AH Challenge: Orthodox Christian Sweden

I'm really liking these ideas - but of them, which one could work in a POD circa 999-1000?

:confused:Why? (aside from the coolness factor). Cyrillic HAS a letter for the 'th' sound, namely 'fita' (basically a Greek theta). In Russian, it is synonymous with 'ef' (the phi-based character), but they would know what the Greek pronunciation was and use it for Swedish. IMO

When the Latin alphabet was adopted by the Scandinavians, Þ/þ was retained from the old runic alphabet. Same thing with the Goths when they (presumably) adopted the Greek alphabet.

Now, it would be very possible to just use the Early Cyrillic alphabet from the get-go. There is, however, a problem - at least in Old East Norse (not to be confused with Old West Norse, which is largely the basis of the standardized "Old Norse"), there were dental fricative - voiceless Þ/þ and voiced Ð/ð, if we use the Icelandic alphabet for a bit. Now, either Þ/þ or Fita could be used to represent both fricatives (indeed, Old Icelandic manuscripts used Thorn for both sounds, so there is a precedent) or we could split up the load between Thorn and Fita. Not with Cyrillic D - it is basically that, a stop like the English "D". Therefore, one of them is used for the voiced dental fricative and the other for the voiceless. I'll leave it to you to figure out which letter goes with which sound.
 
I'm really liking these ideas - but of them, which one could work in a POD circa 999-1000?



When the Latin alphabet was adopted by the Scandinavians, Þ/þ was retained from the old runic alphabet. Same thing with the Goths when they (presumably) adopted the Greek alphabet.

Now, it would be very possible to just use the Early Cyrillic alphabet from the get-go. There is, however, a problem - at least in Old East Norse (not to be confused with Old West Norse, which is largely the basis of the standardized "Old Norse"), there were dental fricative - voiceless Þ/þ and voiced Ð/ð, if we use the Icelandic alphabet for a bit. Now, either Þ/þ or Fita could be used to represent both fricatives (indeed, Old Icelandic manuscripts used Thorn for both sounds, so there is a precedent) or we could split up the load between Thorn and Fita. Not with Cyrillic D - it is basically that, a stop like the English "D". Therefore, one of them is used for the voiced dental fricative and the other for the voiceless. I'll leave it to you to figure out which letter goes with which sound.
Given that delta (often) has the ð sound in modern Greek (I suspect the shift happened before this time period), I would assume that they'd just use a delta. (E.g. Grandma's birth certificate has a 'd', although she ended up using 'th')

Did the Goths really use a þ in Greek? Never heard of that. Mind you, I know little of the Goths using the Greek alphabet.

AFAIK, there is no rune for ð. (the system I use, when I use it at all, which is rarely, is the ?old west Norse? that doesn't distinguish between voiced and unvoiced at all).
 
Given that delta (often) has the ð sound in modern Greek (I suspect the shift happened before this time period), I would assume that they'd just use a delta. (E.g. Grandma's birth certificate has a 'd', although she ended up using 'th')

But that invites confusion with D/d. When the Greek alphabet was introduced to Slavic, thereby producing the Cyrillic alphabet, the Slavs used the Greek delta for the sound value of /d/, not /ð/. Something similar would also work for Old East Norse/Swedish.

Did the Goths really use a þ in Greek? Never heard of that. Mind you, I know little of the Goths using the Greek alphabet.

If one believes in the Gothic language Bible as being representative of the Gothic language in general, then yes - there was a thorn in the Greek-derived Gothic alphabet.

AFAIK, there is no rune for ð. (the system I use, when I use it at all, which is rarely, is the ?old west Norse? that doesn't distinguish between voiced and unvoiced at all).

True, but one could easily commandeer Þ/þ if one wanted to.
 
AFAIK, there is no rune for ð. (the system I use, when I use it at all, which is rarely, is the ?old west Norse? that doesn't distinguish between voiced and unvoiced at all).

It's similar to the situation in the Anglian dialects (and likely true of most early germanic) where there was no differentiation between voiced and unvoiced fricatives: s = s and z, f = f and v, ð or þ = th and dh. As distinctions were made other letters were adopted (z and v) though it was not entirely regularised - note how s is often z in Modern English and how ð and þ were thoroughly interchangeable in Middle English. Obviously the Danish and Norman invasions complicated things but that is the general theme.

Since ð was a modification of the roman d then I assume cyrillic-using Scandinavians would modify delta too. But it depends who is doing the scribing - imported christian scribes would use what they were familiar with, and ditto converted scribes. At some point a convention would be reached.
 
But that invites confusion with D/d. When the Greek alphabet was introduced to Slavic, thereby producing the Cyrillic alphabet, the Slavs used the Greek delta for the sound value of /d/, not /ð/. Something similar would also work for Old East Norse/Swedish.
Ja, but that's because the Slavic languages didn't have dental fricatives.

Note, that there are 2 Cyrillic characters derived from beta - beh and veh (Cyrillic goes: abvgd...). So, certainly a derivative of 'd' could work.

If one believes in the Gothic language Bible as being representative of the Gothic language in general, then yes - there was a thorn in the Greek-derived Gothic alphabet.
Hmmm... I believe you are incorrect.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gothic_alphabet
shows the th/þ sound as being represented by something that looks like a trident, and claims it's derived from a phi, of all letters.

Certainly when Gothic is written in Roman letters, the þ is used, but that's different.

True, but one could easily commandeer Þ/þ if one wanted to.
true, true.
 
It's similar to the situation in the Anglian dialects (and likely true of most early germanic) where there was no differentiation between voiced and unvoiced fricatives: s = s and z, f = f and v, ð or þ = th and dh. As distinctions were made other letters were adopted (z and v) though it was not entirely regularised - note how s is often z in Modern English and how ð and þ were thoroughly interchangeable in Middle English. Obviously the Danish and Norman invasions complicated things but that is the general theme.

Since ð was a modification of the roman d then I assume cyrillic-using Scandinavians would modify delta too. But it depends who is doing the scribing - imported christian scribes would use what they were familiar with, and ditto converted scribes. At some point a convention would be reached.
Well argued.
 
Hmm, some things that I'll have to think about.

Back to asking about the POD - any other ideas from around 999~1000 AD onwards for the OP to work?
 
Top