The runic alphabet
The Elder Futhark is the oldest of the runic alphabets: 24 signs that Germanic peoples carved into stone, bone and wood between the second and the eighth century. Its name is not a word but its first six runes read one after another: f, u, th, a, r, k.
It was made for carving, and that explains how it looks: it has almost no curves. Everything is straight strokes, because a straight line is what a knife can open against the grain of the wood. Hence ᛒ recalling a B and ᛘ an M, while ᚦ, which sounds like «th», looks like nothing of ours.
It has no uppercase and lowercase: each rune is a single shape, which makes it the shortest to learn of all the alphabets in Phabetia. And each one also carried a name with a meaning of its own —ᚠ is «cattle», ᛋ is «sun», ᛏ is the god Tiwaz— which is what eventually turned them into symbols.
The 24 runes of the Elder Futhark
| Rune | Name | Sounds like | Looks like |
|---|---|---|---|
| ᚠ | Fehu | F | |
| ᚢ | Uruz | U | N |
| ᚦ | Thurisaz | TH | P |
| ᚨ | Ansuz | A | F |
| ᚱ | Raido | R | |
| ᚲ | Kaunan | K | C |
| ᚷ | Gebo | G | X |
| ᚹ | Wunjo | W | P |
| ᚺ | Hagalaz | H | |
| ᚾ | Naudiz | N | |
| ᛁ | Isaz | I | |
| ᛃ | Jera | J | |
| ᛇ | Eihwaz | EI | S |
| ᛈ | Pertho | P | C |
| ᛉ | Algiz | Z | Y |
| ᛊ | Sowilo | S | |
| ᛏ | Tiwaz | T | |
| ᛒ | Berkanan | B | |
| ᛖ | Ehwaz | E | M |
| ᛗ | Mannaz | M | |
| ᛚ | Laguz | L | |
| ᛜ | Ingwaz | NG | O |
| ᛞ | Dagaz | D | X |
| ᛟ | Othala | O |
Words to practise
- ᚱᚢᚾᚨ runa
- ᚾᚨᚢᚦ nauth
- ᚹᚨᚱᚷ warg
- ᛊᛏᚨᛁᚾ stain
- ᛊᚢᚾᚨ suna
- ᛒᛖᚱᚷ berg
- ᛗᚨᚾᚨ mana
- ᛚᚨᚷᚢ lagu
- ᛞᚨᚷᚱ dagr
- ᛒᛚᛟᛏ blot
How you learn it in Phabetia
Every new letter is introduced first with its name and its Latin equivalent, and you have to recognise it before you start practising it. Then come the exercises: letter to sound, sound to letter, quick memory, telling it apart from the Latin letter it resembles, spotting the intruder, completing a word and reading one.
Characters arrive two or three at a time and are never dropped: each level carries the previous ones along. What you get wrong comes back sooner and more often; what you have mastered shows up rarely, and anything you have not seen for days climbs back up on its own.
There are no lives and no punishment: getting one wrong interrupts nothing. To move on you only need 70 % right.
Frequently asked questions
How many runes does the Elder Futhark have?
Twenty-four. Later futharks cut the number down: the Scandinavian one, the one the Vikings used, settled at sixteen.
Are runes a language?
No, they are an alphabet. They were used to write several old Germanic languages, just as the Latin alphabet serves both English and Spanish today.
Why is there no uppercase and lowercase?
Because two shapes for one letter is a much later invention. Runic, like Georgian, has a single shape per letter: half the work.