h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

forþorc is indeed a misspelling. Ah, cringe, cringe... it happens to the best and the worst of us...

I mentioned in the article that the many signs for a particular sound (and the similarity between signs that indicated different sounds) could be incredibly confusing, and that heaven help the reader whose Latin was not up to the task. I should clarify that this constituted a problem only in the cases where a scribe would write partly in Latin and partly in Old English. But something else to keep in mind is that it was not unusual for a scribe to be incompletely au fait with the Latin letters used in Old English. This language of Old English was mostly transcribed using Latin letters, with a few of the letters from the Runic alphabets carried over into the alphabet for Old English as it was codified. Hence it might be best to edit the article so that this is clear...

I want to thank everyone here, too, for being so encouraging in your feedback and so on.

Aaaaaack!

Ok, I've given it another try, and I would appreciate it incredibly much if you would take a look and make sure I haven't inadvertently introduced any errors. Out of all the entries I've sub-edited over the years, this is easily the one for which I am least familiar with the subject!

Definitely not your fault, though -- it's a very well-written entry, overall.

I'm quite confused on this sentence, however:

"Between five and nine runes were added, the commonest being nine extra runes - which brings us to that total of 33 runes in the Anglo-Saxon Fuþorc."

Does that mean that researchers aren't sure whether 5, 6, 7, 8, or 9 runes were added? Or that there were different forms of the Anglo-Saxon Fuþorc, and some had more runes than others?

And when you say "as well as some runes being given completely different letters to those customarily used in the Elder fuþark", do you mean that they were given different signs? Or did the names change? Or both?

thanks!


Mikey

You quoted this: "Between five and nine runes were added, the commonest being nine extra runes - which brings us to that total of 33 runes in the Anglo-Saxon Fuþorc."

... and asked "Does that mean that researchers aren't sure whether 5, 6, 7, 8, or 9 runes were added? Or that there were different forms of the Anglo-Saxon Fuþorc, and some had more runes than others?"

There were quite a few different fuþorcs formed out of the basic Elder fuþark. One of these was the one we call the Anglo-Saxon Fuþorc, which was the commonest. The Anglo-Saxon Fuþorc had 9 extra runes added to that basic set. Other, similar, runic alphabets had 5 to 9 runes added to the Elder fuþark form, depending upon the different linguistic needs of the language for which the fuþorcs were being used, the region, communities' trade with other communities, and so on.

I hope that makes it clearer...

You also asked, 'And when you say "as well as some runes being given completely different letters to those customarily used in the Elder fuþark", do you mean that they were given different signs? Or did the names change? Or both?'

The runic signs in the Anglo-Saxon Fuþorc differ from the runic signs in the Elder fuþark in a number of instances - and when I said that some runes were given completely different letters, it's probably better expressed as "as well as some runes being given completely different signs..." In more than one instance, the name and meaning, in the Anglo-Saxon Fuþorc, for a runic sign referring to a particular phonetic sound (or group of sounds) was completely different to the name and meaning in the Elder fuþark.

You edited "it early incorporated a great deal from other languages" as "it early on incorporated a great deal from other languages" - do you mind if I ask you to get rid of that "on"?

And perhaps you could reword "Even readers at the time often found it difficult to know precisely what the Latin text was saying - Heaven help the reader whose Latin was poor and couldn't work out the meaning from the context!" as the following...

"Even readers at the time often found it difficult to know precisely what the text, using the combination of Latin characters and the remnants from the runic alphabet, was saying - Heaven help the reader whose ability to mentally transcribe the various letters and runes and their various forms was poor, and couldn't work out the meaning from the context! The problem was compounded by the occasional juxtaposition of Latin and Old English texts hugger-mugger on the same page, and by the shorthand and unique methods employed by individual scribes in transcribing the letters."

The rest of it looks fine... Thanks!

Okay, I've made some changes. I added quite a bit of your explanation, as I found it quite helpful.

Since you weren't happy with the "early on", and I wasn't happy with it as just "early", I changed it to "also" -- does that work for you? Alternatively, "soon" would work, I think.

For that last bit, I broke it off into its own paragraph, and split the first sentence into two separate sentences. Does that work okay for you?

Thanks, Mikey.

"Soon" would work perfectly - and the rest looks fine, too. Nice work!

- Almirena

Thanks for getting back to me -- it makes this so much easier! I'll change that word to "soon" and then send it in to the eds -- you should get an email when it shows up on the front page.


Mikey