâ begins with a soft G (as in the name âGeorgeâ). This shows that there is a connection between the rune á· and the soft G sound [dÍĄÊ] historically.
In light of the above, it is justifiable to argue that, had runes remained in use, á· would have become the rune to make the [dÍĄÊ] sound (like the letter J in the word âjeepâ). Consequently, I consider Hurlebatteâs assumption that âáłá·â would make this sound to not only be a false assumption but strangely inaccurate.
The use of á (which Hurlebatte shows on screen as áĄ) for the [j] sound (of Y in âyesâ or âyearâ) is entirely appropriate. Likewise, the use of áž for the [g] sound in âgutâ is also ideal. Both of those runes remain âuntouchedâ to use Hurlebatteâs terminology. Why then did he not chose to repurpose the redundant á· rune when he did repurpose other runes? (Iâve just explained how that can logically be done in light of history.)
Iâm sorry but his very use of the word âproperlyâ bewrays his bias. In accents with the pin-pen merger, many speakers canât even hear the difference between the sounds he assigns to the runes á & á. So how could they possibly know how they were meant to say them âproperlyâ? Now I basically agree with the way Hurlebatte has assigned those two sounds (although I recognise the need for some flexibility in spelling to avoid creating an artificial split for some speakers). But he is in error to attempt to instruct people in regards to how to speak. This causes him to make the following, very common mistake.
This is the key reason why English spelling reforms almost invariably fail. This is just as true of Shavian as it is of Deseret script. But runes has what neither of those scripts ever had - history! Those 2 scripts were invented with the accents of their days in mind without reference to the broader spectrum of English. That spectrum expands through both time and space/place.
Because how runes were used can be analysed across the time period during which they were in use, the methods of adaptation the Anglo-Saxons used with them can also be employed to solve the current problem of diverse accents across space/location. I have seldom seen anyone even try to do this and those who have inevitably run into the fault of failing to realise that they themselves have an accent which restricts their ability to design a system that people with significantly different accents can use. This is what I have almost finished doing now after several years working part-time on this problem.
By way of example, based upon Hurlebatteâs choice of the word âfatherâ to represent his tweaked sound for the áȘ rune, I can deduce with relative confidence that he uses that same vowel sound in the words âpalmâ and âlotâ. Unfortunately for him, most accents (including RP) use different vowel sounds for the PALM and LOT lexical sets. In this case, he has created an artificial merger for many millions of English speakers, probably without even realising it. Although, he does acknowledge when speaking about á© that he has dropped the short O sound that rune originally made (presumably because he could not hear it as a distinct sound).
Although this runeâs historic sound is still used in a very small minority of English dialects, speakers of those dialects almost always considered that sound to be allophonic with another vowel sound. It would be more logical to repurpose it in light of its history.
The rune ᣠwas originally created to distinguish a sub-set of the sounds made by áą. One of those sounds was the sound still heard today in the Scottish pronunciation of âcowâ (which sounds a lot like âcooâ). Consequently, it is logical to conclude that ᣠwould have been the rune making that sound when it morphed into the vowel in the MOUTH lexical set in Modern English. There is no need to assume a digraph for that sound as Hurlebatte does.
There is a better option for the modern sound of the á rune but thatâs another topic.
To be fair, I myself have struggled greatly with the matter of how to overcome rhoticity-related problems. This is extremely difficult but I think this suggestion creates more problems than it solves. There is a simpler solution to the problem of vowel length but Iâll keep that to myself for now.
~
At this point, Iâll end my critique. Although I do have some further differences with Hurlebatte, I think it would only be fair to commend him in regards to some things he has done well.
As mentioned above, he tried to respect the Futhorcâs history. He even correctly recognised that ááł is the historic way of writing the âshâ sound (as in âsheepâ) and á»áč is the historic way of writing the âwhâ sound of âwhineâ (in accents which do not exhibit the wine-whine merger).
Hurlebatteâs use of áá± for the vowel of the NURSE lexical set is extremely logical in light of how children in many countries are taught that âerâ makes that sounds.
In spite of point 6 of my above critique, Hurlebatte did begin by instructing viewers to tweak his system. However, it was a major oversight to provide no guidance in regards to how that could be done in a feasible manner.
Not using áł to represent the sound of âcâ in âcutâ is an excellent idea and the logical development of having the ᣠrune. Though I praise the concept, for historical reasons Iâve not fully required its abandonment in my system but it is highly restricted.
The use of á before a syllabic consonant has merit in light of how frequently âeâ is used in Latin script, yet it may seem odd in words like ârhythmâ. So I think its best not to lean upon our existing biases in this case. In spite of what some English teachers say, the English language does not require a vowel to be present in every syllable. (I say this having taught English as a second language while helping to establish a tutoring school.) This could easily move into a discussion about the schwa but thatâs too big a topic for here and Iâve already said far more than I probably needed to.
For now, I am planning on publishing a book (possibly two) on how to write todayâs English phonetically in runes. Currently the handbook is around 80 pages long but thatâs likely to change during editing. I have tried to keep it brief so itâll be on A5 paper. I wanted to have the runic keyboard ready well beforehand though so I could include images of it.
While Iâve not publicly released anything yet, if you would like to follow videos on Modern English Futhorc once theyâre out, please let me know your preferred platform and Iâll give you a link.
Finally, my apologies for such a long reply but, given your clear interest in the topic, I didnât want to leave you thinking that I hadnât thoroughly thought through these matters, as a brief response may have done.
Bingo!
Shavian is custom to English and also featural (quite smart), but it has no connection to history. People like to have that rootedness whether they know it or not. Although, I suppose Hangul took off without a history as well. But if the king of england required adoption of shavian, that would also be quite the historic event
Regarding the issue of accents and mergers, I think it is natural that there will be different âofficialâ dictionaries for different major accents. I donât see it as a problem as long as the letter sounds are agreed upon across accents. Keyman has a wonderful prediction system for keyboard too so you can include your preferred dictionary for your accent.
Great comment with great ideas!! I also would find it tragic if some runes were simply unused. So many of them are beautiful.
Please do share a youtube channel, blog, email, or even discord server. Iâm super interested. Otherwise we can stay updated on this thread.
If todayâs King of England requires all English texts henceforth to be escribed in Shavian Iâll give you a $1000 mate!
Iâm not opposed to dictionaries. Indeed, they can be helpful. However I agree with that Oxford professor who the other year said that requiring specific spellings is a form of elitism. Whenever a language too rigidly adheres to set spellings, its new learners suffer along with the less educated as a result.
How familiar are you with different accents? They are people who say the vowels in âsquareâ and ânurseâ identically. They are people who insert a yod (i.e. the [j] sound) into the word âcarâ so that it sounds like [kjaËÉč]. There are people who think the vowel sounds in âforceâ and ânorthâ are different.
Nonetheless, I believe it is possible for all of us to typing phonetically in runes according to our own accents provided we agree upon a system of anchoring, i.e. some degree of liberty in spelling needs to be acceptable yet it must remain anchored to certain common words so that, even if you and I say those words differently, we can still both decipher what the other writes by drawing upon our common knowledge of which runes represent which lexical groupings. (Iâve intentionally avoided the technical term âlexical setsâ here because, put simply, itâs a bit more complicated than that.)
If you know though please, is there a way to access a list of IPA transcriptions in RP &/or GenAm? I must admit, I have no idea how to write a dictionary for a keyboard. If youâre skilled in this area, it would be wonderful if you could assist please
The problem is that English is not Spanish. I am fairly educated and I need to think really hard to figure out how I would spell a word phonetically in English. Stress-timing is so tricky! So itâs not about elitism. Itâs about genuinely being helpful imo. Elitism could be forcing Americans to speak the âkingâs englishâ perhaps. But as I mentioned, I donât see an issue with having multiple acceptable pronunciations in a dictionary, or different major regions having their own dictionaries.
Focusing on these little quirks are a huge waste of time imo. General American and RP are a great start. Nobody that pronounces âsquareâ like ânurseâ is going to be up in arms that their accent is not one of the official standards
It is a noble concept, but my proposition is that nobody wants to type in their own very specific accent because it requires too much effort to think deeply about how they specifically pronounce things. Too much work and too much study would be required.
It sounds like you are describing a Phonemic alphabet (as opposed to a phonetic alphabet). This would be similar to Shavian which in multiple cases says âhowever you pronounce this sound, that is what this letter isâ.
Keyman enables this actually. It was done for Shavian if you look at the âlexical setâ repo here: Shavian-info (Shavian-info) / Repositories · GitHub
People on this forum can help us with this. Essentially though, it can be as simple as
And that is it.
If you need to think hard, you may be overthinking my friend. If phonetic spelling required everyone to be an expert in IPA, we wouldnât already see so much of it in casual exchanges. Precision is not required. Indeed, often it is detrimental. What needs to be conveyed in a general idea, and thatâs what runes can do.
You seem to miss the point. A speaker with the square-nurse merger is incapable of distinguishing between those 2 vowels because they are identical to that person, not only in thought but in their lived experience. Thus, a method for accommodating such people must be available or else we are guilty of prejudice. Perhaps a better example may be how many Americans consider the LOT vowel to either be the same as that in PALM or that in CLOTH, yet a few recognise those as 3 distinct vowels though in some places they are such. Yet to what extent is distinction in writing necessary? To complicate matters furthers, some assign the LOT vowel to the PALM set yet consider the CLOTH vowel to be entirely distinct, while others see the LOT and CLOTH vowels as being identical but the PALM vowel as being distinct. Do you see now what I mean about the need for flexibility?
Sorry but that is simply not the case, though I can see why you may think it is. Youâre right that the average man doesnât like thinking too hard. But people regularly write in their own local accents precisely because it comes naturally. We see it in words like âdawgâ (in Georgia) and in how children everywhere default towards writing phonetically because it is easier for them than trying to remember numerous, often absurd, spellings. Are you old enough to remember 1337? Leetspeak may have had its day but every generation creates its own new slang which often has some phonetic basis. Whatâs more, itâs not just an ideal, I still have my licence key for Keyman (from Tavultesoft) from when I began working on how to solve this problem. Iâve not completed it yet, but I overcame a major hurdle just a few months ago
I have drawn upon some similar ideas to Shavian though I was unaware it existed when I did so. As far as Iâm aware though, Shavian failed to account for the dynamism of accents. Whenever one assumes accents are static, oneâs ship is bound to sink in the storm. This is what I mean by the use of âanchorsâ, not that even sound has only its own range but, if you can imagine it, something more like a series of interconnected Venn diagrammes of varying sizes where the centre of each circle is an achor. Each boat can drift within its circle, which may even allow some boats to do-si-do, yet despite this there will still be an ability to understand one another.
Thank you very much for the link. That may be quite helpful but Iâll look at it another day seeing itâs nearing 4 am here.
Thanks for the suggestion but manual transcribing would be a waste of time. If its decision tree were accurate, a machine could do the whole dictionary in a matter of minutes, if that. It wouldnât be hard to programme. Thatâs why I asked for RP & GenAm lists. They would make good test cases and could help form an initial dictionary for Modern English Futhorc.
Speaking of programming, Iâve completed my runic keyboard layout now. (Decided to add Ogham on an extra layer too.) But itâs been so long since I last used Keyman that I seem to be running into a problem with the keyboard compiler. If you can help at all, what do I resolve the following please?
RunicKeyboard.kmn (207): 208A The compiler has assigned a minimum engine version of 9.0 based on features used in this keyboard
runic.kmn: Failure: âC:\Users\Owner\Documents\Keyman Developer\Projects\runeboard\runic.kmnâ was not compiled successfully for Windows, macOS, Linux, Desktop devices.
Thanks in advance.
In Shavian, I leaned towards an âunmerging maximalismâ. I would prefer to learn how to spell the word in the unmerged way even if I could not personally hear a difference. My logic is that over time I would start to see the patterns of words that are unmerged and use the same vowels. I may even start to unmerged them in my own speech one day.
I preferred a more conservative spelling I suppose. One that retained as many sounds as possible, even if some were unclear to me. Maybe it is idealistic and an attempt to aim at a future âtransatlanticâ accent.
Can you share some of the layout info? even if it is just runes->IPA sounds in a list?
Yes, I would never suggest manual work regarding the dictionary
is it uh-liz-uh-buh-th, ih-liz-uh-beth, eh-liz-ah-beth, i could go onâŠ
Frankly, english being stress-timed just does not lend itself to clarity in vowel sounds. It is probably the main reason that the writing departed so much from the pronunciation.
You seem quite intelligent. Would it be fair to say youâre an academic? Itâs great that you want to learn as much as you can but when one canât heard any difference the exercise becomes inauthentic. The average man is often unwilling to learn what he sees as unnecessary.
Though I would ask how you would address accents that never underwent the foot-strut split? Why should they have to learn something extra when they werenât the ones to change? Or should everyone who has the split be required to ignore it for the sake of the remnant minority? My system offers options for such cases so that every man write his own accent while still being able to read the accents of others just as much as we can both read colour/color regardless of the debate.
I have included the Trans-Atlantic accent in my analysis though Iâve generally preferenced natural accents. Iâve looked at around 50 including 3 South African accents, various Pacific Islander accents, Singaporean, Indian, as well as the usual line-up of CANZUKUS accents, though to be fair I really only looked at one Canadian accent as most of theirs can be covered by different US accents (as much as they may not like to admit that).
I originally intended to include a table at the end of the handbook on possible IPA equivalents for different runes though now Iâm not entirely sure itâs a good idea as it could confuse the common man. I may save it for a larger work further down the track.
This is overthinking my friend. Stress generally does not matter. It can be largely be ignored when writing in runes. If one vocalises a schwa then it should be written as such. If one doesnât, then write what one says. One need not over-complicate matters. The purpose of text is to convey what is basically oral. Thatâs one of the reasons why variety in spelling is helpful. It can convey sounds more naturally than unified spelling can.
Good point! I suppose that I would simply make a choice as I see fit and if a different group of people disagree, they would be free to make their own dictionary and set of âstandardsâ. Again, I see the standards as helping people rather than controlling them. I would prefer to have some kind of autocorrect to help me.
The problem is that many people hear the words in their head even when they are reading silently. So if I read the british spelling and pronunciation of a word, then I (as an american) am forced to read it in the british way and it is jarring and unfamiliar. If the text is long like a novel, these two communities of speakers may depart further just because they donât like a foreign accent invading their mind space. Sounds dramatic, but it is what I experienced with Shavian.
I only meant that stress timing crushes vowels to a degree where even the speaker isnât exactly clear which vowels they are saying (see: âelizabethâ example). In that sense, I would prefer to just have a standard representation of the word to help guide the clarity of my own pronunciation and thought.
I tend to favor a more etymological spelling, but I know that is a point of divergence with many people.
I have made a keymap for a 4x12 ortholinear keyboard (e.g. the Planck) for the open source QMK firmware that uses Unicode on Windows, Linux and macOS. Each OS uses a different input method for unicode. It is available here and you can also view the documentation on this page: https://github.com/qmk/qmk_firmware/tree/master/layouts/community/ortho_4x12/trguhq
I think ortholinear is well suited for runes compared to QWERTY. With the 24 runes in the Elder Futhark grouped in 3 sets (aetts) of 8 runes each, they can be logically arranged on the keyboard (see attached photo). QWERTY offers little for this purpose, and trying to map runes to specific positions of Latin characters can be an inexact method. There have been a number of efforts to come up with QWERTY layouts - none of which I found particularly compelling.
that looks beautiful! how did you print the keycaps?
Thanks! Those are an out of production variant of âDrop + MiTo XDA Canvasâ called âManfredâ.
Going from my notes (which may be out of date), other keycaps with runes have been âGMK Norseâ, âInfinikey Vanirâ and âePBT Skadiâ.
There are some custom keycap printers as well, for example WASDkeyboards. Varmilo also offers rune options for complete keyboards.