@Ephraim
Even if these sorts of glyphs were begun during a Proto-Germanic time, I do not think the alphabetic
portion would retain the /d/ and /ō/. The /d/ for the 2PL just does not look right to me at all, considering
,
(and remember Old
as well ) would use some kind of
þorn rune IMO.
The
oþala looks & feels like it has too much
gravitas in the descendant languages which either delete the vowel or front it. You might have mentioned somewhere that these may be optional, and I might have missed that.
**NB: Another thing to consider is this:
Wikipedia wrote: Another complication is that several shortcut forms for common words, syllables, and grammatical endings developed. One example is the use of the rune named maðr (man) for the word maðr. Another is the use of a special glyph for the various r-endings so common in Old Norse.
Thorn with a stroke was an actual attested abbreviation for the definite article, looks like in Old
and
.
The pitchfork /m/ rune also doubled as 'Mensch' or 'maðr' .
.kgr. apparently was in vogue for 'king' (mebbe that could be represented in my Square Rune Calligraphy?
And, just like
(no doubt those meddling monks influenced here) a kind of macron or dot could represent
a missing letter or two or three.
So.... there was already a somewhat robust tradition of assigning single runes , or quasi-rebuses, etc. Wiki mentions a few, tantalizing us for more - WHAT MOAR ARE THERE?
I think the vowel ligatures make some sense, Ephraim. Only I would join them to the root as branchlets (ooh, very Yggdrasil here), like so:
Sure, one runs the risk of missing them/misreading them. It just seemed more natural to me that they'd branch off of the main rune somehow.
I enjoy the reduplication visually represented by the doubled glyphs. Who knows, perhaps that might have become the
de rigueur way to graphically represent the Past in (at least strong) Germanic Verbs using these runes?? At least in a shorthand sort of way to circumvent spelling out the ridiculously long terminations.
Ooh, and look what I found-
Of course, these are Old Norse runes, but actual attested
compound runes! The article it came from doesn't say too much new, but that Runes were 'pieced together like a puzzle'.
Perhaps that's
yet another parameter that could help inform the aesthetic?